(Benedict
Cumberbatch)
Sam
Mendes’s gripping Oscar-nominated Great War movie is, to use the word of
current coinage, thoroughly “immersive”. (Review by Patrick Compton - 9/10)
This is a war film that effectively
combines a real feeling of authenticity – trench warfare on the Western Front –
with artifice, namely the fact that the entire film appears to be shot in one,
long, take. This, presumably, is an attempt – brilliantly successful in my view
– to create a simulation of the uninterrupted flow of time from the point of
view of two soldiers sent on a crisis mission to a newly established front
line.
It is April 1917. The impression has been
given that the Germans are in full retreat on the Western Front and a battalion
of about 1600 men is about to launch an attack that is intended to rupture the
German line and, who knows, help win the war. The grim truth, however, is that
this is part of an elaborate German trap that will bring down disaster on the
attackers.
At this stage, two historical points:
First, people may complain that the battalion should have been radioed. Much
quicker. The problem was that in those days, radio communications were
extremely fragile, largely because of primitive technology and the destructive
effect of shellfire. Instead, human messengers were invariably used to relay orders
to different parts of the battlefield.
Secondly, a brief historical background to
the German withdrawal (as opposed to retreat). Late in 1916, at the conclusion
of the Battle of the Somme, the Germans decided to withdraw their troops from
the immediate battlefield area and establish a new defence system (the
Hindenburg Line) further back with the effect of shortening the line and
economising force, thereby creating defences more formidable than any yet
encountered by the Allies.
In actual historical fact, this clever
strategic decision resulted in a French disaster at the Chemin des Dames
battlefield which led to mutinies that virtually sidelined the French army as a
potent attacking force for the remainder of the war.
Mendes has, of course, made an imaginative
film based on stories told to him by his grandfather, Alfred Mendes, a
combatant in the war. So, although the film is a remarkable work of fiction,
it’s as well to know that it carries a personal as well as a general link to
historical fact.
The two messengers, Schofield and Blake
(wonderfully played by relative newcomers George MacKay and Dean-Charles
Chapman) have been given 24 hours to reach the battalion before the attack is
scheduled to begin.
First, they have to negotiate their way
through a largely deserted no-man’s land full of floating corpses, rats,
barbed-wire and of course, mud. This part of the film is a masterpiece of
historical accuracy that should surely win production designer Dennis Gassner
an Oscar. For example, he’s done his research to such a degree that he shows
the superior construction of the German trenches to those of the British and
the French. The latter, politically driven by the need to push the Germans out
of France, were never content to build “permanent” structures: the aim was
always to push forward.
As mentioned, the halting and extremely
dangerous progress of the messengers is followed by a camera that not only
captures their point of view through these hellish landscapes, but frequently
circles around to show them against a background of mud and blood. This is a
technical aspect of the film that will surely thrill the art movie crowd.
The episodic nature of the film focuses not
just on the trenches; there’s also a semi-phantasmagoric night scene in a
destroyed town where one of the messengers meets a French woman and a child, a
brief moment of sentiment and emotional warmth in this otherwise brutish
environment. And there are even glimpses of green countryside with cherry trees
in blossom to suggest the greater world is waiting to be renewed.
The film is not just spectacle, brilliant
sets and cinematographer Roger Deakins’s magnificent tracking shots. The
script, co-written by Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns, establishes an intimate
relationship between the two messengers, the young, idealistic Blake and more
damaged Schofield, that gives the film its personal force and human warmth.
The structure of the film is episodic.
Essentially a quest movie, the cast includes cameos from distinguished actors
such as Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong and Andrew Scott who
each play a brief but significant role in the emerging narrative that
culminates in a quietly wrenching climax.
1917 is currently showing at Ballito Junction, Cornubia Mall, Galleria
Centre, Gateway IMAX, Musgrave Centre, The Pavilion, Shelly Beach and
Watercrest Mall. – Patrick Compton
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