An immersive thrill

Rating: 9/10 (29 January 2020)

1917 takes a familiar storytelling approach to the calamity of the western front. Send a couple of fictional characters into a real world event and follow them around. We are introduced to two honest British tommies and literally follow them, without a break, through the crucial details of the conflict. There is no mistaking the intention of the film as memoriam to the men who fought in the war. Mendes dedicates the film to a family member who was there and wants us to remember what happened. The film does not raise the question of how or why. It seeks only to examine the what of it, for this is the only bandwidth available to any Private or Lance Corporal in war.
The plot is basic. Two Lance Corporals are sent into hostile territory to call off a doomed attack. The film is structured into 6 set pieces (excluding exposition and coda). Each is their own short story that could be played in any order.
Following our two NCOs through the desolation of no man's land, the horrors are impressionistic. We barely notice dead bodies camouflaged in muck. A few misty tree trunks imply the ground was partly forested before being pounded to mud. Further in, we see churned up humanity left to the vermin. In the opposition trenches the German resources are noticeably superior to the Brits. The Brits have sandbags and corrugated iron lining their trenches whilst the Germans have concrete walls. The Brit dugouts are small and dark, whilst the Germans are billeted in underground barracks. And this is the position the Germans have abandoned for far superior defences! The Germans are better trained too. A key facet of the film is the contrast between naive British soldiering and the ruthlessness of the German men. Time and again Schofield is caught out by more decisive counterparts. The key moment in the film occurs whilst demonstrating mercy to an injured German pilot. They do what any decent civilian would have done, but these are not civilians and it does not end well.
Must Schofield sacrifice his sense of humanity and decency to be a better soldier? The film's answer is resoundingly no. Following a near fatal exchange of rifle fire with a sniper, Schofield does not fire a single other shot, despite opportunities (and dire need) to do so. It may be the case that he has simply run out of ammo but this is not explicitly shown, so it is left to your own judgement what motivates his reticence. His only other kill is by strangulation, but this is clear cut survival.
In a hellish sequence, surrounded by fire and smoke, we meet the only civilian and only woman in the story. A sort of good witch offering safe harbour from a sea of horror. She patches up the wounded man and tries to keep him safe from the outside world. He leaves. A safe harbour is no place for a solider anymore than the burning town is any place for a civilian.
The most moving sequence has an eerie feel reminiscent of Tarkovsky or 'Come and See'. After a horrifying scramble over bodies of dead civilians, we hear ethereal singing coming from the woods. Through the trees we see hundreds of faceless men listening to a human voice singing a folk hymn. Here is the lost generation. The millions that left and didn't come home. Their very absence from Britain immeasurably changed its future in unknown ways. Deakins' camera wheels around slowly to reveal some of the faces. Here are teenage boys transfixed by the last moment of human produced beauty they will ever witness. As soon as the singing stops, they wake from the dream and return to human produced terror. We go with them, desperate to call a halt.
In the end the officer in command sees no hope for these men. If they are not sacrificed today, they will be next week. It doesn't really make any difference, we will simply follow orders. The irony is that deferentially following orders is what put everyone in these trenches in the first place. New orders might save them today but aren't going to save them in the long run.
One technical quibble. By necessity the artillery explosions in the final charge are CGI'd into the scene but they cross the eyeline where Schofield is running and this takes us out of the picture. We lose the very 'you are there' essence of the film up to that point. Nevertheless, expect to see the peerless Roger Deakins pick up his second Oscar on a technically challenging production and even in a strong field for Best Picture, you wouldn't bet against this.