1917 Searches For A Reason To Fight
Recently I’ve been struck by the heartbreaking realisation that the veterans who fought in the unholy mess that was the First World War are all but gone. Each step away is a loss, remembrance relying on echoes. What they went through is what we hold onto, reason enough to keep their memory flickering. This is a war where I constantly wonder why in God’s name did this happen. What the hell did they fight for? And if we can’t quite find an answer to that question — to fight a war so abhorrent in its absurdity, we at least have the power to honour it.
It was a war that quickly became one of vicious cycles. A relentless, churning machine that fed on the lives of young men dragged into oblivion. The mud, the trenches, the blasted lands, disease and rot. The maggots, the relentless barrage of shells and machine gun fire. The rats and festering, dead bodies. It was hell on earth. How do you keep going in the face of this? It’s a whisper that builds to a steady hum in Sam Mendes’ 1917. A technical marvel that reveals a fraught, emotional centre. One that’s hesitant to be exposed, to be open to feeling anything until it is full unto bursting.
The film mimics this depressing cycle, a knowing that it is part of a larger scope where this specific attempt to quell the insane slaughter is only temporary. Ending as it began, a reflection of itself while the randomness and horror of war pulsates around it. Mendes employed Roger Deakins to craft it all as if it was a single take and the technique shades the film going in. At first it is detached and mechanical, keeping its distance from the two soldiers, Schofield (George Mackay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman), tasked with delivering a message to call off an attack that would cost hundreds of men, as well as us. As it clicks into rhythm there is a stark realisation that there is nowhere to hide, no respite. We are caught, as they are, in time’s cruel devices. It’s grip is gentle, assured, letting the camera linger amongst an eerie calmness. We are treated to the daily life of breaths held before the whistle and horns blare. It passes by, never to be seen again. Like a river that begins gently, we move ever onwards. This passing reminds me of the faces we see as we go about our lives, the stories behind them. What ails or strengthens them in that moment we lock our eyes. Do we both know that we see them, or are we both hidden. Afraid of letting the world in lest it crush us.
We are witness to a landscape scoured brutally clean, our soldiers walking the apocalypse. At one point Schofield and Blake come upon mounds of shell casings so large as to seem like they’ve stumbled into a field of battle where giants roamed. The technology of war ratcheted to such an extreme and overflowing efficiency that it renders the two of them powerless, fragile. Rare are the moments of succour. Mackay and Chapman provide two sides of the battered coin. Chapman is all pudgy youth, irreverence and elbow grease determination. Mackay broad and tall with a face scrambling to find what life used to be. One strides between the worlds of childhood innocence and youthful exuberance, the other remains closed off. For to open up would be to rip Schofield’s soul out. And so we remain continuously caught between them. The genius of this unbroken film coming into focus.
There are moments of broken wonder, humanity and compassion. When night descends, the flares and passing lights from planes cast shadows in motion, mingled with a ruined village burning. It’s as if they have slipped back from purgatory to hell. But then we are witness to the sweet cry of a child or the gentle embrace of a soldier’s camaraderie that calms the staggering heart. Often I found myself lost in the scene, descending through the void and spreading out like my particles scattering in the wind.
As much as the film’s calling card is the technical wizardry (and with good cause) that does lend a cold sheen to proceedings — like a thing to be admired but not engaged with — compassion and humanity, lost in the rubble and dirt of this cataclysmic conflict, helps to crystallise the reason to fight. It is simply to return home. There is nothing more honourable than upholding a promise and in this, 1917, finds its heart.
