1917: Vintage Fear
by Toni Carr
Sam Mendes’ 1917 (2019) gave me one of the most harrowing film-watching experiences of my life. I’ve been genuinely scared by five films in my life: The Ring (2002), The Blair Witch Project (1999), Quarantine (2008) although I admittedly saw it before I saw (REC) (2007) which was superior, The Witch (2015), and Hereditary (2018). To be viscerally frightened and shaken by a war film more effectively than any horror film was not something I ever expected.
In 1917, Lance Corporals Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay) are called upon by superiors to deliver a message to the Second Devonshires in Ecoust-Saint-Mein, France in order to stop an attack on supposedly retreating Germans, during the historical Operation Alberich during their strategic retreat to the Hindenburg Line. Blake’s brother is among the 1600 troops heading to certain death if they do not complete their mission. We follow, in real-time starting in the early afternoon, their journey across nine short miles of No Man’s Land, scorched earth, and battlefields to save lives at the risk of their own.
Scorched Earth. Image courtesy of Agustín Ljósmyndun on Unsplash.
My short review of 1917 is that it is an unparalleled masterpiece of tension and despair. Mendes expertly creates the illusion of unbroken, real-time takes of the action. One is used to seeing this much turmoil take place over the course of days, weeks, or months in a war film. One is reminded every fifteen minutes that all of the chaos has happened on top of one another and there is no time to breathe. I applaud Mendes for his expertise in drawing tension and confusion for two hours straight. The closest film that matches the tension is Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998) which memorably offers an eye-level view of the horrors of Omaha Beach. I have admittedly only seen the movie once and viewed the scene twice. It was too much, too real, and I cannot effectively remove my emotion from it long enough to view it aesthetically rather than viscerally. 1917 forced me to live Omaha Beach for two straight hours. Well done, Mr. Mendes. I couldn’t look away if I tried. The constant thread of the film was fear. Visceral fear. Our main characters are constantly in danger, there is no respite even when they attempt to assuage their reactions and press forward. With the extended take, you are transported into their position as a participant and you cannot control what is happening any more than they can.
My personal reaction after the film was to sit in my car in the parking lot of the local movie theater. I yelled at my steering wheel for close to ten minutes about what I just saw. I yelled about the relentless fear, the realization of the time frame between events, the unknowable bravery of the Great War veterans and how I could not even begin to grasp the gravity of survival. Then I burst into bitter tears and wept for three minutes before I could drive home. The crying came out of nowhere. I had apparently been holding it in the entire film. Even when one character is finally allowing himself to briefly weep over his experience, I was not ready because I knew there was more to come. I let it out after. Even after the tears, I was intermittently yelling at my steering wheel again during the drive home. I stayed up after I arrived home to watch Parks and Recreation in order to have some levity (few things give me joy in the midst of despair like Chris Pratt). I walked around my home and sat in my chair in a fog and no matter how I tried to distract myself, the film and the horror I saw stuck with me. For the following week, if I thought about the film, I would begin to yell the same things and weep. I am writing this review after two weeks and finally have a handle on my emotions enough to get them out. So, here we go.
Sam Mendes loosely based the plot of the film on World War I experiences of his grandfather, Alfred Mendes. Young Alfred served as a messenger during the war among other duties. Apparently, he never told his family of his experiences until he reached his seventies. None of my grandfathers are currently alive and only one is known to have military experience. I know very little of my grandfather’s involvement in the Bay of Pigs, only that he was involved at all during his service in the Navy. He passed when I was nine years old so I never was able to glean stories from him. I don’t believe any of my other male ancestors served in battle as they were tradesmen. It is hard for me to be removed from my ancestral experiences so I continue to live vicariously through others via the medium of film.
***Spoilers follow from this point***
Back to our thread of fear. From the moment the two corporals are assigned to take the message of the stand-down across No Man’s Land, we are set on a journey of fear and uncertainty that never lets up. Schofield is immediately apprehensive of their plan, as well as his realization that he was volun-told for the mission and has no recourse, and Blake is driven by protection for his big brother. Fear becomes their main motivation. After trudging and crawling among the corpse-strewn mud of No Man’s Land, in which Schofield cuts his hand on barbed wire and has the same hand plunged into the rat-infested chest cavity of a dead German, the two find themselves in the abandoned trenches and dugout of the retreated Germans. In the dark, lit only by rudimentary flashlights, the boys are caught in a cave-in caused by a rat crawling over a tripwire. Here is the first instance of the complete madness of this film. Blake has to find and dig out Schofield from the rubble as the latter is quickly suffocating. Blake pulls his torso from the rubble and we see Schofield open-mouthed and covered in white chalk. He is clearly dead and Blake must revive him as the dugout collapses around them. They quickly find their way out of the mine and Schofield is able to clean out his eyes and recover from dying only moments earlier. He chews out Blake for choosing him for an unknown mission and they reconcile.
Battlefield. Image courtesy of Stijn Swinnen on Unsplash.
Next, they continue their journey to a nearby farm and are bombarded by a shot-down German plane from a dogfight. They save the pilot, who rewards their humanity by stabbing Blake in the stomach. Schofield attempts to carry him forward but Blake insists it is too painful and slowly loses blood to his death. The movie shows the color leave his face in real-time and we are as helpless as Schofield to save him. We did not begin this journey with any indication that they would not both be experiencing the mission in its entirety. At this point in the film, barely 35 minutes, both characters have violently died in their own right. This hasn’t been a narrative with cuts and time jumps. 35 minutes ago, they were asleep next to a tree and complaining about hunger and now one is revived from death and the other is decidedly dead. Even more bonkers, the ultimate survivor was dead less than ten minutes prior. Ten minutes. This is seen in real-time. After Blake dies, we are given a moment of respite and grieving but not even long enough to shed a tear. Schofield has a moment to collect his personal effects and drag him to his final resting place. We’re not even halfway done, ladies and gentlemen. This is the film. Relentless fear.
Schofield is found by fellow English troops and taken to a bridge in Ecoust where he must continue on foot because the bridge has been destroyed due to the scorched earth policy of German warfare. He is beset upon by a sniper and works his way to infiltrate the nest and it then hit by a ricocheting bullet and passes out. This is the first cut of the film. It takes about an hour. I am sitting in the theater wracked with fear and I know it’s only halfway done. What could they possibly do to make this even more frightening? Oh, dear reader, they can do much more.
Schofield wakes hours later during the early morning, still dark. He avoids an attack by Germans and finds himself hidden with a young woman and an orphaned infant. After finding his bearings and realizing the time, he runs out of the hideout and avoids being shot, culminating in jumping into a river. He falls over a violent waterfall and finds a log to hold onto while he floats. Fighting a head wound and exhaustion, there is a point where he holds onto the log, floats on his back, and slowly sinks into the water. He disappears for a moment only to chokingly surface. We realize that he very closely died again. This young man’s will to live is strong, arguably the strength of two men. At this point, the sky is light with the early morning. He soon hits a fallen log serving as a dam and begins to climb over it in order to reach the river bed. We slowly realize it is also being dammed with dead soldiers. Schofield moans as he climbs over them one by one before reaching the shore. This is the moment where he allows himself to weep for a moment.
War Planes. Image courtesy Simon Fitall on Unsplash.
He hears singing and slowly, almost catatonically, follows the sound to a group of soldiers. He collapses against a tree and blissfully listens to the hymn “The Wayfaring Stranger.” Once completed, fellow soldiers notice him and he dazedly says he needs to find the Second Devonshires. They are the Second Devons. This springs him into feared action. The next ten minutes are him fighting his way through a trench searching for the commander in order to complete his mission and save the troops. We find out that the current troops in the trench getting ready to attack are already the second wave. Having difficulty navigating the crowded trench, we reach our climax as Schofield surfaces onto the battlefield and sprints to the end far end to find command. Behind and in front of him are advancing troops. He gets collided with multiple times and continues to run. Once he reaches command, they don’t want to listen and he also learns that Blake's brother, Lieutenant Blake, was part of the first wave. The attack is called off and he eventually finds Lieutenant Blake and delivers the news of Blake’s death. After their meeting, Schofield makes his way to a tree in a field and resumes his activity from the beginning, sleeping against the tree in the sunshine.
I had no intention of relaying the entire film, but the context in unavoidably needed in order to analyze the theme of incessant fear during WWI warfare. These men experienced warfare like our generation could never imagine, especially in Western civilization. The closest we can find currently are probably special forces and particularly affected infantrymen. The timeframe offered the horrors of trench warfare, which consisted of “hurry up and wait” uncertainty and the constant danger only inches above one's head. Sam Mendes used this as an inspiration for his writing style, stating,
"I took a calculated gamble, and I'm pleased I did because of the energy you get just from driving forward (in the narrative), in a war that was fundamentally about paralysis and stasis." (1)
The discovery of shell shock was so misunderstood in its time that some afflicted soldiers were given court-martial and death sentences for their trouble. New therapeutic measures and mandatory respites from the battlefield were soon required in order to screen and prevent debilitating shell shock. As many as ten percent of British soldiers were afflicted. This particular film does not directly address the condition however I would be remiss to leave it out as we are only privy to two hours of a year’s long war.
So what does any of this have to do with the Bible? I am reminded of some of the stories that would drive fear into me as a child. I read about them with little context and saw them acted out with VeggieTales. I appreciate the attempt to explain the horrors of religious persecution to children but the realities of the situation are hardly recognized without visceral visualizations. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3-16-18). Daniel in the lion’s den (Daniel 6: 16-23). In his case, the king’s fear of Daniel’s demise was more relevant to the narrative than Daniel’s life.
Moses leading the Israelites across the Red Sea with Pharaoh's army on his tail (Exodus 14:10-31). This story most closely mirrors the film’s narrative, especially during Schofield’s run alongside the trenches during the advance. Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane coming to terms with his certain death (Matthew 26:36-46). I was reminded of these stories when Schofield holds the dying and paling Blake in his arms. Blake is crying and confused, but begs Schofield to write his mother and tell her that he died without fear. Blake dies on page 60 of a 120-page script.
Blake is no longer breathing.
Without the lines of worry or agony on his face, Blake looks very young.
Schofield is still for a moment, cradling the head of Blake.
A long beat. Behind Schofield, the barn is collapsing in on itself.
The smoke has risen several stories into the sky. Schofield looks at Blake. Desperate.
Then, he snaps out of it.
The men of World War I were a different kind of man. A different kind of human. They stood on the cusp of battlefield warfare and mechanized warfare and did the best they could. They dug trenches in order to avoid battlefield losses and gain hardly any ground over the course of years. They waited in filthy, rat-infested, and diseased trenches for any kind of action or relief. I cannot imagine that level of fear. In 1917 we get to see two short hours of one soldier’s experience. He loses his life (albeit shortly), his friend, and his hope over the course of two hours. The birth of my son via Cesarean lasted less time. I applaud the efforts of Sam Mendes to bring the horror of World War I to modern audiences in a way that we hardly needed in order to appreciate it. He went above and beyond to help us relive the horror devoid of cuts, edits, and time jumps. This is the best movie of 2019 and the best war movie I will see.
works cited
Karl Vick. Time magazine. "Escaping the Trench". January 20, 2020. Page 38-41.
Cover Art
1917 poster fanart (2020). Image courtesy of Sarah Odom.
Resources
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