From the composing of the Iliad in the 8th century B.C. to yesterday’s reports on the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, war stories perpetually captivate our imaginations. Maybe it’s the epic scale of the action that draws us in. Our mind moves with the great movements of history, events of incomprehensibly large magnitude, changing the face of the earth, like continental drift. Or maybe it’s the fact that war offers the ultimate test of courage, straining the strands of a soldier’s character and determination to the breaking point in one of the most extreme of environments.
We love—and need—tales of heroism and self-sacrifice, tales that war stories, both real and imagined, offer at higher rate, perhaps, than any other genre. War, we might say, like all crises in human experiences, lays bare the human soul. Unmasked are the cowards, the cutthroats, the courageous, and the many ordinary people who find within some half-known region of themselves the ability to do extraordinary things.
‘The Great Escape’ (1963)
We’ll start with a classic. “The Great Escape” renders for the screen a heart-pounding tale of daring and ingenuity, based on the true story of 76 Allied airmen who broke out of the “escape-proof” Stalag Luft III camp in Nazi Germany during World War II. In the film, squadron leader Roger Bartlett leads an attempt to break out 250 men simultaneously, not only for the sake of their individual freedom but also to divert German manpower from the front to search for escapees.The film builds at a slow pace, gradually increasing suspense and taking its time to establish characters and detail the ingenious methods used by the POWs to gather materials and build three escape tunnels, nicknamed “Tom,” “Dick,” and “Harry.” In addition to some outstanding action sequences, such as Steve McQueen’s iconic motorcycle escapade, the film is memorable for its depiction of the cavalier, undaunted, and unquenchable spirit of the POWs, who go about their history-making, high-risk plot almost as a matter of course. The intrepid escapees believe absolutely in their cause and trust one another with their lives. Though perhaps lacking character depth, these are old-fashioned heroes who will appeal especially to boys, and they’re portrayed by stars that include, in addition to McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, James Garner, and Donald Pleasence.
‘Saving Private Ryan’ (1998)
A newer classic, Steven Spielberg’s World War II film of epic proportions helped redefine the genre of through its gritty and unhesitating realism. Multiple WWII veterans have stated that the scenes in “Saving Private Ryan” reflect the reality of war with total accuracy, saying that it’s the closest the average person can come to understanding what it’s like to be in combat. Obviously, then, this film is not easy to watch, though it is well worth it for those who can stomach it. It tells the story of a small group of soldiers who are sent behind enemy lines during the D-Day invasions in 1945 in order to rescue a single private who has been discharged because all his brothers have already been killed in the war.
‘1917’ (2019)
If “Saving Private Ryan” is about several soldiers trying to save one, Sean Mendes’s World War I film “1917” reverses the formula: a pair of soldiers embrace a mission to save thousands. The set-up for the film is elegantly simple. Our two heroes must deliver a message to a certain battalion on the front, calling off an attack that will likely turn into a massacre. To make the stakes personal, one of the soldiers has a brother in the doomed battalion. All the ingredients are here—high stakes, time pressure, and a world of obstacles to be overcome.
There’s less emphasis on backstory or character development in “1917” than in some films on this list, but it still maintains a great deal of emotional subtlety. As with Mr. Nolan’s “Dunkirk,” we are simply immersed in a life-or-death situation and drawn to root for our heroes because of their humanity, not because we know much about them or have developed some strong emotional bond with them. There are some beautifully tender moments, snatched from the flames in a mostly nonstop action film, and they’re probably all the more successful for being brief.
‘Dunkirk’ (2017)
Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” is another film replete with technical mastery and innovation. Mr. Nolan tells the story of the evacuation of British forces from Dunkirk early in World War II through a mixture of panoramic and enclosed cinematography, a rich and austere color palate, a searing musical score by Hans Zimmer, and a clever manipulation of narrative timelines. The three separate timeliness are what occurs in the air, at sea, and on land, and they weave in and out of one another in an intricate and mesmerizing manner. Director and writer Christopher Nolan explains that he based his script and its timeline around a musical motif known as the Shepard Tone, which gives the illusion of an endlessly ascending scale. Mr. Nolan explains:“It’s an illusion where there’s a continuing ascension of tone. It’s a corkscrew effect. It’s always going up and up and up but it never goes outside of its range. And I wrote the script according to that principle. I interwove the three timelines in such a way that there’s a continual feeling of intensity. Increasing intensity. So I wanted to build the music on similar mathematical principals. ... So there’s a fusion of music and sound effects and picture that we’ve never been able to achieve before.”
Mr. Nolan zeroed in on his characters’ raw humanity and struggle for survival by using minimal dialogue. This, combined with the captivating score and time-bending storytelling, makes for a riveting and haunting film-watching experience. There is an atmosphere of bleak loneliness, desperation, imminent danger, and apocalyptic happenings to the film that’s difficult to describe if you haven’t seen it. All I can say is, I never went to a movie where I felt that the bullets on screen might fly at me at any moment until I watched “Dunkirk.” Truly immersive.
All four of these films favor us with a glimpse into the experiences of the men who were beaten, battered, and forged into heroes in the crucible of the two world wars. Generations of men were formed by these wars; generations were lost in them. The state of the world today depends greatly on what occurred in the titanic struggles of the 20th century. But war movies remind us that world-shaping battles between massive armies and powerful ideologies play out concretely through the individual battles of human beings, boots on the ground, fingers on the triggers, blood and sweat on their hands—who often pay a great personal cost.
