“Lord of the Rings” fans: Ever wonder what Gollum meant when, in describing Mordor, he says that everywhere are “Pits, pits, pits!”? Go see the World War I movie “1917,” and you’ll see.
Author J.R.R. Tolkien was describing the battlefield bomb craters he’d experienced, filled with megalithic rats and rotting corpses—almost like ponds half-filled with unholy water—and some such pits brimming with blood. Truly hell on earth.
The Story
It’s springtime, 1917, in northern France, and two young lance corporals, Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chaplin), are summoned to a meeting with Gen. Erinmore (Colin Firth).
Erinmore’s got a mission for them. As he explains, at a point beyond No Man’s Land, the Germans have strategically withdrawn; two British battalions led by Col. MacKenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch) are poised to smash the retreating Germans. However, all is not as it appears.
Since there are no phone lines, the two young soldiers are tasked with crossing No Man’s Land and locating said battalions on the front lines, in order to deliver the message that the Germans have laid a trap and the Brits are about to walk into an ambush. If this message doesn’t arrive in time, approximately 1,600 men will be wiped out, including Blake’s older, officer brother (Richard Madden).
Which is why Blake is chosen. He’ll have more motivation to brave the horrors and not turn tail and flee. His friend Schofield just happened to be in the vicinity, and since Blake needs a mission buddy, Schofield, to his great unhappiness, is by default the man for the job. And there you have it. The general goes on to offer something about fewer men being able to travel faster, but it’s really just to set up the use of the continuous shot.
Why? The use of a camera seamlessly following two men through the trenches, barbed wire, and the various and sundry horrors of No Man’s Land is a sight we’ve never seen. It’s something we didn’t know we needed to see. But we need to see it. Because it adds to the heap of things about war that we should never forget.
Performances
The two principal actors are mostly unknown to American audiences, but it’s a nice touch, as their presence is juxtaposed with a who’s who of well-known mature British actors. Mark Strong and Colin Firth are officers functioning in warrior/elder capacity, Cumberbatch plays an ambition-addled officer who needs his cage rattled in order to get some human perspective on the young men he’s all too eager to send into harm’s way, and Andrew Scott plays a seen-it-all, fed-up officer who injects a bit of exasperated humor into the proceedings.
In a sense, this is a coming-of-age film because this is a literal hero’s journey, a staggering ordeal that challenges these boys on the verge of becoming men.
They will either return from the war as true men or die trying—that was traditionally the dichotomous option built in to all tribal male rites of passage. Chapman and MacKay’s best-friend chemistry is palpable.
Ultimately, though, it’s the nonstop claustrophobic, musophobic odyssey through the muddy, bloody trenches; the German sniper-overwatched hamlets;
and the here-a-hand, there-a-blown-off-foot, pits, pits, pits of real-life Mordor that will remain with you as a meditation on the human condition. There has always been war, and there will always be war; war is hell. We never, ever learn from our mistakes, and history repeats itself.
