1917–An SWP Review

The film 1917 has received considerable critical acclaim and box office success. Some have called it the definitive World War I film. I therefore entered theater with great anticipation. I left it, alas, in great disappointment.

My one word review: Meh.

My objections, in order from large to small.

First off, it is wrong to call it a World War I movie. It is war movie set in WWI. There’s a difference.

A true WWI movie captures some essential feature of the unique horror of that conflict. A great example is Paths of Glory, a 1957 Stanley Kubrick film starring Kirk Douglas. It brutally portrays the utter cynicism and detachment of the high command, and the futility of the struggle of those under their command, that culminated in the French army mutinies of 1917. Another excellent example is the 1931 version of All Quiet on the Western Front, particularly for its evocation of the alienation of the front line soldier from the civilians who had no conception of what ordeals of the former suffered. Gallipoli is also excellent for its portrayal of the collision between the youthful enthusiasm of those who went to war and the pointlessness of their misery and bloodshed at the front.

Yes, in 1917 you see the blasted moonscape, littered with bloated corpses, that was the Western Front. There are moments of versimilitude, such as the Germans’ booby trapping of the fortifications that they abandoned in Operation Alberich in March-April, 1917. But this is scenery–backdrop–that places the film in time, without telling any deeper truth about that time.

As a generic war movie, the plot covers well-trodden ground: A small contingent sent into contested ground on a forlorn mission to save comrades. Saving Private Ryan tells the same basic story, but in a far more compelling way. In part this is due to the fact that in Private Ryan a few handfuls of men are involved, and much of the drama turns on their interactions in the crucible of war. A central part of the movie is helping us understand leadership, through the character of Captain Miller (Tom Hanks).

The mission in 1917 starts out with two men, one of whom is killed about half way through, leaving the remainder of the action focused on a single man. Yes, that creates a different sort of dramatic tension, but it is far flatter than in Private Ryan. As a result, 1917 cannot hold a candle to the World War II movie. War is a social endeavor that stresses the bonds between men in ways that nothing else can. A movie without that element–or which like 1917 loses that element relatively early on–is far less compelling. Yes, it is important to understand what drives a single man to pursue what seems to be a hopeless mission, but it is harder to understand how a man can get others to follow him on such a mission.

Perhaps due to the fact that the story and characters were not sufficient to hold my attention, I soon found myself unable to suspend disbelief, and as a result started focusing on irritating problems in the script. Many unrealistic things jumped out to a mind that was not raptly focused on the story that the director wanted to tell.

Would a general truly trust a message canceling an attack into an ambush to two men? Maybe 10 pairs of men, but not a single pair. And the general could have called on aircraft (portrayed numerous times in the movie) to attempt to drop messages to an otherwise isolated regiment (and this happened in the war).

Further, when the messengers were about half-way on their footslogging trek, one was killed. Immediately thereafter, a convoy of British trucks come upon the survivor. As it turns out, this convoy was destined for a waypoint along their mission, a French village. If convoys were being sent into the area abandoned by the Germans, why not use them to try to communicate with the isolated unit about to launch a suicidal attack? Or attach the messengers to the convoy? Why send two men walking across ground that whole companies were about to cross in trucks?

The protagonist’s journey on the trucks was aborted when the bridge over a river at the village was found to be destroyed. The commander of the convoy said that the only bridge was six miles upstream. But later, during a scene in which the protagonist had plunged into the river to escape the Germans, and was being swept down the raging stream, he passed under an intact bridge–which happened to be closer to the unit he was supposed to reach.

And about that river. There are no rocky rivers with rapids in Picardy. And the rivers flow west–not east.

Quibbles, perhaps, but I wouldn’t have cared, or even noticed, if the film had held my interest. An unengaged mind is the critic’s workshop