War, so real

Johnson Thomas

The story here is minimal. The main performers are just two, with a few high ranking army officials played by A-listers like Colin Firth and Benedict Cummerbatch (unrecognizable cameos both) getting in their orders, the rest of the cast are just extras. Despite the minimal characters and threadbare storyline, the impact of the narration is epic.

It’s 1917, two young British soldiers (World War I), corporals, Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay), are given an impossible mission. They are tasked with delivering a message deep in enemy territory in order to prevent 1,600 fellow troops, including one of the messengers’ brothers, from walking straight into a deadly trap.

The manner in which director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins’ zones in on that depute, is what makes this experience so very worthy. For the protagonists in this film, surviving the climb up to that designate expectation, it’s precipitous. There is only uncertainty and fear with no sigh of relief. No one expects them to survive. Their bravery in achieving the objective might get them a posthumous medal and if not, be totally forgotten as one of the numerous killed in the war.

The film is one long take, a cinematographic feast of long expansive shots that follow the protagonists as they wade from the long winding protective trenches to the insecure, fully exposed high ground, through the horrors, excesses and wastes of War. It’s a breathtaking, eventful saga. The narration is fluid, depravity is balanced out by humanity and hope in an extended single shot that extends right through the film’s length. Roger Deakins meets the challenging visual conceit with an impresario reverence that is both showy and affective. And that’s what stays with you in the end