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“Red lips tarnish the scabbarded steel, High hopes faint on a warm hearth-stone– He travels the fastest who travels alone.”
It is with these words from Rudyard Kipling’s “The Winners”, recited by Colin Firth in the first of a series of monolithic celebrity cameos, that director Sam Mendes sets into motion the driving force of what is at once his most epic and intrinsically personal film, one that shines brighter than any other to date in his long and prolific career. 1917 is a story about brothers, both of blood and of war, and the measurement of their loyalties for one another in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. It is a story inspired by one passed down to Mendes from his grandfather, a veteran of the First World War, and as the film ventures deeper and deeper into the horrors of its elaborately constructed battlefield, it becomes apparent that this familial connection is its beating heart, complementing each fresh nightmare with an emotional resonance that makes this film a truly unforgettable experience.
The film is centred around two young soldiers serving in the trenches of Northern France, Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay), who are tasked with delivering vital information across enemy lines overnight to prevent sixteen hundred British men, including Blake’s brother (Richard Madden), from marching blindly to their deaths in the morning. During their quest, the pair are faced with a series of Homeric obstacles, each more striking and allegorical than the last. These include an encounter with an embittered Lieutenant (Andrew Scott) who guards the passageway from the safety of the trenches to the great beyond, a nail-biting sequence in a labyrinthian German bunker layered in dust and shadows and, in the film’s darkest hour, a race through a burning village transformed into an apocalyptic Underworld, a canvas of orange and black smoke cast against buildings crumbling into Biblical ruins across the razed landscape.
The film, shot by Oscar-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins, draws its audience into this relentless odyssey through the use of cleverly composed cinematography which creates the illusion of one continuous take that relentlessly chronicles every footstep and fatigued gasp for air for the duration of the film. This tight focus has the effect of generating a particularly extreme sense of terrifying isolation which few films have managed to capture. As the two soldiers traverse a wasteland which can shift from devastated to deadly at the turn of a head, they must depend entirely on one another to survive each unforeseeable new challenge.
Most of the characters they encounter along their way are played by recognisable celebrity actors like the aforementioned Firth, Madden, Scott, along with a small handful of other surprise cameos. These men are all rigidly trapped within their own borders however, and function only as warnings for the next grand obstacle in the boys’ path rather than offering any sort of relief. This is not a film interested in comfort or security, only in emphasising the impossible scale of the mission ahead of its heroes and of us through the gaze of its persistent camera. It is their unbreakable drive that keeps us going even as the surrounding world becomes increasingly bleak and bitter.
The score of the film, composed by the ever-reliable Thomas Newman, also deserves an acknowledgement for its pitch-perfect accompaniments to each of the stage of the journey. It hums as our heroes climb their hills and grinds against a chalkboard as they tunnel through the muck, slowly building in confidence until finally it roars in the face of the film’s sublime climactic set piece, sucking the oxygen straight from the lungs of its audience and leaving them in a state of broken awe.
1917 is an exhausting tale of survival and of the determination demonstrated by its two young protagonists, whose actors delicately reveal their most implicit desires largely through body language piece by piece, giving us a fresh understanding of their need to keep fighting after each hopeless setback. They are assisted in no small part by the film’s many impressive technical feats, with Mendes, Deakins, Newman and editor Lee Smith taking every possible opportunity to showcase a masterful control of their respective crafts without ever losing sight of the tender, often tragic soul at the core of the film’s intricate design. In a year overflowing with exemplary works from master filmmakers, 1917 is a film like no other.
1917 is released in Irish cinemas from January 10.
