‘1917’ is half movie, half video game, all genius: Film review

Director Sam Mendes based the plot of 1917 on a World War I story told to him long ago by a veteran of the trenches — his Trinidadian novelist grandfather Alfred Mendes, who in 1917 was a Lance Corporal in the British Army. But he also freely admits he based the style of the film on something much more modern: video games. 

Specifically, third-person action titles like Star Wars: Battlefront, where you’re always watching the action over the shoulders of your player character. “I watch [my kids] with those games and I find them remarkably mesmerizing, almost hypnotic,” Mendes told Variety. “I just wanted to do something like that, but with real emotional stakes.”

Leaving aside that provocative part of the statement — yes, fellow gamers, we can all name games with real emotional stakes — it’s not hard for the casual viewer to make the video game connection. 1917 consists of two roughly hour-long shots, stitched together by a blackout. Each shot unfolds in real time. You’re always following one of the two main characters, Lance Corporal Blake (Dean Charles-Chapman, who played Tommen on Game of Thrones) and his friend Lance Corporal Schofield (George MacKay). 

You’re not always watching over their shoulders; we swing around to see their faces as much as we see the soldiers they interact with. For example, there’s the arresting shot that fills the trailer, of Schofield running towards the camera as his fellow soldiers charge the German lines. But over-the-shoulder is certainly 1917‘s default position. 

The homage goes even deeper. As in a game, the pair start with a simple, clear mission (find and stop a gung-ho corporal from blundering into a German trap and wiping out a thousand men) with clear stakes (Blake’s brother is in the at-risk battalion). 

As in a game, there’s a vast map for them to wander around on: multiple trenches, the crater-filled strip of no-man’s land, and the countryside that remains, eerie and quiet — too quiet — on either side of the lines. 

And as in a game, we learn so little about our protagonists’ back stories that they serve as cyphers for us. We care about these kids, desperately, because we have to follow every harrowing minute of their mission. And they are very much kids, just like the majority of soldiers in every war — fresh-faced youths trying to act all brave and bold in the face of overwhelming horror.

1917 expertly blends the immersive video game concept with sheer moviemaking skill to create something new in the world.

But that’s where the similarity ends, because a movie that looks like a game walkthrough would get old fast. Instead, 1917 expertly blends the immersive video game concept with sheer moviemaking skill to create something new in the world. Even the lack of backstory has a storytelling purpose that isn’t revealed until the very last minute. The result is an experience that will stick in your brain long after the credits roll. 

A game might draw your attention to an important new object, once you discover it, with a cut scene that puts it front and center. Mendes and his cinematographer, the legendary Roger Deakins, want to let the terrors they have designed seep in from the edge of the frame. 

The movie’s most pivotal moment happens off-screen because one of our protagonists was looking the wrong way. Just like Blake and Schofield, you are disoriented and on high alert the whole time. 

In a more sanitized war movie, you might be allowed to pull back the camera, change the viewpoint, see things from “god view” when the action gets too intense. Mendes and Deakins do not allow you that out. Often the camera follows our heroes at ground level, the better to drive home the true horrors of one of history’s most horrible wars. You are forced to linger in a lot of places where you would rather not linger, yet you cannot look away. 

If you’ve seen Peter Jackson’s jaw-dropping restoration of World War I footage in the documentary They Shall Not Grow Old (2018), you know what kind of post-apocalyptic nightmares to expect here. Barbed wire is no mere nuisance. Corpses are often camouflaged by mud and water and mess, just as they really were in the trenches. And 1917 is certainly not a film for the rat-phobic. 

What made World War I unique, what still makes it unique, is how vast the chasm was between the  expectations of glory beforehand and the on-the-ground reality. (Before 1914, wars had not reached this level of industrial slaughter; after 1918, we were never again quite so naive about the true cost of conflict.) That makes it an ideal subject for a movie that punctures the notion of fun and glory, a notion that still seems to cling to game series that deal with war, like Call of Duty and Battlefront. 

Turn a video game into live action, and the result is surprisingly traumatizing. My main emotional response to 1917 was to feel close to tears the whole time — not because of any particular plot development, but because of the sheer unrelenting near-death anxiety of it all. The focus on a very small number of characters makes us care more, and thus makes other stressful soldier’s-eye view films — looking at you, Dunkirk — seem like a walk in the park by comparison. 

That said, it’s not all shock and horror. There are slower moments that allow you to catch your breath. For a game that kind of feels a bit like a first-person shooter, the first bullet is fired surprisingly late in the day; the build-up is everything. One scene in particular offers a gentle, unforced glow of humanity, a sort-of-Nativity that is the closest this movie gets to a feel-good holiday moment. (1917 goes into limited release on December 25, the likely reason being the Oscar nominations deadline; Last Christmas this ain’t.)

Also unforced is the representation of Indian, African and West Indian troops (like Alfred Mendes) who also fought in Europe’s trenches. I was struck, too, by the quiet camaraderie between soldiers. In many war films, this is handled in a way that feels manipulative and false. In 1917, the men are simply stuck in the shit together, competing only for the best imitation of their aristocratic officer’s accent. No hero poses, no solitary trumpet on the soundtrack to inform you that a soldier is doing the right and noble thing. Just the Poor Bloody Infantry, as contemporaries called it, living their mundane, mud-filled lives, trying their damnedest not to die. 

In short, this movie is the closest you can get to stepping in a time machine and taking part in World War I yourself — no video game controller or VR headset required. You will never see that war, or any war, the same way again. And the same goes, hopefully, for any war game.