Some thoughts on the film 1917

1917 could have been a contender for Best Motion Picture of the Year, having won the Best Motion Picture, Drama at the Golden Globes.  Still it won seven BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, and  three Oscars, and more other prizes than one knew existed. The so-called liberal elites of Hollywood and the British film industry clearly loved it.  Yet the politics of the film are not simply outdated, they are Brexiter. They are the politics of the resentment of Germany and of plucky, united, Brits just about saving the day.  

For those who have not seen the film it is an extraordinary techno-fest.  Elaborate British and German trenches and artillery-blasted landscapes are astonishingly well recreated. Film critics have focussed on the very long tracking shots cleverly put together into one.  It can indeed be criticised for searching for mere verisimilitude rather than telling a decent story.  It is, in fact, a superior video game. Like videogames involving war and destruction and baddies it is a quest in the face of enemies.  But the enemy here is not some imaginary grotesque out of Lord of the Rings.  It is Germans.

Two British lance corporals are sent through no-man’s land to stop a British battalion from attacking the German lines. There are under the misapprehension they have the Hun on the run.  But the enemy are devilishly drawing them into a carefully and elaborately prepared trap.  Because the telephone lines have been cut, the only way to stop the upcoming massacre of the Tommies is to send our two heroes with a letter (uncoded) to the commanding officer of the isolated 2nd Devons.  They have a day and a night to get there. This is odd since a message could have been sent by one of the aeroplanes we later see flying about, but no matter. It is after all a game.

Our gallant heroes cross over into the abandoned German trenches and find not a mere dugout, but an astonishing underground barracks, with sprung (!) bunk beds.  Even their rats are bigger (an old joke I think).  The sneaky Germans have booby trapped the place, and a fat rat sets one off (why only now?), burying one of our hardy lads.  His mate saves him and they set off again. They then rescue a German pilot from his burning aeroplane. But the ungrateful bastard stabs one of our questers to death, the cheerful, funny, innocent one indeed. Our remaining NCO continues his journey, partly on a lorry with British troops who stray onto the scene.  He continues on his own and wounds a German, who even as he lies dying tries to kill him. After encountering the very picture of France, Marianne herself perhaps, looking after an orphaned baby, he sets off again, leaving her with milk he had conveniently picked up at the abandoned farm where they had encountered the German pilot. Then he comes across a retching drunken German and captures a German who promises to keep quiet to avoid alerting his inebriated colleague. You guessed it, the sneaky German calls out to his comrade, and nearly does for our hero.  

This is the sum total of the encounters with the Germans. The message: it would have been better to kill them first and ask questions later, for they are free of the slightest trace of gallantry.  Indeed nowhere in this film is there a shred of common feeling across the front, not the slightest echo of the Christmas Truce, no sense whatever of the common European tragedy that the Great War was.   This isn’t La Grande Illusion, or even The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, but a wretched piece of narcissistic nationalism. The British are just too nice.

I was not prepared for this as none of the extensive press commentary that I read mentioned it. After seeing the film I read six reviews, and only one even hinted at what it called ‘an outdated and idealistic ode … in which the Jerries are sneaky’.   It is more than that, and what really depressing  that in 2020 a Great War film can still hide its politics so effectively from critics. Perhaps British men of a certain age and education, even today, see the Great War mainly as a test of manhood, something to regret not having taken part in.  In this context, beastly Germans are perfectly acceptable it seems.

The film shows a diverse British army. This drew some useful distracting fire from the fools who thought this was mere wokeishness, for there were indeed non-white British soldiers on the Western Front. We spy black soldiers in the background, and in the foreground a Sikh who can impersonate a high fallutin’ British officer better than the white squaddies.  This is as close the film gets to the Blackadder Goes Forth picture of the British officer class as donkeys who led lions.

That critical image is alluded to, in order to crush it comprehensively.  The film makes us expect the commanding officer of the 2nd Devons will ignore the incoming order and attack anyway, as a donkey would. But no, Colonel Mackenzie, like all the other officers shown in the film is gruff, sweary even, but definitely a lion, a caring lion indeed.  The message arrives late, but he stops the last wave of the attack, and calls back the unfortunates who went over before the order appeared.   Paths of Glory this film ain’t.

The quest, the journey, the game is over. Disaster is averted, the Hunnish plot is foiled.  Our fighting lads are in good hands.

But 1917 is not a game, nor even a boyish ripping yarn dressed up in spectacular sets and effects. Although more than faintly ridiculous it is a political intervention of astonishing crudity, presenting  a two world wars and one world cup view of history, but one so well adapted to our Brexiter times that no one seems to have properly noticed.