What I’m watching: a great film about the First World War – Reminder Publications

What Im watching: a memorable war movie.

In theaters: 1917

For most audiences in 2020 a film about the First World War must seem as foreign as a film about the Civil War. There are no humans living today who were veterans of that war. That personal connection is gone.

WWI, if you skipped that part of history class, took place from 1914 to 1918 and was considered the first global war. The conflict pitted European nations and their territories against one another. The United States entered the war in 1917.

Perhaps the image that has characterized the war the most is its use of trench warfare in which opposing armies would literally dig into its front line, and would make attempts to gain ground by attacking the enemy who were also entrenched.

The trench experience was one filled with fear, mud and rats.

Director and writer Sam Mendes has created a narrative that has the simplest of plots: two British soldiers are tasked with delivering a message to another British unit of 1,600 soldiers to stop the planned attack of German troops as its a trap laid by the Germans.

The British command could not reach the troops in question as the German have cut communications lines. To deliver the message, the two soldiers have to travel about nine miles and have about 24 hours to do so.

The film depicts the challenges the two young men face. One of the young men, Blake, (played by Dean-Charles Chapman) has been picked because he has a personal stake: his older brother is among those troops. If he doesnt get there in time, the odds are his brother will be killed.

Blake has chosen his friend Will Schofield (played by George MacKay) to accompany him, not knowing what the mission is about. Schofield is greatly apprehensive about the mission and resents have his life placed on the line.

The two men, though, follow orders and make their way as quickly and carefully across the French landscape that has be greatly altered by the war. The Germans have retreated but have left burnt-out farms, dead livestock and weapons in their wake. There are corpses everywhere.

There is no deficit of horror and sadness in this film. Mendes effectively not only creates the nightmarish world of this war but also does so in a way that will involve audiences who might only have a cursory knowledge of the conflict.

The two young actors portraying the British soldiers do an excellent job conveying the mixed emotions of the pair. They are both dedicated to the mission and frightened to death by it.

This is a significant film and the best war movie since Dunkirk.

Oh whats a reviewer to do?

As I get older the inclination of sitting through a film or TV series that is simply bad is less and less appealing.

As a rule, I dont walk out of movies I believe the last one was the film biography of actress Frances Farmer the 1982 movie Frances. Farmer was an up- and-coming actress in the 1930s and 40s who suffered from mental illness and shortly before seeing the film I had interviewed her sister. The story presented by the film was very inaccurate to the point that I couldnt tolerate it any more.

With streaming services, though, I feel less an urge to sit through productions that are simply bad. So, I couldnt make it through more than one episode of the Christmas sit-com Merry Happy Whatever. The show is about a father who is a sheriff who rules his family of adult children and their spouses with an iron hand. His daughter who lives across the country has brought home her boyfriend for the holidays. Naturally dad begins working to break them up. Its supposed to be funny, but instead its predictable and sad.

Another Netflix original, Christmas Break-in took about a half-hour to set up a ridiculous premise: parents left their daughter at school. Shes left alone in her school, and a group of would-be thieves are approaching.

Yeech.

I was on the fence about the new Netflix/BBC production of Dracula. This handsome production would have audiences think it is closer to the Bram Stoker novel, but from the first episode alone it deviates so far from the source material that is no more authentic than the Bela Lugosi version from 1931 or the series of films staring Christopher Lee.

Horror films work when the creators establish rules governing the universe they create and in the first episode the rules regarding vampires are bent and altered to the point the episode makes little sense.

I gave up on it. Perhaps you might like it. It would help if you have never read the novel or seen any of the previous movies.

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What I'm watching: a great film about the First World War - Reminder Publications

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero