‘1917’: War Film or War Propaganda?

The Menin Road (1919) by Paul Nash

“You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.”

(Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-Attack and Other Poems)

In Sam Mendes latest film which is the story of a mission to avert a slaughter in the first world war we are treated to a tour de force in cinematography and held captive by one long continuous take, we are witness to stunning set-pieces that overwhelm us in their combination of both light and darkness. Both real and metaphorical.

The film, literally, follows two soldiers Blake and Schofield played by Dean Charles-Chapman and George MacKay respectively, as they carry out an almost impossible mission to alert fellow soldiers to a trap the German Army has set for 1,600 men of the Devonshire Regiment. It will undoubtedly result in a massacre if they are not warned. The camera follows them from start to finish. Or so we are led to believe.

However, the seemingly single unbroken continuous take is nothing of the kind as it is made up of much shorter continuous takes, spliced together in the editing room. Its brilliance is in its deception as we are fooled beautifully into…