1917 Quietly Raised the Bar for War Movies

This article contains discussions of violence, gore, and death.

In 2019, critics, audiences, and the entertainment industry as a whole found themselves gobsmacked when 1917 was released in theaters. Directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Spectre, Skyfall), the war film focuses on William Schofield (George MacKay) and Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman), two young British soldiers who are tasked with delivering a message to Colonel Mackenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch) during World War I. Set against a strategic German retreat during Operation Alberich, Schofield and Blake realize almost immediately after leaving the trenches that their task is anything but simple, nor easy.

With a budget between $90 and $100 million, 1917 enjoyed an astronomical reception upon its release. The film grossed a whopping $446 million, was quickly hailed the best film of 2019 by many (although Mendes faced stiff competition from Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite), and received over 160 award nominations, including ten at the 92nd Academy Awards. While the story of 1917 and the film’s cinematography (courtesy of Roger Deakins, a frequent collaborator with Mendes) took center stage, a quiet truth about the war epic has flown under the radar for six years: 1917 wasn’t just a fantastic film at face value, but one that singlehandedly, although perhaps unexpectedly, changed expectations of future war films.

1917 Deviated From Typical War Film Tropes

Schofield runs through a burning town in 1917

Image via Universal Pictures

1917 tells a magnificent story based on bravery and heroism, except the protagonist of the film is no one other than a typical World War I British soldier. When the audience is introduced to Schofield and Blake, not much is revealed about them on a personal level. It’s mentioned that Schofield fought in the Battle of the Somme, and that Blake has a brother, Joseph. Besides that, however, there is nothing presented that makes the soldiers-turned-messenger-boys stand out, physically or otherwise.

1917 doesn’t pop up its main character as a hero; nor does the main character undergo some grand transformation on a fantastic adventure. Sticking to a realistic portrayal of those who fought in the Great War, the men featured throughout the Mendes film are just ordinary people placed in a difficult situation.

While there’s plenty of action throughout 1917, it’s the characters and their fragile psychological states that propel the film more than anything else. In various war films (such as Full Metal Jacket and Saving Private Ryan, for instance), particularly those that cover World War II, soldiers and their commanders are depicted as brave, courageous, and mentally tough individuals who seem to overcome virtually everything one way or another. 1917 does not take this approach, and instead depicts many characters (supporting and background) as downright terrified of the war. Just before Schofield runs across the battlefield at the film’s pinnacle moment, for example, the soldier tries to converse with a Captain. The man, overcome with a clear mix of emotion and shell-shock, can barely string a sentence together.

As a film about World War I (instead of World War II, which is more typically depicted in the media), 1917 cares less about potential victories and instead focuses intensely on the consequences of war. As Schofield and Blake face off against the tough and powerful German soldiers and their traps, for instance, their physical movements seem to take a backseat to the characters’ reactions. When the British and German troops finally started to fight, the battle was short-lived as well. Throughout 1917, the film doesn’t focus on who wins each round of conflict. Instead, Mendes and his production team make a distinct point to highlight how each conflict affects the people involved.

1917 Portrayed Violence & Death With Horrific Realism

George MacKay turns his back to a river full of corpses in 1917.

Everyone knows that casualties are a natural consequence of war, and oh boy, does Mendes refuse to shy away from the horrors of death and destruction throughout 1917. In a daring move that viewers don’t expect on a first watch, the character who is initially set up as the protagonist is killed off suddenly. While Schofield and Blake successfully cross no man’s land, it isn’t long before Blake is fatally stabbed by a German pilot. Blake’s sudden death and Schofield’s reaction are hard enough to get through.

Between the rapid spread of blood and Blake’s face turning gray as the seconds ticked by, Mendes sold one integral point in the early stages of 1917 that continuously followed the audience: despite how much someone wants to succeed, war will always cause random, unpredictable, and sudden deaths.

Getting a front row seat to soldiers perishing throughout 1917 is hard to watch, but the losses of life only scratch the surface of the film’s enormous amount of violence and gore. Before the 2019 war film was released, most projects in the genre featured plenty of explosions, hand-to-hand combat, and gunfights. While many of these war movies utilized an over-the-top approach to make their battles stand out as much as possible, 1917‘s approach is simpler, but highly (and uncomfortably) realistic. When the German pilot and his plane crash, for instance, the noises and sights draw the audience in closely, as if they’ve witnessed the event first-hand. Between a plethora of gunshots, stabbings, strangulations, traps, and artillery explosions, the war film intricately displays the horrific amount of traumatic events that soldiers had to go through.

In a courageous move that adds another hard-to-stomach level of realism to 1917, viewers are treated to a host of dead human and animal bodies strewn throughout the film, whether freshly killed or terrifyingly rotted. Before Mendes’s war films came about, those of the same genre generally showcased the deaths of background soldiers during conflict, but only kept them in for those specific moments. As Schofield and (before his death, Blake) slowly make their way to Colonel Mackenzie, there are deceased humans and animals strewn about in every scene, both from the British and German sides.

While some may find the bodies gratuitous or over-the-top, their constant inclusion is another realistic portrayal of what the battlefields actually looked like during World War I. In addition, of course, all the corpses also remind the audience that, despite how strongly the soldiers fight for their side, once the lights go out, the horrors of war not only continue to persist, but naturally move on without their existence.

1917 Was Constructed to Appear as One Single Take

Blake and Schofield in army uniforms and helmets stand in the trenches in 1917 (2019).

Except for a brief moment where Schofield is knocked unconscious by a German sniper, 1917 is presented as one incredibly long single take. For months after the war film was released, many viewers genuinely could not tell whether 1917 was shot in one long take or brilliantly edited to appear as such. In total, the acclaimed Mendes movie features 34 cuts over two hours, an incredibly impressive feat. Unlike others in the genre, Mendes wanted to include the least number of cuts possible to not just add another defining element to 1917, but also to make Schofield’s experiences stand out as a more dreamlike movement. “It was to do with the fact that I wanted the movie to go from afternoon to dusk, and then from night into dawn. I wanted it to be in two movements,” Mendes explained in 2020. “I wanted to take a movie, the movie tonally somewhere very unexpected.”

As the first film to thoroughly convince viewers that the events occurred in one shot, a lot of effort understandably went into editing and producing 1917, with the effect led by Mendes, Deakins, and Lee Smith, who served as the film’s editor. 1917 filmed its scenes in long continuous takes that were expertly choreographed and then carefully spliced together. The moment where Schofield runs across the battlefield (generally called “Schofield’s Run”) not only took two days to execute, but had to be carefully planned with hundreds of explosions and over 500 extras. Schofield’s run-ins with two soldiers, in which he’s knocked off his feet, were interestingly accidental collisions that Mendes decided to keep in the final cut. Cuts that were made in 1917 are nearly impossible to spot due to the film’s masterful post-production, but besides the obvious one in which Schofield was knocked unconscious, another occurs when Schofield and Blake narrowly escape an explosive bunker.

While rooted in the real history of World War I and Operation Alberich, it’s important to note that 1917 is a fictional story that should not be regarded (or expected) to be completely accurate. The characters and their motivations (particularly Schofield being tasked with delivering a message) are not adaptations of the real world, but dramatized stories based on the World War I experiences of Mendes’s Trinidadian grandfather, Alfred Mendes. Alfred, who served in the British Army from 1915 to 1917, carried messages across no man’s land during the war due to his short stature. After his discharge, Alfred became a successful novelist. Over a century later, Mendes took his grandfather’s stories and used them to create 1917, a war film that inevitably changed the genre as we know it now.