Did anyone else like it as much as I did?

The basic idea is: During World War 1 two British soldiers are sent across no-man's land to find a battalion that is about to fall into a trap and deliver orders to stand down the attack. Sorry - no aliens flying around in capes, huge green men, love stories, or superheros LOL.

I studied this period of history extensively during college and beyond and I have to say the film is pretty darned accurate. The event takes place around the third Battle of Ypres, when the Germans did a strategic withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line to free up a large number of units for other purposes. The town Écoust-Saint-Mein is real, was among the war zone, abandoned by civilians, and razed to the ground as everything else in the region of withdrawal was in line with Germany's scorched earth policy to deny their enemies any resources and increase their burdens.

My only issues with the movie - no man's land could have been gorier but I understand why it was kept to the level it was, this isn't a horror movie. The other is everyone acting like 1,600 men about to get slaughtered is horrific. Of course it is, but the British suffered 60,000 casualties on the Battle of the Somme's first day alone. The whole Passchendaele campaign created some 500,000 casualties overall so there were many assaults that cost 1,600 men. I supposed if they'd made the number 16,000 the average movie viewer wouldn't have believed it so it makes sense.


Excellent movie, I highly recommend it if you like this sort of thing

The offensive at Passchendaele was launched on the 18th July 1917 with a bombardment of the German lines involving 3,000 guns. In the 10 days that followed, it is estimated that over 4¼ million shells were fired. Passchendaele before and after the battle

Haven't seen it yet but plan to. Thanks for confirming its accuracy. Agree with the casualties of this war, I couldn't see them making much effort to save 1600 men, but that is history through a modern lens.

850,000 casualties adding both sides together for Passchendaele, and the allies abandoned it in 1918 in fear of a German attack.

I rode the Eurostar thru the general area last summer from London to Paris, the French countryside is so serene, hard to imagine what it was like back then

I rarely go to the movies anymore, but had to go to this as my grandfather was a Chaplain in the first war to end all wars, and this movie shows pretty much the way it was back then, incredible that anyone came out of there alive! Everyone should see it!

I haven't seen 1917 as I don't go to movies anymore but last Dec the WW1 movie "They Shall Not Grow Old" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Shall_Not_Grow_Old)
came thru for a few days and I made a point to watch it. WW1 was pretty brutal.

Yes - I saw it in theaters too, actually found my new fave movie spot since they were showing it. Seeing it in the theater with all the post-credit info was the best way, so glad I did it. Try to see this one if you can.

I have not seen the movie.
Looks like its pretty well made.
I think I know the plat base on the trailerss

I just wonder why they just did not fly a plane over the Battalion and drop a message to them not to attack it was a trap?


Matt

A question asked on line and well answered. Remember planes were just born:



"Potential answers posted here are: a) The time it takes to send a message to the aerodrome with the hope that they have a free plane to send over make it too risky

and/or

b) In the big scheme of it, saving 1,600 men would not get the attention it deserved at higher levels, so the general took care of it directly, without having to rely on other units."


and


"The mission wasn’t that important and 1600 men death means nothing in the cheer horror of WW1. 19 240 British soldiers died in The battle of Somme just in the first day.


I thought this too as soon as I saw the airplanes. It could be that getting the message from the general to an airplane unit would have taken longer than sending infantrymen asap. (remember, there was no radio back then obviously) In reality they probably would have done both. "

I haven't seen the movie, only the trailers, I expect to ss it within days.

On the relatively importance of saving "1600" men in the big picture, I'm not a veteran, but in seems to me in typical military camaraderie, just saving your buddy next to you, is alone worth your life, we here are using the lens of hindsight, and at that period, nobody knew what the final body count of the war was going to be, and as Patton(?) said, basically, its not about giving your life as a soldier, its about getting the enemy to give his.

Spent a number of days in the Verdun area visiting WW1 sites, they frowned on any off path excursions, in that its reported every square ft of the battlefields received at least one artillery shell, and they all did not explode.

I totally get why the two soldiers sent on the mission felt it important, but not so much those in charge.






At the base foot soldier level yes, but back then war was still thought of by grandeur, nobility, and honor dating back to the old Napoleon days, whole towns joined up together. The original picklehaub helmet used by the Germans shows how it started along with noble cavalry charges into machine gun lines (see Warhorse - does great job of showing the mindset in the early stages). Once it settled into a grinding slog of trench warfare, disillusionment set in and reality took over for the men on the lines. At the British command level tho, the nobility of it never went away. Haig kept sending wave after wave of soldiers in the same outdated fashion to their deaths. He created half a million casualties among the allies when those under him knew it was pointless but he wouldn't stop. He eventually achieved his victory, only to have Passchendaele abandoned less than a year later. To the man in the trench 1600 was astounding, to the officers in charge, they thought nothing of losing 1,600 so they wouldn't have concerned themselves much with this attack, maybe even thought of it as a sacrificial test of the new German lines.

World War 1 changed the entire perception of war, so much to the point that France dedicated its doctrine to the Maginot line, and the rest of the world leaders let Germany expand and take territories in hope of avoiding conflict. They wanted to avoid another stalemate and were totally unprepared for a full air-armor-ground onslaught that the future would bring.


When you see the movie, you will see how the characters diverted between one talking about the honor of a medal and the other not wanting to go home.

Sounds like the same plot as Gallipoli.

Similar basic mission premise yes, but much more detailed journey

"My only issues with the movie - no man's land could have been gorier but I understand why it was kept to the level it was, this isn't a horror movie."

IMO...Any movie that is the subject of war..any war, is a horror movie.

Ozzy said (sang) it best:

Gen'rals gathered in their masses,
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction,
Sorcerer of death's construction
In the fields the bodies burning,
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind,
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Oh Lord yeah

Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role for the poor, yeah
Time will tell on their power minds,
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess,
Wait 'till their judgement day comes, yeah

Now, in darkness, world stops turning
Ashes where their bodies burning
No more war pigs have the power
Hand of God has struck the hour
Day of Judgment, God is calling
On their knees, the war pigs crawling
Begging mercies for their sins
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings
Oh, Lord, yeah!

Long, almost a history of the challenges creating the movie:

https://www.vulture.com/2020/01/1917-movie-the-hardest-days-on-set.html

Sample quote

All of Cooke’s efforts paid off in the film’s bravura final sequence, which called for the actor to run through what feels like an entire regiment of extras storming out of a trench in doomed infantry charge. “Movies don’t necessarily get made like that anymore,” Cooke says. “They do crowd replication with VFX. We didn’t. Everybody there was real.” The scene features 450 extras, whose job was just to run, and 50 stuntmen, who essentially acted like human sheepdogs, shepherding the extras away from the high-explosive charges the effects team had planted in the ground. (According to Tuohy, there were 18 explosions in each run.) “We took it in baby steps,” Cooke says. “Doing it walking pace, speeding it up, slowly starting to introduce more people, setting up safe zones, having the hot seats that the stuntmen would be in and around the explosions.” Making it work took constant communication. “I broke the whole 500 into platoons, and then I’d put stuntmen like sergeants among the group,” he says. “I had everybody on the walkie-talkie.”

End quote

Saw it last night, looked about 90% CGI.

Haven't seen the movie.

But if anyone is interested in WWI history and you haven't been to the national WWI Memorial/Museum in Kansas City, you should definitely go.

I enjoyed the film. Its a story, not a documentary. In the mid-60's I would talk with my next door neighbor on occasion. He was wounded in the lower leg. would raise his pant's cuff and show what appeared to be scars from two bullets. He was in the cavalry out West, before then.

He showed my younger brother (probably seven at the time) how to throw a grenade.

during the field hospital scene, I thought of Mr. Kennedy and pictured him laying in a similar situation.

He never mentioned the gas attacks. Maybe he was shipped away before that started happening.

Very little CGI in the movie I believe. The trenches were dug, the town constructed, the explosions were real, and all humans were living. I assume the German artillery pieces were, but that was a brief bit.

What movie has not been made yet,
but SHOULD be made
about some aspect of World War I ?

My, oh my... if you are interested in WW1, you should carefully weigh whether you can resist an addiction to watching the YouTube channel "The Great War"... Hosted by a historian named Indi Neidell.. He is a fantastic story-teller and covers the entire war, one week at a time, in 10-minute episodes, from 1914 to 1919. Every theater, every campaign is covered, from the mud of France, to the Alps, Russia, colonies. It is incredibly bingeable. Something you mention above is often highlighted, the disconnect between the doctrines employed by High Commands vs the realities of modern warfare.. the staggering incompetence, the failures to learn from mistakes and thus the repeated failures of strategy and tactics... some of it is soulcrushing to contemplate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FgaL0xIazk&list=PLB2vhKMBjSxO1lsrC98VOyOzfW0Gn8Tga

Cheers,
- Art