In 1917 narrates the adventures of two corporals, Schofield and Blake (George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman), sent by General Erinmore (Colin Firth) to stop the planned attack by Colonel MacKenzie (Benedict Cumberwatch), who is about to fall. in a trap because he is unaware that he is facing a highly fortified position. To add drama to the situation, our protagonists have very little time, they must arrive before dawn the next day to avoid catastrophe and, in addition, one of the officers of the Devonshire battalion, the one who is going to carry out the attack, is the brother of Corporal Blake, with which both protagonists begin a race against time not only to save some impersonal sixteen hundred soldiers, but also a specific man, Lieutenant Blake (Richard Madden).
This starting point, apparently so simple, is embedded in a much more complex historical context, the first months of the year that gives the film its name. After being defeated at Verdun (see Desperta Ferro Contemporánea no. 13:Verdun 1916 ), the Germans were frankly on the defensive, even if it was only for a few months, due to the fall of the Russian Empire due to their own internal crises (see Desperta Ferro Contemporánea nº 24:Rusia 1917. Revolución y guerra ) was about to give a radical change to the situation. Meanwhile, the strategy they had chosen for the Western Front was to fortify and hold, and to that end, the Kaiser's army had decided to give ground and withdraw to the Siegfriedstellung (called the Hindemburg line by the British), a new defensive position – precisely the one that pretends to attack the Colonel MacKenzie of history – built with the latest technical innovations. With this the Germans hoped to shorten the front and reduce the number of troops needed in the front line. The maneuver was carried out in mid-March 1917, the date on which the narrated events take place, leaving a wide no man's land between the Allied front and the new German positions, a territory that, in fiction, becomes the performance area of the film's protagonists.
An urgent mission to prevent a disaster sounds like those Hollywood war movies of the fifties and sixties; however, it is difficult to include this film in that category. As happened at the time with Dunkirk (C. Nolan, 2017), 1917 It is a film that can disappoint lovers of pure action war films and that perhaps we could dare to include in the category of road movie , because what the film tells us is a version of the Odyssey, except that this time the travelers are on foot and the setting is not the dark waters of the Mediterranean, but the unpredictable no man's land of the First World War. In any case, the viewer who wants it will find much more than an "action movie", they will find a magnificent show of characters, lights and events.
It all starts with two men lying next to some trees in a green meadow. The camera then rises slightly and, followed by the protagonists, is introduced into the depths of the war. The road sinks slowly into the earth and soon the walls of the trench appear, the soldiers who circulate through it, the mud, the weapons, an underground command post and the first, gloomy, fruits of the bombing. However, what for the viewer is an overwhelming spectacle and while one clings to the seat trying to pay attention to every detail, the two soldiers chat quietly about their things. The counterpoint could not be more brutal, for them, everything we are seeing is a daily spectacle against which they have already armored themselves.
From here, the trip subjects us to a barrage of sensations. The oppressive stench of crushed earth, decomposing corpses, festering wounds and stagnant water lead the protagonists, always keeping their sanity with small talk, into the dark depths of a shelter, a booby trap or a cherry orchard. whose trees, still covered with floats, have been felled. They will revert to green, indicates one of them hopefully. An abandoned farm is the pivot that marks a radical change in the film. The empty world of the two protagonists begins to fill with other pieces:a downed pilot, Captain Smith's men (Mark Strong), whose appearance is providential, and even the Germans end up making an appearance... at Écoust. Écoust en Ménin exists, it is south of Arras and it was just behind the new British front when they advanced to the Hindemburg line, and Croisilles too, there may even have been a forest nearby, not anymore. What there isn't is a canal, let alone a whitewater river like the one that rescues the character in Écoust, the ghost town, worthy of a zombie movie and the setting for some of the most frightening scenes in the film.
Mixing beauty and horror, 1917 comes to an end, not without offering us a spectacular bayonet assault. Basically, everything happens as it has to happen and, after so much suffering, we find that Colonel MacKenzie is not the one who had sold us, and in his statements there is a wisdom that, in a way, detracts from all the glory to the that the protagonists of the film may have aspired to. So that? At the end we can see Corporal Schofield leaning against a tree, on his face he has an expression that, personally, reminds me of some of Hugo Pratt's characters, those who have seen too much and have gone further, who contemplate with mocking eyes knowing that what is important today may not be tomorrow, and that are anchored to a memory so as not to be shaken by events.