1917

I saw the film 1917 yesterday.

Some critics are saying it's the best World War 1 film since All Quiet on the Western Front, but to be fair there haven't been many WW1 films, have there? Some additional contenders might be Joyeux Noel, A Very Long Engagement, Gallipoli, and Paths of Glory. I don't have an opinion about the best WW1 film since I haven't seen most of these films.

I think 1917 is a technically well-crafted film. For instance, the apparent use of a single continuous shot (save for one interlude) throughout the film might be a bit gimmicky in a less seasoned hand, but it's masterfully used in this film.

Plot-wise, 1917 is very simple and straightforward: two British soldiers are tasked with going on foot to deliver a message to call off an attack or else 1,600 men will be walking into a German trap. That's the entire plot, from start to finish. (As an aside, the British had to send soldiers as messengers because the telegram lines had been cut. One wonders why the British didn't use other means such as airplanes to drop authenticated message tubes over the unit? From what I've read, that wasn't an entirely uncommon practice at the time.)

There weren't many fights or battles to showcase the horrors of war (like in Saving Private Ryan or Hacksaw Ridge), but throughout the film one could see the grotesque aftermath of battles. A heap of broken images. Human figures strewn across no-man's lands. Multitudes mangled by machinery. Rotting corpses with mouths frozen wide open as if real-life replicas of Edvard Munch's painted shriek. Waif dead animals. Flies swarming carcasses. Rat infestations. And always the mud. Mud everywhere. Mud thick as blood. Mud thick with blood. One could almost feel the wretchedness the soldiers must've had to endure in the trenches, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. They must've become anesthetized to it all. Otherwise how could they have lived in such squalor, death so palpable around them? It's no coincidence some of the most dreadful scenes in The Lord of the Rings were inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien's experiences at the Battle of the Somme.

Yet at times these gruesome images are juxtaposed with utterly beautiful sights and sounds - siren songs to dispell the darkness. Take the near-drowned soldier floating downstream on his back to be revived with the sight of lily white flower petals gently gliding toward and falling upon his lips, as if God breathing life into Adam. A group of woodland soldiers rapt as a consecrated host in their compatriot's haunting rendition of "Wayfaring stranger", a song which pierces the still air on the dawn of battle (and, by the way, a biblically themed song). A brow-beaten and bloodied soldier finally resting his weary head against a tall green tree shooting up like a towering stronghold or sanctuary from wide-open earthen fields into placid blue skies above. This latter image in turn bookends the film with a last scene similar to its first scene, for the film began with the soldier lying under like-tree, as if to say with T. S. Eliot that after a hard-fought journey through the waste land the soldier has "arrived where he started and knows the place for the first time".

In short, I think this film is more like a silent film than a talkie, conveying its message through visuals over words.

What is its message? I'm still contemplating it, but I tentatively venture it might be that there's a kind of irony in finding beauty in a world at war. We don't expect to discover beauty in violence and death but we do - or long to.

After all, we know beauty fades. We know nothing lasts forever. We know each faces the grave. Nevertheless we yearn for beauty everywhere such as in the heavenly bodies or in the fairer sex (I speak as a male). We search for beauty in mathematics and in nature. We create beauty in art, literature, and music. However, if all things including all beautiful things are destined for death, who cares? There are more important matters to consider in a world governed by death. Namely how to survive. Or at best, is not our grasping at beauty like grasping at wind? A vain pursuit in the end.

Yet beauty matters to us, even in the midst of men killing men, even in the midst of widowed women and lost children, even in the midst of inexpressible atrocities. Archimedes indulged in his calculations during the siege of Syracuse. Augustine meditated upon the Psalms when Hippo was overrun by the Vandals. Why does beauty matter to us? Why should beauty matter to us?

I suppose it's in large part because true beauty is good. A moral good. The truly beautiful can point us to the truly good. I think in the midst of horrendous evil it is not only worth pursuing the beautiful, the true, and the good, but it is absolutely vital to life to pursue the beautiful, the true, and the good. If we don't pursue the beautiful, the true, and the good, then we won't pursue "nothing" like some neutral blank slate awaiting orders. Rather we shall fall into the vile, the false, and the bad. We will sink to the level of brute beasts. But life is more than animal survival. If we live only to survive, then we do not truly live; truth, goodness, and beauty make life worth living. Hence why I think it's essential to pursue beauty, though death stalks us. And there's no higher truth, goodness, and beauty than God himself.