skjam

1917 (2019) dir. Sam Mendes

Dateline: April 6, 1917, somewhere on the Western Front in France. Lance Corporal Blake (Dean Charles Chapman) has been chosen for a special mission, and he has picked his friend Lance Corporal Schofield (George MacKay to accompany him. Unfortunately it's not the supply run Blake was expecting to go on. The German forces have suddenly retreated, making it look like they're on the run. In reality, they've just moved back to new, more formidable fortifications and trenches. A Devonshire regiment, of whom Blake's brother is one, is marching into a trap. The regular lines of communication are down, so messengers must be sent. Can the two couriers get to Colonel Mackenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch) and get the attack called off in time?

This movie is, first, technically spectacular, designed to flow from scene to scene as though it's happening in real time in continuous shots. This builds audience identification with Blake and Schofield as they move from place to place. Other soldiers (and one or two surprises) appear, but only briefly before our protagonists must move on. It also plays well to convey the urgency--every lost moment feels real.

The acting is top-notch, and the sets well-made. Blake and Schofield pick their way across hellish landscapes littered with corpses, interspersed with peaceful-seeming countryside (also littered with corpses.)

There's a little fiddling with timelines to let there be black soldiers in the background and a bit with Indian Sepoy Jondalar (Nabhaan Rizwan), but like a couple of other historical discrepancies (trigger discipline was not a British Army thing in World War One) excusable for a good movie.

The music's also good, with a fine rendition of "I Am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger."

Content note: This is, after all, a war movie. People die violently and unfairly. Corpses are abundant, and many gory wounds. (Still toned down from actual WWI injuries which might have made the film unwatchable.)

Overall: This is an Oscar-winning movie, all right. Like director/producer/co-writer Sam Mendes, my grandfather was in the war, so I was very much emotionally involved. Also check out the making of features, because wow.

George W. Hamilton, USMC: America's Greatest World War I Hero by Mark Mortensen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Disclosure: I received this book through a Firstreads giveaway, on the premise that I would review it.

Everyone who served in a military in World War One is dead, and we're rapidly coming up on the centennial of the Great War itself. I expect we'll be seeing a flood of books, TV series and films on the subject. So it's no surprise that someone decided to do a biography of George W. Hamilton, one of the most impressive people involved in the war.

It's not as good a book as it could be, however. The problems start with the introductory material, which overdoes trying to sell the reader on why this book should be written about this person. Some of the famous Marine terseness would have served well here.

Major Hamilton did not keep a journal and did not get around to writing his memoirs, and very few of his letters are still in existence. To cover for this lack of primary source material, particularly in the earlier chapters, the author lists various historical timeline events that Hamilton might have heard about or been in the vicinity of. There's also a fair amount of attempted mindreading. "Hamilton would surely have been interested in..."

Once the book gets to Hamilton's war service, the book gets more solid--probably both because of the extensive documentation of events, and because it's the meat of the story. I'll just say that the subtitle of the book is well supported.

The disappointing and short post-war years are covered, followed by a "where are they now" segment for people George W. Hamilton was close to. There's a postscript that sounds like the author's attempt to start another attempt to get Hamilton the Medal of Honor (arguably, he was robbed.) Extensive footnotes, a fine bibliography and an index round out the volume.

The book is primarily intended for schools and libraries, and is retailing at $45 a pop; I'd suggest checking your local library for a copy and skipping straight to the war chapters.



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