‘Come Back to Us’
‘1917’
A Review
21st of January, 2020.
Tom lay in the arms of his friend, Will, bleeding, dying, having been stabbed by the German pilot.
This was a dramatic scene in this film as much as Will climbing out of the trench whilst all around him men were running towards the enemy. This was one reason why this film had to be seen in a cinema – to get the scale; to get the feel that, I was there.
The opening scene saw two soldiers, Tom (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Will (George Mackay) laying down, resting, looking over fresh green and yellow countryside. Idyllic, un-spoilt by war. It could not last.
It was the 6th of April, 1917, and the soldiers were summoned to the Front Line to see a General Erinmore (played by Colin Firth). We followed their journey and the general told them that their mission was to go to the front and give a letter to a colonel to ‘STOP’ a planned attack. There was a personnel interest for Tom, as his brother was in the battalion which was due to attack the Germans.
Very soon, all within a minute it seemed, we passed through trenches with British Tommies standing guard or trying to sleep or write letters home, until the two men reached the front line. Very soon they were making a giant leap of faith, by going over the top, into ‘No Man’s Land’.
Snaring his hand on barbed wire, Will looked aghast at then having to put his hand into a corpse which lay in one of the many shell-holes which pock-marked the lunar like landscape. It was nothing short of what hell must look like. Trees, debris, bodies in and out of water and an old knocked out tank and dead horses with flies swarming all around.
Yes, we were right there, bar the stench.
Eventually, they reached the German line. They were pleasantly surprised though to find that it had indeed been seemingly abandoned as the General had informed them – as the Germans had made a tactical withdrawal to shorten their line. They were soon shocked to discover though, just how deep the trenches were, not to mention comfortable and bomb and bullet proof – and it was appropriate that one of the lads quipped, ‘Even their rats are bigger than ours!’.
‘Bang!’
There was an almighty crash as the dugout imploded, as one of the rats – which looked the size of a cat, ran over a booby trap wire and almost entombed the two ‘Tommies’. Luckily though, despite Will temporarily losing his sight, they scrambled clear.
‘Why did you pick me?’ to go with him, Will asked Tom soon after; why indeed?
And so, to the farmhouse and the dog-fight they witnessed in the sky, at a safe distance, or so it seemed, until that is the German plane came crashing down towards them and caught alight in a barn, only a few feet away. They ran to humanely rescue the pilot and managed to drag him out of the plane which now blew-up in the background. As Will went to get water, Tom, trying to tend to the German’s wounds, got stabbed by the German, who Will shot dead.
However, this is where I took-up the story, with Tom, dying. We all knew it; as dark red blood oozed un-controllably, out of his body, like a dam. He mercifully soon passed away.
We could have heard a piece of grass drop.
Despite his grief, Will soon had to ‘come to’ as a captain Smith (Mark Strong), who appeared out of the blue, called him to order. Will took a place in the back of a crowded lorry which soon hit a rut and Will soon had the men ‘onside’ as he urged them to push the lorry out of trouble, as he told them later that he had orders from the general to stop an attack – at dawn.
Then Will had to go it alone when a bridge had been blown, in the planned German retreat, as he tip-toed, like a trapeze artist over its fallen girder top before being shot at from the other side. Surmounting all the courage he could muster, he managed to fire back and then kill the German, who had been sniping at him, from a tower but not before Will was rocked back by an explosion. He was in the wars again, as he sustained a wound to the back of his head.
Will passed out and from this point for a while the film I felt lost its way a bit I felt and did not grip me so much. Ok, I guess Will had to reach the front-line somehow and after going through a town, being pursued by Germans, he also met a French girl who tended to his wounds and she offered him a dream like prospect to stay with her and an abandoned baby. All very commendable and after this interlude, Will almost drowned in a fast-flowing river before being jolted back to consciousness and getting out of the river by climbing over bloated, floated, dead bodies…
He presently, came upon a group of ‘Tommies’, listening to a man beautifully singing amongst some trees and no wonder he slumped down against a tree, after his recent ordeal. As it was morning he realized, I’m guessing, that it was too late to see the Colonel MacKensie, as the attack must surely have ‘gone-in’.
However, he was informed that the ‘Devon’s’ were still around, and that some of them, including the colonel he was looking for, had not gone ‘over-the-top’, just yet. There was still time.
Will ran as fast as he could with men walking to the line in support trenches and then reaching the front line, which was being bombarded at an alarmingly increasing intense rate, as was evidenced by an officer being speechless – frozen in fear, as explosions banged all around.
Will frantically ran, so much so that it was at this, in desperation to not only save the possible lives of 1,600 men but also Tom’s brother’s life, that Will opted to climb out on a limb, during an attack, into ‘No Man’s Land’. Somehow, he survived and even then, was nearly pipped at the post by two sentries, barring the way to the Colonel’s dugout.
However, Will was not to be daunted, again, as with his uniform in tatters, his head and hands having bleed and having cried almost un-controllably at everything that had been thrown at him along the way, he found that, to his dismay, Colonel MacKenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch) refused to believe that he should stop the attack, which was now only moments away.
Will though was un-daunted and shoved the letter from the general, into the colonel’s face and finally the colonel read the letter.
‘Ok, Major’ the colonel paused, as the seconds ticked down like a hammer on an anvil, as we waited to hear, with a heavy beating heart, what was going to come next.
‘Stand the men down’…
Will had at last carried out his mission and then had the un-enviable task of hunting down Tom’s brother, which he eventually did.
‘Where is Tom?’ his older brother asked before it dawned on him what had happed to his younger brother; before somehow managing to hold back the tears.
It was touchingly sad.
At the end, Will sat under a tree and took out the precious photos of his wife and children.
On the reverse side of one of the photos there was a simple message;
‘Come back to us’
21/1/20
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