Along the way, they encounter a grizzled camel driver who doesn’t even realize there’s a war against Germany. Photograph: Assoc RR/Paramount/Kobal/Rex/ShutterstockWith Sam Mendes’s 1917 currently in theaters, it’s a rare chance to see how it fits into a tradition of first world war movies – which have, naturally, been vastly eclipsed by movies about the war that followed two decades later. The standard-bearer for all first world war films is Lewis Milestone’s 1930 masterpiece All Quiet on the Western Front, a best picture winner that’s astonishingly blunt about the grand-scale nihilism of the war, following a group of German boys whose teacher rallies them into enlistment. The ordering of suicide missions is a running theme in first world war movies, which often contrast the bravery of the rank-and-file with leaders who are either tragically wrong-headed or openly reckless in leading these lambs to the slaughter. What’s touching about the great first world war movies is their attempt to find meaning in small acts of courage and friendships under duress, when a salvageable moment or relationship transcends the cynicism, chaos and death that defined the war itself.

Source: The Guardian January 10, 2020 16:46 UTC