FILMS

1917 Sam Mendes’ wartime epic arrives at a strange time, two years after the centenary of the Great War and two years after Christopher Nolan ticked off a few of the same boxes in the technically spectacular WWII drama Dunkirk. It’s a different conflict, obviously, but the similarities are glaring (a dangerous mission, lots of pale, worried boys smoking roll-ups and shivering in sodden uniforms), and even the film’s bravura conceit – the entire story is ostensibly told in a single take – doesn’t raise the creative stakes much.

Though there’s a cast of thousands, the story itself is strikingly intimate, opening with privates Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) waiting, hungry and bored, with thousands of other British soldiers in the trenches of northern France on April 6, 1917. They are summoned to a meeting with the General Erinmore (Colin