Sam Mendes, the director of 1917, has shared his thoughts on what keeps attracting people to war movies.
1917 is the latest war movie to capture the imagination, picking up a slew of awards in the process. The critically acclaimed WWI movie has proved rather popular, following in the footsteps of many great war movies of the past.
But what is it about the genre that keeps pulling people back? Well, director Sam Mendes puts it down to the human condition. Speaking to Kino Plus, Mendes said:
“The reason, I suppose, that you make a war movie or you go and see a war movie is because it’s one of the few situations where human beings are pushed to the absolute extreme of what they are capable of doing. You’re looking to try to find a way to define the human condition. And this is human beings at their most naked, their most stripped away. Not only that, but millions of men in this war had the same experience.”
SEE ALSO: Sam Mendes receives the 2020 DGA Award for 1917
It seems likely that war movies will continue to appeal to audiences in perpetuity and 1917 certainly captures all of Mendes’ comments, harnessing its ‘one-take’ framework to provide a gripping account of WWI and it’s many horrors.
At the height of the First World War, two young British soldiers, Schofield (Captain Fantastic’s George MacKay) and Blake (Game of Thrones’ Dean-Charles Chapman) are given a seemingly impossible mission. In a race against time, they must cross enemy territory and deliver a message that will stop a deadly attack on hundreds of soldiers— Blake’s own brother among them.
1917 released on Christmas Day 2019 in North America and on January 10th 2020 in the UK, and features a cast that includes George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Mark Strong, Andrew Scott, Richard Madden, Claire Duburcq, with Colin Firth, and Benedict Cumberbatch.
