In Eastern Europe, meanwhile, rumblings of revolution set the stage for Russia’s impending withdrawal from the conflict. Although the Allied and Central Powers were, ironically, stuck in a stalemate on the Western Front, engaging in brutal trench warfare without making substantive gains, the conflict was on the brink of changing course. Set in northern France around spring 1917, the film takes place during what Doran Cart, senior curator at the National WWI Museum and Memorial, describes as a “very fluid” period of the war. It lodged with me as a child, this story or this fragment, and obviously I’ve enlarged it and changed it significantly.” What events does 1917 dramatize? The director added, “And that’s all I can say. In an interview with Variety, Mendes said he had a faint memory from childhood of his grandfather telling a story about “a messenger who has a message to carry.”īlake and Schofield (seen here, as portrayed by George McKay) must warn a British regiment of an impending German ambush. In short: Yes, but with extensive dramatic license, particularly in terms of the characters and the specific mission at the heart of the film.Īs Mendes explained earlier this year, he drew inspiration from a tale shared by his paternal grandfather, author and World War I veteran Alfred Mendes. Universal Studios/Amblin Is 1917 based on a true story?
From the stark realities of trench warfare to the conflict’s effect on civilians and the state of the war in spring 1917, here’s what you need to know to separate fact from fiction ahead of the movie’s opening on Christmas Day.īlake and Schofield must make their way across the razed French countryside.
While Blake and his brother-in-arms Schofield (George McKay) are imaginary, Mendes grounded his war story in truth. “If you fail,” a general warns in the movie’s trailer, “it will be a massacre.”
One of the men, Blake (Dean Charles Chapman, best known for playing Tommen Baratheon in “Game of Thrones”), has a personal stake in the mission: His older brother, a lieutenant portrayed by fellow “Game of Thrones” alumnus Richard Madden, is among the soldiers slated to fall victim to the German trap. Plot-wise, 1917 follows two fictional British lance corporals tasked with stopping a battalion of some 1,600 men from walking into a German ambush.
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