1917

1917 - Official Trailer [HD]
Soldier, take this message to Colonel McKenzie. It's not far, just a few miles, but this short journey is fraught with peril, as you might expect, being as they are in the middle of a war zone. Production values are fabulous. Endless trenches, endless mud, endless destruction which, if we are to believe the reports from those who were there, is an accurate description of WW1 battlegrounds. The movie is a thriller and an accurate depiction of a slice of life of a WW1 soldier.

Here's a short summary from Wikipedia, for those of you who want to nail down the story line:

It is based in part on an account told to [writer & producer Sam] Mendes by his paternal grandfather, Alfred Mendes, and chronicles the story of two young British soldiers during World War I who are given a mission to call off an attack doomed to fail soon after the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line during Operation Alberich in 1917.

There are a couple of scenes where a little civilization intrudes. In one our hero, Will Scofield, encounters a woman and a baby in a bombed out town and recites the Edward Lear poem The Jumblies to the baby.

In another, when Will is close to completing his mission, he comes across a large group of soldiers waiting in a copse of trees listening to one of their own sing a Wayfaring Stranger.