Sam Mendes’ (Skyfall, Spectre) 1979 is a very good war film, though rarely ever feels as unrestrained, as chaotic as it needs (and likely should) to be.

Somewhere in the ballpark of 40 million people died in World War I though trench warfare was a particularly brutal aspect of that war, with an instance of 60,000 British deaths in the Battle of the Somme in the first day of fighting alone.

1917 often feels not unlike a movie depicting a quest–like Lord Of The Rings–as oppose to a war film. Watching it I got glimpses of the horror and beauty of the conflict, but they were relatively few and far between.

In my video I referenced Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, the movie that best underlies my thesis. I recall it depicting–I haven’t seen it in awhile, which I have to remedy–war as a phantasmagoria of sensations, both beautiful and horrific, which is likely one of the truer representations ever put on screen.

Though 1917 is perhaps closer to Samuel Fuller’s The Big Red One, which took place in World War II, though that felt more realistic to the experience that war likely is.

Though that’s not to imply for a moment that 1917 isn’t a good–even great–movie though the problem is that it could be unequivocally, indisputably great, and I’m not sure that it is.