Journey's End

I watched this yesterday and it was really excellent.The unit depicted was tired, depleted, partially-manned, and w/ a high % of replacements (quite like mine in Iraq), clearly a unit about to fail catastrophically. It was quite deliberately exposed by Higher and left in place as expendable - and the emotions displayed were very, very believable for this circumstance!As a common soldier, you develop complex relationships w/ those among whom you've been thrown, those in your unit - but Kipling, Pyle, and Mauldin described these definitively, and I can add nothing - certainly nothing of comparable quality of insight/turn of phrase.But - quite apart from inter-relationships among troops w/in a unit - one topic left unaddressed by those authors is now called “toxic leadership.” Under fire for months at a time, we found that close to half of our Regular Army (RA) commanders/chiefs of staff (CoS) inexplicably abused subordinates in dramatic, public temper tantrums, degrading and humiliating targeted elements of their staffs, emasculating them in front of our Coalition partners: the Australians, British, Danes, Fijians, Peruvians, and others (there were 26 nations in the Coalition). These hysterical "berserker fits" (our term) were alarmingly sudden and verbally violent, as if a switch had been thrown in their brains. This was shocking, because it was so unexpected in what was purported to be a professional army, and severely damaged morale & unit cohesion. It was so common from this select group that some of us speculated that this abusive behavior was deliberately taught in an RA class for senior Cdrs/CoS before deployment "to get the most out of your soldiers", carte blanche for subordinate debasement. For each such abuser, there was always some weak-willed "Enabler" immediately above, usually a GO (General Officer, in our case a BG (Brigadier)). The Enabler exchanged the Abuser's obsequious fawning (Yanks call this "brown-nosing") for free rein to degrade and abuse subordinates at will; the Abuser courted the Enabler, fawning in obeisance, oblivious to the presence of subordinates.Commonly, mid-grade officers (over-worked and sleep-deprived Captains/Majors, assigned as staff officers) were their targets, treated no differently than as downtrodden dogs, prevented from responding to the verbal public abuse at risk of an accusation of "insubordination", which would ruin their budding careers, and their families' income/lives. How many later suicides have resulted? (5 of the 15 of us in my coterie later took the suicide route!) Our young officers - particularly - often identify as idealists, and in the intensity of combat, and faced w/ public emasculation by a toxic superior, many will consider suicide as an “honorable” response: "falling on their swords". For whatever psychological reason, these suicides always occurred AFTER - sometimes a year or more after - they rotated CONUS (returned to the Continental U.S). It is reported that more OIF (OP Iraqi Freedom) combat veterans have now died of later suicide than of combat wounds. My experience suggests that many of these subsequent suicides were likely due to the delayed effects of their humiliation under toxic leadership in the combat zone. I speculate that the shame later self-associated w/ having quietly and subserviently tolerated this abuse in the combat zone w/o recourse finally became intolerable during "decompression" CONUS. Understandably, they no longer cared - or were ashamed to - live. These are not men who could be expected to react well to having been bullied and forced into humiliating public submission. Their later suicides do not surprise me. Post-combat suicide is not an inexplicable epidemic, as the Army cluelessly misrepresents it. I suggest that it's the reaction to earlier humiliating public abuse under toxic leadership. How many of their families were thus left ignorant of their husbands'/fathers' reasons for post-deployment suicide, and their civilian spouses and children left devastated and bewildered? Based upon cruel smiles and laughter, this targeting appeared to give the abusers sadistic pleasure. I spent 30 years in the Army (beginning as a young Private right out of Public School) and never before or since Iraq encountered pure sadistic malevolence from a senior field grade officer, apparently psychotic behaviour. And there was NO responsible supervision from Higher, only continued enablement.We never saw this weakness of character in officers of the rest of the Coalition (the British and others), but we common soldiers could see the surprise/disdain on their faces: all of them came from long-professional armies and behaved properly, w/ dignity and respect. It was difficult for us common soldiers to admit to our U.S. Army's qualitative inferiority in higher-ranking field-grade officers' (commonly Colonels (COLs); always RA) behaviour in the combat zone, and we felt deeply ashamed/humiliated by association. It sullied our uniform. At those times, I was embarrassed to be an American soldier. I saw others in the Coalition - Aussies, Brits, and Danes - turn their faces or bodies away so as not to witness our shame. Character deficiency in our higher-level RA field grades, under what we felt was no more than quite ordinary combat zone stress, was forcing us into unnecessary mission failure, and we had somehow to come to terms w/ this. It is a weakness of our American national character that we expect an A+ success when we work intelligently/industriously - yes, this is naïve, but it's a near-universal trait among us overly-optimistic, excessive-work-ethic Yanks. But here it was dismaying to us subordinate soldiers that we KNEW what failure looked like, and it played out around us inexorably as we watched, helplessly. We felt betrayed, and frustrated, our efforts wasted. A sense of futility, helplessness, and the oncoming inevitability of failure pervaded HQ and seeped downward to the outlying units. And it became the source of sardonic creativity w/in available venues (among messmates [the guys whom you eat w/], primarily - you only fully trust your chosen messmates, after all) - the only outlet for our frustration.Service in the combat zone sorts through leaders: the better are those w/ "real world" (civilian) experience, not those who grew up from adolescence knowing nothing but the RA. Common soldiers learn quickly whom to follow when under fire, and this is what toxic leaders fear most: that soldiers whom they targeted for abuse will not follow them reflexively in combat, but instead choose to follow those whom they respect/trust (this is the root cause of "fragging", a Vietnam War phrase). Thus, to our surprise as professionals, we came increasingly to rely upon - and to prefer - Reserve leadership. These officers were older (often a decade or more older than their RA equivalents), far better educated, more experienced in the "real world", more emotionally stable, and thus more capable of problem-solving in stressful, changing circumstances - even commonly displaying a sense of humour (always the mark of maturity/stability). We did not see temper tantrums from them. Our own "toxic wonder" (an RA COL) traveled only w/ a Personal Security Detail (PSD) armed escort, to avoid the personal risk that the rest of us all lived w/ continually. Nothing could earn our contempt as quickly as such personal cowardice in an Army-appointed "leader." He was later awarded the Legion of Merit (LOM) and the Bronze Star for his Iraq tenure; none of us common soldiers accepting the risks of combat conditions received ANYTHING like these prestigious awards - and he stayed in relative comfort and ensured security throughout his Deployment; whereas about a fifth of us became casualties (among them, my two best buddies were killed and I was wounded). (I recommend that you look up "Schofield's Definition of Discipline": just a page long. MG Schofield served gallantly/capably in the American Civil War, and received the Congressional Medal of Honor. He understood "toxic leadership", and in this short essay wrote of its effect on soldiers in a Democracy.) At one point, our appointed CoS pointed out those of us whom he considered to be "expendable". In the extremely high stress environment that we were in, it had immense psychological shock to have a belligerent, malevolent superior glare at you eye to eye, and have him declare that you are "expendable", to be considered disposable garbage. I'll never forget that moment, the shock of it. Leadership? We were considered to be untermenschen, and treated accordingly.Thus began widespread avoidance of "the flagpole": subordinates minimized contact w/ HQ to avoid abuse, or witnessing abuse, not reporting failures to avoid "being shot as the messenger" (the Arabs w/ us seemed to understand - having seen all of this before w/in Saddam's army). This resulted in delusionally-positive HQ "sitrep" assessments to Higher: a topic of sub rosa black humour among us. We common soldiers became increasingly sardonic, and avoided HQ; we came to prefer the greater risk and problematic resupply of being farther from "the flagpole", and presumably closer to combat.Combat itself is so exhausting that it sucks years of life out of you: you become old, weary-to-stumbling, utterly exhausted - the shell of a man, emotionally and physically. The misery is ineffable - but you DO share continual discussion of it w/in the unit. You even try to joke about it (all jokes fall flat). You do what you HAVE to do, what is expected of you, what you are ordered to do. Food looses all taste; you live on bad coffee: moldy, stale. You think (not talk) about death quite often, "testing the waters"; to come to an acceptance, and gain an unhealthy relationship to RISK, as do those around you (you become inured to it, as to so much). For those of us who have been there, though, - in any war - we vividly relive the smells, the shock waves, and the multitude of long-accumulated discomforts: headaches, hunger, bruises, rashes, cuts, sprains, infections, the unique dumbing effect of months of sleep-deprivation, the constant, long-term exposure to weather that we had no choice but to experience to the full, the often disturbing sights that we've seen, and the emotional numbing that some of us would fight (others not). The surreal life of a combat soldier at the "point of contact" is incredibly, definitively uncomfortable, stressful - but never "dramatic" in the Hollywood sense (we did not tolerate "drama"; we were professionals). And we were fully conscious that we were being deliberately expended by Higher, inexorably drained into exhausted, degraded husks.You - and those around you - take to staring at the horizon, or the sky. Your eyes are less strained if you focus on things that are at a distance - or it's easier to muse at distant objects? They seem cleaner, more ideal than everything nearby. The filth just has to be experienced. You come to believe that you can never become clean again, and come to suspect that memories of past cleanness were false. Your mind is on things far away, because what's close seems surreal - and you are very, very tired! But it is the only reality that you know now, and you eventually come to accept it (a matter of resignation). Once you accept it, you never recover from this. This is your "new normal." For the rest of your life, you tend to fall into the "thousand-yard stare". It's odd, but you can recognize other combat vets in this, even decades after their own experiences in whatever war was theirs, because you never lose this inclination to gaze long and musingly at the horizon. Exhaustion simply mounts. We were gradually expended. Reactions become purely reflexive, w/o thought. Call it "PTSD", but it is really the normal and healthy acceptance of conditions that had to be endured.And all of the above describes your state prior to wounding. Once wounded, you experience the predictable waves of pain that thoroughly distract you from your surroundings. You KNOW just when the next wave will begin to roll through you, you tense for it - and those muscles finally exhaust themselves. During a pain-wave, it is the only reality. This experience is completely surreal (I began to associate each wave w/ primary & secondary colors - and began to dread the color orange). I remember being dazed and mentally drifting as an Army nurse swabbed clean a patch of skin on my forearm to insert an IV to rehydrate me and apply the morphine, the syringe puncturing the thick, clear plastic bag elevated above me (morphine really works, by the way: all pain temporarily vanishes!). Medical orderlies: "Prepare to lift!"; "Lift!"; "Prepare to move!", "Move!" To be lifted and carried strapped onto a taut stretcher is a bewildering, disorienting experience. "Prepare to rack!"; "Rack!" The stretcher is locked into a sturdy, aluminum frame, w/ many others. You can now turn your head to one side or the other, only that. "Where are you from? How were you wounded?" You take stock of newly-found buddies (rank insignia cannot be seen; it is "bad form" for wounded to acknowledge rank), and try to let the reality of your disabilities sink in. Are you permanently crippled? You feel helpless, vulnerable, desperate, because your weapons have been taken, and these have not been out of your hands in months: prized possessions. Triaged numerous times at different stops (at one I learned that I then weighed 135 lbs [9 stone, 9 lbs], having lost 36 lbs in combat!), you are medevac'ed progressively "back", handed off from the "A Team"; to the "B Team" as you are gradually de-prioritized. You doze. Only your head is loose, and it rolls side to side as the aircraft rocks in flight.Immediately after being medevac'ed out of combat, I spent several months billeted among other wounded in what was called a "Warrior Transition Battalion" (WTB), and we were called "wounded warriors" by the excellent, caring Army nursing staff. While there, waiting in queue for my surgery, I believe that I saw the full scope of wounds and also PTSD. We received fine billets. We were clean (!), and were served fine chow. More importantly, we had time to talk to one another, at length, in the Day Room. I still remember many of those impromptu conversations. Rank was forgotten. We solicited the other's stories. We commiserated. We shared a mound of well-thumbed novels - and we discussed them! We were patient w/ one another, always waiting for a long pause before speaking in conversation, never interrupting another. Those more mobile got coffee for those less so. I remember that some of us played chess, and took the time to concentrate on our moves (we had nothing, if not time!). Others gathered to watch, all quite patient. None complained or urged faster play. I remember one languorous day, late morning to dusk, spent in a group that continually varied w/ comings and goings, discussing all aspects of coffee: experiences w/ it, different preparations of it. Eventually, we discussed our future prospects, in many cases altered due to new handicaps (I could no longer walk w/o a cane). We each wanted quiet, calmness, dignity. Ah, to be clean, untroubled, and to sleep between clean, white sheets, under good, thick, wool Army blankets! I recall it wistfully now as a "golden time" interlude after a filthy, degrading, bruising experience....The truth, for good or ill, is that none of us are the same afterward - and our families (particularly) and acquaintances can't help but notice this. I can't "speak for" those who deployed but did not see combat (perhaps as many as 90% of USF in GWOT [the Global War on Terrorism], by some estimates). But I think that all of those of us who spent our deployment tours in combat, as opposed to being restricted to FOBs ("Fobbits", in our parlance), were adversely effected, perhaps because we 10% were either continually "in" or we kept being sent back in (like me), as "expendables" (we were called that, to our faces, by the RA COL "leader" who sent us out, while he remained in complete safety and relative luxury). Many of us described ourselves using the terms "broken", "NMC" (non-mission-capable), or “on degraded mode” [these are officially terms for partially-inoperable equipment, not personnel, and AMMED (the Army Medical Department) was NOT be pleased at our usage].The doctrinal concept of "resilience" (an elastic rebounding of the soldier, if withdrawn into safe circumstances) is pernicious, as is any suggestion that only the "delicate" among us are susceptible to PTSD (I personally know a few hundred wounded US veterans, and every one of them has a PTSD diagnosis of some severity, among other diagnoses. Rhetorical question: were all of these soldiers "delicate"?) There IS no recovery. This is permanent. And it is socially crippling (for instance, I can now never hold Public Office, because the social risk of some unforeseen circumstance eliciting tears - a very common, severe PTSD response - and The Public would not understand).I wish that young boys could understand this. As a kid, I'd watch The Lone Ranger, and if the hero was "hit" in a shootout, at the end of the episode he'd simply be wearing a white bandanna as a sling, and the next episode would commence w/ no trace of any former injury. Reality is different - oh, so different ....This movie portrayed it all quite well. It's quite brilliant!(By the way, as a retired soldier, I'm deeply impressed by the "pluck" and steadfastness of the British People in general, but what they'd endured up to this point in WW I had to have been particularly trying. The British were steadfast throughout, and as a soldier this impresses me.)

This movie is among my all-time favorites. Among war films as well. I'm a combat vet and a huge war film enthusiast and this one has remained a standout for me.Not only does it tread the familiar ground of a WW1 battlefield, it deviates from that path most others to take to tell the story from a unique perspective.While hardly brimming with action, it succeeds in building tension. Much like the majority of Das Boot- you become enveloped by a world of filth, boredom, tension and men packed into confined spaces awaiting action. Where in Das Boot its a matter of finding the action, in Journey's End the men of Company C await the inevitable.The most powerful scene for me was the pre-raid conversation between Raleigh and Osborne in the dugout. You can feel what is about to happen in your gut, long before your brain can tell you. The first time I watched this, I apparently got something stuck in both of my eyes...Underscoring most of the scenes are droning string instruments that ties the whole movie together with an even tone. While not a long movie, it will ensnare your attention and invest you quickly in the story.Its one of the few war movies I can watch where I get the feeling of "being back in". The classic character tropes are pushed past simple writing tools to advance a plot. Each member of the company with screen time brings something human to the screen.Despite being a war movie set in 1918, much of it translates to my own personal experience. Some scenes simply hit the nail on the head.Without getting into a long, winding story, during my time in Afghanistan- We manned an isolated checkpoint on the MSR running through Kunar. Very remote territory. Each troop in our squadron would rotate out of this checkpoint duty every few days. Usually spending about a week "out of the wire" at this isolated CP. It was the ruins of an old stone house that we ringed with sandbags and hescos. By day we pulled guard duty in shifts while the rest of us would stay out of sight in the house. We'd sleep, clean our weapons, eat and save our strength for the night. When the sun set, we'd head out to use the darkness to fill sandbags and repair or improve the fortifications. When standing in the maze of sandbags and hescos ringing the house you got the impression you were standing in a WW1 trench. Going into the house, you walked through the front room occupied by the officers and higher enlisted. The interior was damp, the floor was mud. Every time it rained the roof leaked. The interior felt like the interior of a dugout and the fortifications outside were the trenches. The open country beyond was a No-Mans-Land you didn't dare to poke your head up to look at for more than a few seconds. Every morning we'd "stand-to" as the sun rose and await an attack that always seemed to be ready to happen. Upon rotating out, you'd pass the incoming guys in the dark- taking anything of value with you to use on your next rotation while wishing the faceless darkened figures passing you "good luck" and trying to listen for guys you knew. By the time you knew it, you were passing them in the dark on your way in to relieve them again. If you had to go to the latrine, you had to make a mad dash from the cover of the sandbag "trench" and cross open ground to the fortified latrine pit. Occasionally an unseen Taliban fighter would take a shot at you as you made this dash.Scenes in this movie sum up the feeling. I caught myself remembering what it felt like to stand-to in the cold morning air. What it felt like to stand by a wood stove and try to heat up your cup of instant coffee in a canteen cup on its top. What it felt like to have an older guy take my green butt out on watch and show me the ropes- to point out the terrain features, explain the fire angles and where the enemy most likely were. Right down to letting me shoot the hourly flare over the deadspace between us and the far ridges.Shot for shot this movie is a sharp and neatly packaged representation of how I felt in similar circumstances. It conveys the plot well through articulate characters. It tugs at the heart when familiar faces step off on a raid and never returns. We don't see their fates clearly and are left to wonder just like the main characters who watch the raid unfold from the safety of the sap.Overall I HIGHLY recommend this movie to anyone looking for a well made movie that will absorb your mind for its entire duration.

It’s hard to make sense of a senseless war. We may try but largely fool ourselves. Maybe all war at root is senseless, a suicidal madness, since the killing of one’s kind taken to its logical extreme is the extinction of the species.A further tragedy and irony of the First World War was that old ideas and attitudes were asked to function on the battlefield with new technologies and techniques the human mind was unprepared for. The war was thus unique, the first in history to be waged under these new terms — waged both physically on the ground and psychologically in the mind. Which is why, when the two worlds collided, the destruction was so immense.Old ideas were mounted cavalry charges with sabres drawn, plumage and banners waving in the wind, or infantry advances in organised, orderly rows. Old attitudes were moral values such as honour, sacrifice, valour, heroism and glory.New technologies and techniques were tanks, machine guns, grenades, poison gas, barbed wire, one-tonne artillery shells, aeroplanes, trenches, dugouts and tunnels. It could even be said men did not fight in this war. Machines did, much of the killing impersonal, the enemy’s position — rather than the enemy himself — seen. Hand-to-hand combat did occur, but most of the killing occurred in no-man’s-land, a fitting epithet for unholy ground, a place of anonymous slaughter where some bodies were never found, at least not fully intact. Savagery, then, advanced to a new level of destructiveness. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier contains the phantom remains of hundreds of thousands of vanished human beings.R.C. Sherriff (1896-1975), author of the stage play Journey’s End, was intimately aware of the above, having lived through the war as a British army officer. He fought near the Somme at Vimy Ridge, and later in Belgium at Loos and at Passchendaele where he was severely wounded in 1917 and billeted out of the war. The play was first performed in London in 1928 with Laurence Olivier, aged 21, in the leading role. Although Robert Cedric Sherriff wrote several plays as well as screenplays for the cinema, Journey’s End remains his best known work, and perhaps his most personal and poignant. Here on film it is given expert treatment.The action, such as it is, is mainly confined to dugouts and trenches, and to HQ behind the lines. The physical spaces are narrow and confining, the atmosphere heavy, oppressive, claustrophobic. Because this drama began as a stage play it consists mainly of dialogue, conversations between the men.Northeastern France, March 1918, the expected German offensive quite imminent. Captain Stanhope is in charge of C Company. He has endured nearly four years of fighting on the Western Front. He is therefore battle tested, but at present his nerves are badly fraying, his painkiller of choice whisky. As the battle draws nearer the whisky intake increases, suggesting perhaps that dulled senses are a better form of armour than the fear fully conscious soldiers have. To what extent are logic and reason relevant anyway in the chaotic randomness of battle? A bullet may miss you by inches either way you move or turn. You can never know. No one can, not even the soldier who fires. War is a crapshoot, and in this sense supremely democratic, all equal in its carnage.Second Lieutenant Raleigh is a young officer straight out of Officers Training School. He has just arrived from England full of energy and ready to go, his eyes and voice full of life, his mind eager for the great adventure to come. He knew Stanhope back in England and is now proud to be under his command. But he’s astonished at the state Stanhope is now in. Before the war the captain was so regal in bearing, a heroic figure. Now he looks battered, a sloven and dishevelled ghost of what he was, his speech slurred, his mind muddled, his vision blurred. Raleigh sees what the war has done to him and understands it theoretically, but not existentially. He is pure and virginal, a lamb being readied for slaughter.The other officers (Lieutenant Osborne, Second Lieutenant Hibbert and Second Lieutenant Trotter) do their best to keep their minds distracted. Unlike Raleigh, they have no illusions about their untenable situation. They are in the most forward trench, a place reserved for the full brunt of the first wave of assault. Why there? Because it’s their turn, companies moved forward and back on a rotational basis. Bad luck, a poor hand dealt to them. In a way everything comes down to odds and probabilities in life, everything a matter of contingency. At least that’s what chaos theory says, and I think it to be true. They are done for. They exist in the crucible and now merely await the whistle that will send them over the top.Small talk is the way to cope, or if not this then dreamy reflections of past places so unlike this one: streams and meadows, the village green, the pub and family hearth. They see smiling faces and beautiful lips to kiss. They never loved England and life more than they do now. But tears will not conjure up that green and pleasant land for them. Nor will fear. They must man up. They are soldiers, defenders of the realm or civilization or something. This is their duty, one that can’t be shirked. All they can do is pray and hope they are among the lucky ones, wounded but not killed.The pastoral beauty of England’s verdant fields adds to the gloom of the squalor they live in now: mud, lice, rats, damp, rain and the maddening din of artillery bombardments. It hardly seems the same earth, the same planet. Who knew hell could be so cold and filthy?Journey’s End means the obvious — annihilation and extinction. The drama could have been called Sacrifice, but that thought is implicit in the title R.C. Sherriff chose for his play. And so Stanhope drinks and the others divert themselves. An old Russian proverb says “hope is always the last thing to die.” It has here, or soon will. They are at death’s door and know it.The climax of the film would be different in a standard war film. We would see the physical action, be immersed in all the chaos of conflict. That could not happen in a stage play, and thus cannot happen here either since the director remains true to the original art produced by Sherriff. So it’s left to us to imagine the outcome, to dwell emotionally on what a death foretold might really feel like.Of course it’s sad. That’s what war is. The banners, bugles and flags exist to camouflage that painful truth. The rhetoric that sustains war is largely a civilian and political pursuit. It’s the non-combatants who cheer the loudest. The soldiers, on the other hand, are those who live through the sorrow and pity of it all.

Beautifully shot, tense, emotional drama from R C Sheriff's 1928 play and book.This adaption is in my opinion the best stage to screen adaption and puts many "action" war films to shame.If you're looking for a Hollywood style all action effort, sorry you're out of luck.This film is about the tension of war weary men waiting for a German onslaught in March1918.New recruit (Raleigh) requests he be attached to the unit of his old school hero, and sister's boyfriend (Stanhope).After years of war Stanhope is keeping himself going by large quantities of whiskey.The acting is beyond excellent with Sam Claflin (Stanhope) leading the way. Paul Bettney (Osborne) gives a tremendous performance as the older, calmer influence. Asa Butterfield (Raleigh) and the other cast members Stephen Graham, Toby Jones, are also faultless.If you like great acting, tense drama (without the bloody action scenes) and a great screenplay this is for you.

It was a hard watch and very consuming. The writing, acting and directing were all very good and I felt I was in the thick of it. Not pleasant and was surprised that it received a 12 classification because although the violence in the main was not very explicit the subject matter and how it was dealt with was. The music was very haunting and in view of it's classification should be shown to young people who are studying this particular period of history at school.It also illustrated the futility of war and hopefully we will never be subjected to such brutality again. Difficult to watch again but I daresay I will if only to remind me that we should not return to those dark days again.

I thought that it was a very good film, worth buying and watching. It milks the World War I Western Front cliches of a heartless and essentially incompetent High Command, plus the senselessness of the slaughter incurred. The acting was very good, and I thought that Paul Bettany as Lieutenant Osborne was excellent.On the negative side, I thought it too stereotypical, whilst at the same time not necessarily entirely accurate. By 1918 battlefield tactics had improved dramatically. Without more explanation / argument I'm not sure that a front line trench would have been packed with men standing on a firing step knowing that a massive enemy artillery barage was coming or extremely likely to be coming.I also thought that the dynamic between Captain Stanhope and Second Lieutenant Raleigh was not properly thought through. In the film Capt Stanhope is close to becoming Lt Raleigh's brother-in-law, and the two men supposedly knew each other very well indeed from earlier, and yet they seemed like a couple of strangers most of the time in this film. Also, did I miss something, or was there a hint that Capt Stanhope was a homosexual or had homosexual tendencies that did not entirely square up, I thought, with his desire, if that is the right word, for Lt Raleigh's sister? I also thought that the total absence of religion was erie. No Chaplain. Nothing. More secular 2018 (actually 2017 when the film is made) than 1918 when in theory the story takes place. It is a difficult topic, but people do talk about politics and religion, particularly people who know each other well, and sometimes people who don't know each other well. Some people are naturally prone to being preachy. To ignore politics and religion altogether is something of a cop-out which leaves the film lacking depth, hence the four stars instead of five.

I don’t know why I missed this on first release. It’s a compelling drama, very well adapted from the original stage play. Asa Butterfield delivers a convincing performance as a raw young officer, off to front line command although barely out of nappies. The story centres on the stalemate in the front trenches at the beginning of 1918. A German offensive is expected, but no one knows when, so the forces play a long, boring waiting game. This isn’t about gungo ho fighting, blood, gore and guts; it’s a more thought provoking and sensitive portrayal of relationships and interactions between the men, officers and higher command. It’s complex and compelling and I enjoyed it.