Hobnails, drill and boot camp: secrets of Sam Mendes’s war epic 1917
Wasted youth, random violent death and the folly of armed conflict are the big themes of 1917, Sam Mendes’s orchestral symphony of a first world war film. But for the director and the team who made it alongside him, no detail was too small to consider.
“It was very important, the question of historical accuracy,” said Mendes. “We had two very fine historical advisers, Andy Robertshaw and Peter Barton, who are world renowned. And one military adviser, Paul Biddiss, who was also brilliant.”
The film, out in cinemas in January, has already won many admiring reviews and was premiered last Wednesday in front of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall at Leicester Square. Set on 6 April in northern France, after the follows a soldier’s deadly mission to help a family member. Mendes’s own mission as director was to be faithful to the experiences of the men who fought, including his own grandfather, Alfred H Mendes.
