Journey's End

A film set in a trench in France in March 1918. A company takes over a section of the line. They will be there six days and a large German attack is known to be coming. Stanhope commands them. He has been at the front three years, is a good officer, and drinks in order to stay upright. Raleigh has just arrived. A young lieutenant; he knew Stanhope at school, his sister is engaged to him, and he asked to be posted to this company. Stanhope does not want him. He cannot bear the boy seeing him in this state. Osborne is the senior officer. Calm, a former schoolmaster, and the man everyone leans on. From there the film proceeds by waiting. Meals, letters, watches, sleep, conversation and more waiting. An order for a raid comes. In daylight, to take a prisoner from the opposite line, at a time set from above. Everyone knows what that means. What the narrative is interested in is not war but confinement: the setting never changes, there is no way out, and the tension comes only from the clock moving. The cook's line is where the film breathes. Mason busies himself with the food and all the humour comes from there. The source is a play from 1928. The writer had served as an officer in the war, and when the text was published it was counted among the first accounts of front-line life without ornament. The visual language is narrow. Most scenes take place in an earth dugout by candlelight and the sky is barely seen. Sam Claflin, Asa Butterfield, Paul Bettany and Toby Jones are in the cast. Saul Dibb directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes war drama shut into a trench and adaptations of plays. Who it is not for: anyone expecting action; very little happens through the film and there is no fighting outside the last five minutes.