8 Details You Didn't Know About 1917
The details and symbolism you missed watching this year's Best Film contender...
With ten Oscar nominations, and one of the ten being a nomination for Best Picture, it's not hard to understand the buzz around the World War 1 movie 1917. 1917 follows two British Lance Corporals on a mission to cross enemy territory and no man's land to drop off an important letter and stop their fellow soldiers from charging into a German trap.
The movie is most known for its long scenes and the feeling of everything being one continuous shot, but it's also gritty, dirty and bloody. Speaking of buzz surrounding the movie, there is also buzzing from the flies hovering the corpses which have been left on the muddy battlefield.
This article is full of spoilers, like a dead soldier's body riddled with rats. Consider yourself warned, soldier.
8. They All Float
When shooting around the river Tees where Schofield climbs on the floating bodies, the crew had to put up warning signs telling people who lived nearby that there was no cause for alarm and that the river wasn't filled with real corpses.
Sam Mendes wanted the river scene to feel almost mythical and compared it to the river Styx. In Greek mythology, the river Styx serves both as a pathway and a border between Earth and the Underworld, and life and death. When Schofield jumps into the water he literally climbs on the dead, almost as if he's walking on corpses and stops at nothing to come back to life and leave Hell behind.
The mythology symbolism and escape from death and Hell are cemented by the song Schofield hears and follows as soon as he has left the water. The religiously themed song about going home is no coincidence, as he finds himself back home with his fellow Brits.