The true story that inspired Sam Mendes movie ‘1917’
1917 didn’t win the Oscar for ‘Best Picture’, as many predicted it would. However, Sam Mendes‘ visually stunning World War I drama remains one of the most popular and successful war films in recent memory.
Many will, no doubt, have wondered if 1917 is based on a true story. It isn’t, but many real stories went into crafting the movie, and the initial inspiration for the material came from Mendes’ grandfather, a World War I veteran who told him stories of the war.
Mendes explained that his grandfather was “a messenger on the front lines,” he said, before adding: “He was given the job of carrying a message from post to post along the front line because he was 5’4” and the mist on No Man’s Land hung at five and a half feet so he couldn’t be seen above the mist when he ran. I started with this fragment, really.”
As Mendes buried himself in World War I research, he and co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns came across many other historical details that found their way into the screenplay. For example, a conversation between the two main characters features an anecdote about a rat biting someone’s ear off. This came directly from the pair’s research into the war.
Mendes also revealed that the characters were often named after real people… albeit not ones involved in the war. Many characters were named after Mendes’ school friends, former cricketing colleagues, and even those in the England Cricket Team at the time the screenplay was being written.
Clearly, a lot of real-life influences went into the film, which no doubt helped make it an authentic and reasonably accurate depiction of one of history’s most terrible conflicts. Mendes said that he felt a lot of responsibility to keep the history of World War I alive, a sense of responsibility no doubt increased by the fact that no one who fought in World War I is alive today.
He revealed: “I feel that it’s the duty of one generation to hand on the stories of the previous generation so that we understand history,” Mendes said. “I take that very seriously because this generation sacrificed for something larger than themselves. The nature of that is behind everything. That’s really what the story is.”
1917 was a film that succeeded in these aims. It made for a powerful recreation of World War I that honoured those who fought in it – the ones who got to come home and the millions upon millions lost in the trenches.
