59. Journey's End; movie review

JOURNEY'S END
Cert 12A
108 mins
BBFC advice: Contains moderate violence, infrequent strong language

The silence, as the old cliche goes, was deafening. As the credits rolled on Journey's End at Derby Quad, it was as if the stunned audience was holding its own minute's silence for those lost in the First World War.
Saul Dibb's picture is shatteringly good and I am bewildered why it has not been given greater plaudits or wider distribution. It certainly deserves both.
Sam Clafin gives an extraordinary performance as a frontline captain who has given in to drink because of the extreme pressure of seeing comrades fall and being told to order young men to carry out missions against unsurmountable odds.
Paul Bettany portrays his older and wiser confidante, who is always able to reach for a soothing word for those around him.
Meanwhile, Asa Butterfield is the teenager whose wide-eyed expectations of the battlefield are shattered within hours, Stephen Graham plays the pragmatic officer who is more at home with his men, Toby Jones is the officers' servant who keeps them plied with whisky and tasteless meat and Tom Sturridge is the shell-shocked soldier whose emotions take over.
Dibb successfully shows how difficult it is for the various personalities to handle this cheek-by-jowl existence under the fiercest of stress.
In my mind, he brought to life the underground trench which we visited in Passchendaele when it was opened for just a few months last year.
As we wandered through the cramped corridor of mud we had mused on how the men must have lived and died.
Of course, Journey's End is only a film but it is so poignant and so realistic, it felt as if it could and would have been an accurate reflection of the claustrophobic hell.
And yet it is not without humour - Graham's character is even an irritant to Clafin's because he tries not to be dragged into the psychological mire by making light of their plight.
Meanwhile, there is a running joke about the food served up to the officers.
But I could not laugh.
Having spent a day in Flanders' Fields last summer, thinking about those who died and the bodies forever buried in the fields, I felt myself deeply touched again by Journey's End and contemplated how these men handled knowing they would die because of crass orders from those safely tucking into their 8pm roast dinner.
I really hope that word of mouth sees it being distributed more widely.

Reasons to watch: riveting, superbly acted account of trench warfare
Reasons to avoid: it is really upsetting

Laughs: none
Jumps: two
Vomit: yes
Nudity: none
Overall rating: 9.5/10

Director quote - Saul Dibb: "The idea is to try to place the audience right in there with the soldiers, so there is little distance between the viewers and those who experience it."

The big question - Why did so many young men have to die?

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