Review: Journey’s End

Journey’s End (12A)

UK 2017  108 mins  Dir: Saul Dibb  Cast: Sam Claflin, Paul Bettany, Asa Butterfield, Stephen Graham, Toby Jones, Tom Sturridge

It’s March 1918, and we’re stuck in a muddy trench with a bunch of British character actors – plus Hunger Games star Sam Clafin – in Mont Saint-Quentin, northern France. There’s been stalemate for months, but the Boche are just yards away and everyone knows they’re about to mount a full-scale assault. Each company spends six days on the front line every month. Right now, it’s the turn of Company C and the atmosphere is thick with a sense of impending doom.

R.C. Sheriff’s semi-autobiographical play premiered on the London stage in 1928, ten years after the end of WWI, with 21-year-old Laurence Olivier in the role now played by Clafin (no pressure there, then). It’s been filmed several times, notably by James Whale in 1930, and formed the basis for the 1976 Malcolm McDowell flick Aces High. The release of this latest version by The Duchess director Saul Dibb is cunningly timed to coincide with the centenary of the Spring Offensive. It also reunites Bristol-based playwright Simon Reade and producer Guy de Beaujeu, who previously worked together in the trenches on a low-budget adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s WWI novel Private Peaceful.

Reade chooses not to modernise the play in any way, which proves to be both a strength and a weakness. The strength is that these characters speak in a reserved, understated, very English way that reminds us that they really are of another age. Alas, this now seems almost parodic and it’s hard not to be reminded of Monty Python as they trade stiff-upper-lippery about “putting on a good show” or the “nuisance” of a positively suicidal mission to snatch a Jerry, and bid one another a jolly “Cheerio!” as they toddle off to die. It also leads us to wonder why we need yet another film version of this venerable yarn. For an answer to that, look no further than the casting of Clafin, who’s clearly intended to introduce Journey’s End to a younger generation.

Set aside any prejudices, because he acquits himself excellently as tormented, short-fused commanding officer Captain Stanhope, who’s been driven to drink by the horrors of war. These days, he’d be diagnosed with PTSD and shipped home. In 1918, Stanhope and his men are stuck in limbo waiting to be sacrificed in the hope of marginally slowing the enemy advance. Providing a calming influence is urbane, pipe-smoking Lieutenant Osborne (Bettany), who likes to be known as ‘uncle’. Representing the lower orders in this dingy, class-riven hole is Trotter (Graham). And cook Mason (Jones) keeps the jolly, grub-oriented banter superficial, as if to distract from the impending slaughter.

Enter eager, fresh-faced, wet-behind-the-ears Second Lieutenant Raleigh (Butterfield), who’s pulled strings not to dodge combat – as any sane young man would do – but to get posted on the front line, which he considers to be “frightfully exciting”. Specifically, this naïve, hero-worshipping youth wants to serve alongside Stanhope, who was his head boy at school and is now his prospective brother-in-law. But the manly chap he looked up to is now a shell of a man, consumed by self-loathing and ashamed of what he has become.

Even if you’re unfamilar with the play, or previous adaptations of it, no military intelligence is required to work out where this is going. The box office success of such recent war flicks as Dunkirk and Darkest Hour may provide a boost to the box office prospects of Journey’s End, but there’s no patriotic uplift here. What’s more, the uniformly fine performances are confined in the murk of a dimly lit dugout, although Dibb makes the most of the handful of opportunities to open it out, with a tense battle sequence and a striking aerial shot. He also underlines very effectively the cruelty and sheer waste of life in the trenches of WWI, without belabouring the point – not least when a raid is timed not to minimise casualties but to avoid disrupting the top brass’s dinner.