Saul Dibb (2017)
R C Sherriff’s famous trench warfare drama was first performed in London in 1928 (with a cast that included a twenty-one-year-old Laurence Olivier). Since then, it’s been repeatedly revived on stage and twice adapted for television. The first cinema version of Journey’s End, directed by James Whale, appeared in 1930 and a German remake, Die andere Seite, the following year. According to Wikipedia, there hasn’t been another since, until Saul Dibb’s film, whose release coincides with the centenary of the events on which Sherriff’s play is based. The action of Journey’s End spans four days – 18-21 March 1918 – leading up to the launch of the Germans’ ‘Spring Offensive’. Dibb’s version premiered at the Toronto festival in September 2017; it’s a little surprising that its UK release in cinemas hasn’t been synchronised exactly with the Spring Offensive’s hundredth anniversary. Journey’s End would have faced significantly less box-office competition in the third week of March than it did in early February, when major awards contenders were appearing.
Sherriff’s Journey’s End takes place entirely within a British officer’s dugout; the warfare going on above ground is suggested by sound and lighting. Working with a screenplay by Simon Reade, Dibbs opens out the action a bit. The fresh-faced, naïve young officer Raleigh (Asa Butterfield), newly arrived in France, call on his military top-brass uncle (Rupert Wickham), with a request to be assigned to a particular company. This is headed by Captain Stanhope, whom Raleigh knew (and hero-worshipped) at school and who is now in a relationship with Raleigh’s sister, Margaret. In the film’s closing scene, after Raleigh’s death in action, Margaret (Rose Reade) receives and reads a letter from her brother – an optimistic description of his arrival in France and first impressions of army life. He also assures his sister that Stanhope is held in universally high regard: the viewer not only knows that Raleigh is now dead but has also seen what a troubled character Stanhope (Sam Claflin) really is – or has become in the trenches. This one scene in England supplies a quietly trenchant conclusion to the film. Dibb returns to France for the very last shot – a panoramic overhead view of the trenches, accompanied by text on the screen that summarises the huge numbers of casualties still to come before the November 1918 armistice: this too is effective. (Saul Dibb’s restraint in use of the Olympian overhead compares favourably with Joe Wright’s direction of Darkest Hour.) The most important opening out consists of the addition of brief bursts of warfare, when men from Stanhope’s company go over the top, usually to their death. This gives an added edge to the claustrophobia of the candelit dugout: getting out into the open means getting into mortal peril.
The film also expands the play’s cast of ten characters but the no-frills narrative strongly implies that Dibb wants to commemorate Sherriff’s original rather than use it as a point of departure. In a similar spirit, the cast – which also includes Paul Bettany, Robert Glenister, Stephen Graham, Toby Jones, Miles Jupp and Tom Sturridge – all give capable and committed performances. There’s a downside to this approach, though: most of the actors are self-consciously respectful of the gravity of the play’s themes, and acting a shade evidently. You sense too, in the source material, a problem familiar in middle-class plays of this vintage. Sherriff (1896-1975) served as an officer in the Great War, fighting at Vimy Ridge, Loos and Passchendaele, where he was seriously injured. A sense that the non-posh characters are simpler souls than the ones who speak RP English hangs heavy in the air. It’s fortunate for this limited but creditable film that the two characters in question – the company’s erratic cook Private Mason (Cockney) and Second Lieutenant Trotter (Northern accent), commissioned from the ranks and fond of his grub – are played by the two best actors. Thanks to Toby Jones (Mason) and Stephen Graham (Trotter), the lower orders come over as the most fully believable men in the company.
15 February 2018
