Sam Mendes Interview: 1917

Sam Mendes’ latest masterpiece, 1917, arrives in theaters just in time for Christmas. The war epic shares the tale of two soldiers, Lance Corporal Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Lance Corporal Schofield (George MacKay) who must deliver a message of vital importance during WWI. The acclaimed director sat down with Screen Rant to discuss his very personal inspiration for the film, as well as his thoughts on the complex characters and their dynamic.

Sam, amazing job. 1917 is the reason I go to movies. I’m not one of those guys that says, “Oh, you’ve got to see it on the big screen.” But this is one of those movies you’ve got to see on the big screen. I know this story is inspired by your grandfather’s stories. Is this something that happened during your childhood, where you heard these stories and were like, “You know what? This has always been in the back of my head, and I have to put it on film.”

Sam Mendes: Yeah, you just said it. They were told to me as a kid. Obviously, it was 40 years ago that he told me these stories; he was in his late 70s. He’d never told any of the family the stories until then. That was a big deal for the family that he suddenly started talking about it.

I never at the time thought, “I’m going to make a movie of this.” They seemed to be his stories, not my stories. But they stayed with me all these years, and they weren’t gonna let me go. Eventually, I found the courage and I thought, “I really want to write something myself after the Bond movie is finished.”

This was the idea that was right at the forefront of my mind: the image of this one story told us of this one man alone in no man’s land, delivering a message. As he told it, it was in the mist and the dusk of the winter. That really stayed with me, and that was the basis of this film. And then we took that forward; developed it; enlarged it. Obviously, it became two men. But there’s no way I would have made the movie without my grandfather. It’s not about him specifically, but it’s because of him that I made it.

That’s incredible. Roger Deakins is a legend, obviously, but… There’s a great line in this film that I love. “Why did you choose me for this?” And he says, “Well, I thought was gonna be something easy, like getting food.” Can you talk to me about the exploration of these two characters and the bond that they form going through part of this journey together?

Sam Mendes: Yeah. I felt it’s a film about friendship, in a way. An unlikely friendship; the sort of friendship that’s forged in war, that perhaps wouldn’t even exist in normal life. In normal life, these boys are from two very different classes and two different parts of England.

I always joke with George that, in the pub, he would be sitting in the corner by the fire with a book and his dog, quietly having a soft drink of some sort. And then and then the other end of the pub, there would be a table full of really loud young men, and there would be Blake on his fourth pint.

They’re opposites in many ways. One is very chatty; one is very quiet. One’s more experienced, George’s character; one’s more vulnerable and much younger, which is Blake. But somehow they have this friendship, and I think there are those friendships in one’s life, that there’s no obvious reason why you’d be friends. But you just are; you like each other, and you are a different person for that friend. And I wanted to create one of those, really.

And they are quite like that as people. They did develop, off-camera, an unlikely friendship. That was very pleasing in a movie where I was trying to create an environment where the actors lived their roles as much as acted them. With these long takes, you want them just existing in the space for a long time. In the movie, like you say, there’s very little dialogue. So, you want people acting with every fiber of their being and not thinking about it, in a way. Ignoring the camera and letting the physical challenge of just getting the next 200 yards be the point.