Having watched the film twice now, I cannot comprehend the reasoning behind the fawning praise and the 8.5/10 rating. As a war film it was decidedly lame and sanitized, with its clean newly dug trenches where comfort was occasionally disturbed by a shell or two! The acting adequate - though nothing special or outstanding. The Storyline was merely a rehashing of much that had gone before it and better told...Here, there was no utter misery of trench warfare. The ubiquitous mud, the dissembled rotting corpses, vermin infestation, the endless queue of broken bodies stricken by war and epidemics.. This '1917' occurred on different planet - where war is glorified and sanitised. much has been made of the single shot filming technique. One has to wonder... 'so what'? Surely, cinematic innovative filming techniques are deployed to aid more accurate , dramatic story telling.... Given the paucity of the storey line and the insultingly sanitised mise-en-scène just about any filming technique would have done. indeed, a handheld 16mm camera might have greatly improved the end result.