To those who have ever been to the battlefields of 1917 this movie is both a joke. and an insult. What posessed the Academy to award this movie an Oscar, apart from the camerawork? Big names appearing for a five minute part. Probably because as Michael Caine would say: "it pays the mortgage". A maudlin story and a trite rendition of WW1 trench warfare. For those who rate this tripe as "one of the best WW1 movie I've seen" I can only assume this is the only WW1 movie they have ever seen. There are at least three far better movies, to name: "Paths of Glory", "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "The Battle of Passchendaele". Or, for that matter "Regeneration" (a.k.a "Behind the Lines"). THE thing that spoiled the whole movie? Have you seen the battlefields in 1917? Visit Zonnebeke or Ypres museums. Not a sprig of green, not a tree with leaves and branches. And from the coast of Belgium to the Swiss border, not a waterfall to be seen along the frontline. It makes the whole movie more unbelievable than a story even the creators of "Blackadder Goes Forth" dared to conceive.