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Journey's End

Set in a dugout in Aisne in 1918, it is the story of a group of British officers, led by mentally-disintegrating young Officer Stanhope, as they await their fate. Set in a dugout in Aisne in 1918, it is the story of a group of British officers, led by mentally-disintegrating young Officer Stanhope, as they await their fate. Set in a dugout in Aisne in 1918, it is the story of a group of British officers, led by mentally-disintegrating young Officer Stanhope, as they await their fate.

• Simon Reade
• R.C. Sherriff
• Vernon Bartlett
• Paul Bettany
• Sam Claflin
• Stephen Graham
• 108 User reviews
• 75 Critic reviews
• 73 Metascore
• 4 wins & 3 nominations

Top cast 52

• Lieutenant Osborne

• Captain Stanhope

• 2nd Lt. Trotter

• 2nd Lt. Hibbert

• Sergeant-Major

• Private Graham
• Private Peters

• Private Watson

• Second Lieutenant Raleigh

• Captain Reid

• Corporal Pincher
• General Raleigh

• Captain Hardy

• Private Mason

• Signaler Hammond
• Private Turner
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia Playwright R.C. Sherriff had seen first-hand the effect of years of war on his friends and knew the fear and terror of waiting for an impending attack, waiting for his journey's end. The characters in the play are a reflection of the men Sherriff had served with in the 9th Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment.
• Goofs A common misconception is the myth about having your chinstrap unbuckled. It is mainly an American thing that was spread in WW2. Fact is, if the concussion was strong enough to hurt your neck or face because your chinstrap was buckled, the force of the same concussion would more than likely kill you. Having your strap undone just meant you would spend a lot of time holding your helmet on while moving fast.

Lieutenant Osborne : Every little noise up there, makes me feel sick.

• Connections Featured in Projector: Journey's End (2018)
• Soundtracks Elevation Written and performed by Hildur Guðnadóttir

User reviews 108

• bob-the-movie-man
• Feb 5, 2018
• How long is Journey's End? Powered by Alexa
• February 2, 2018 (United Kingdom)
• United Kingdom
• Fluidity Films
• British Film Company
• Third Wednesday Films
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Mar 18, 2018

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 47 minutes

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Journey’s End

An intelligent, meticulously crafted drama about British soldiers in the trenches of World War I, “Journey’s End” is the latest cinematic rendition of a play by a war veteran, R.C. Sheriff, which premiered in England in 1928 with Laurence Olivier in a lead role. While the play was a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic, and has proved an admirably durable theatrical staple (I saw the hit Broadway revival of 2007), one might wonder why it would be made into a movie in the present day.

An obvious one-word answer: “ Dunkirk .” Although they concern different wars, the two movies plumb the innate drama, tedium and terror of soldiers on foreign soil bracing for an onslaught by overwhelming enemy forces. Intimate and verbal, though, Saul Dibb ’s film provides a satisfying antithesis to Christopher Nolan ’s macrocosmic, hyper-sensory view of war: it gives close and sustained attention to a handful of soldiers facing both an implacable foe and their own mortality.

Since its debut, Sheriff’s play has been praised for its precise, flavorful realism and avoidance of cliches and rhetoric. Unlike many literary and cinematic treatments that would come later, it’s neither staunchly “patriotic” nor polemically “anti-war.” Leaving aside the war’s political causes (aside from one character’s statement that it should never have happened), it focuses squarely on the certain individuals and their ways of dealing with a situation of impending catastrophe.

Simon Reade ’s script for the film preserves the play’s virtues while opening its action outward in appropriate and judicious ways: While most of the drama remains in the bunkers of the British forces, when the soldiers leap out of the trenches onto the battlefield, we see that, too.

The tale takes place in the spring of 1918 near St. Quentin, France. The war has already dragged out for nearly four years, with millions killed; it will grind on for more than a half-year longer, snuffing out countless lives as it does. There is, in other words, nothing either strategically or historically significant about the episode we witness; it’s just another horror in a seemingly endless succession of them.

The film escorts us into the battle zone following fresh-faced teenaged Second Lieutenant Raleigh ( Asa Butterfield ), who could have done his service in a safer place but instead has gone to some trouble to get assigned to the command of Captain Stanhope ( Sam Claflin ). Before the war, Stanhope was a senior boy at Raleigh’s school and enamored of his sister; the three spent holidays happily wandering England’s countryside, the younger man recalls.

The early scene where Raleigh encounters Stanhope for the first time in the unit’s underground HQ is one of the film’s most memorable. Instead of the warm welcome he expected from his admired older pal, Raleigh finds a changed man. Though respected by his soldiers, Stanhope is a stiff and troubled officer and hardcore alcoholic. Naturally he doesn’t like Raleigh seeing him like this, and fears the reports he might send his sister.

Stanhope (the role that launched Olivier) is the pivotal figure in this drama. The other main character, gentlemanly, bookish Lieutenant Osborne ( Paul Bettany ), has joined the unit just recently but seems to have already formed a solid bond with Stanhope, who obviously needs his steadying, sane friendship.

A side note: The first film version of “Journey’s End” was directed in 1930 by James Whale , who would direct “Frankenstein” the following year and whose troubled psychic life as a gay WWI veteran is the subject of Bill Condon ’s “ Gods and Monsters .” While rights issues have kept Whale’s “Journey’s End” long out of circulation, a friend who’s seen it told me it’s rife with homosexual subtext. Apart perhaps from a poignant scene where a drunken Stanhope implores Osborne to tuck him into bed, that’s not the case here.

Instead, the drama describes the tensions, anxieties and sustaining camaraderie that unite these men and their fellows—including stalwart cook Mason ( Toby Jones ) and battle-hardened Trotter ( Stephen Graham ) and Hibbert ( Tom Sturridge )—as they begin a week when they’ve learned a massive German offensive is expected to begin. All know that they will be neither be evacuated nor reinforced. They are simply sacrificial lambs of the most basic strategic sort, their deaths meant only to momentarily slow the advancing enemy.

A crucial turn at the film’s dramatic apex comes when the Brits’ commanders send down an order that the unit mount a party of two officers and ten men to dash across no-man’s-land in the face of enemy fire, grab any German soldier they can, and bring him back in hopes of extracting intelligence about the upcoming attack. Raleigh and Osborne are the officers chosen for the detail. The mission is almost assuredly suicidal, just as it is inevitably futile, since it can do little or nothing to affect the impending slaughter.

Dibbs does a fine job bringing a nuanced, realistic visual style to this venerable tale of war’s cruel and colossal wastes, and his actors are all first-rate, with Bettany a special stand-out. But though it proves the timelessness of Sheriff’s drama, the film doesn’t make a particularly strong case for why, “Dunkirk” apart, it should be considered more-than-usually relevant today.

Godfrey Cheshire

Godfrey Cheshire is a film critic, journalist and filmmaker based in New York City. He has written for The New York Times, Variety, Film Comment, The Village Voice, Interview, Cineaste and other publications.

• Toby Jones as Mason
• Paul Bettany as Osborne
• Sam Claflin as Captain Stanhope
• Tom Sturridge as Hibbert
• Asa Butterfield as Raleigh
• Stephen Graham as Trotter

Director of Photography

• Laurie Rose
• Natalie Holt
• R.C. Sherriff
• Simon Reade
• Tania Reddin

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Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – Journey’s End (2017)

February 1, 2018 by Freda Cooper

Journey’s End , 2017.

Directed by Saul Dibb. Starring Sam Claflin, Paul Bettany, Asa Butterfield, Stephen Graham, Toby Jones, Tom Sturridge, Robert Glenister and Miles Jupp.

In France in 1918, a group of soldiers under the command of a disintegrating officer, are given a mission by their Colonel which they’re told will help bring about the end of World War I.  The days count down as they await their fate.

R  C Sherriff’s WWI play, Journey’s End , first saw the light of day back in 1928.  Since then, it’s become a novel and has made it onto the screen a number of times, although its last big screen outing was in 1930.  In the year that marks the centenary of the end of the First World War, it’s back in cinemas in a new version with a powerful British cast.

The claustrophobic setting is a trench on the front line in France.  Soldiers all take their turn there, six days on the trot, whatever they may bring.  As the days tick away, one particular group of soldiers are given a mission by their Colonel: a select handful have to go over the top in a raid to bring back a German prisoner.  It’s a mission nobody wants, but they all know that somebody will have to do it.

Sherriff’s treatise on the brutality and futility of war has lost little, if any, of its original impact and director Saul Dibb ( Suite Francaise ) gives us a serious, sombre and deeply moving film, one that takes no prisoners.  The cost is terrible.  It re-creates the gloom and mud of the trenches to such an extent that you can almost inhale the stench but, most of all, you can touch and smell the fear that slowly builds towards the day of the raid.  And the clock ticks loudly by showing each date on the screen.

What the soldiers have to face is bad enough, but the situation inside the trench bristles with tension, mainly because of the unpredictable Captain Stanhope (Sam Claflin), who is slowly buckling under the pressure of looking after his men.  He puts on a good enough public show, encouraging them with a few well-chosen words, but he’s fooling nobody.  His volatile temper and love of whisky are common knowledge.  It’s easily Claflin’s best performance to date, showing what he can do when he’s given something he can get his teeth into.  His older and wiser second in command, Osborne, is known to the troops as “Uncle” and keeps things on an even keel when his superior officer simply can’t.  It’s another career best piece of acting, this time from Paul Bettany in a sensitive and compassionate performance.  The arrival of new recruit Raleigh (a fresh faced Asa Butterfield) nearly sends Stanhope over the edge: the idealistic young man is the brother of Stanhope’s girlfriend back home and he’s terrified she’ll hear about his behaviour.

Keeping the officers fed and on the receiving end of most of Stanhope’s insults – the food he has to prepare is terrible – is Mason (Toby Jones).  Most of the time, he emerges out of the shadows with something on a plate and then retreats back into the kitchen – when his polite mask drops.  Jones, as ever, is reliably excellent.  While those are the star turns, the acting amongst the entire cast is universally high, with the likes of Stephen Graham, Tom Sturridge, Robert Glenister and Miles Jupp all equally impressive.

Journey’s End is a powerfully emotional film, one that weighs heavy on your heart and leaves you subdued.  The final shot, an aerial view of the battlefield, is full of despair and the captions over the top leave you speechless.  What’s happened isn’t just futile, it’s incomprehensible.

Flickering Myth Rating  – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

SEE ALSO: Check out our exclusive interview with Asa Butterfield here

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Journey’s End Review

02 Feb 2018

Journey’s End

First performed barely a decade after the end of World War I, at a time when the wounds were still raw, Journey’s End is a bracing and understandably angry play. This, the fourth cinematic adaptation, is fittingly bracing and angry (and superbly acted).

This war occupies an uncomfortable position in our popular memory: our cultural picture of its participants reduces them to either hapless Blackadder Goes Forth characters or tragic poets dashing off their final lines before they found out just how dulce et decorum it was to get their guts shot out.

Sam Claflin has never been better.

This is an interesting counterpoint. It’s alive to the sheer unpleasantness of being told you were going to fight for king and country then being sent to hide in a rat-infested hellhole to be eviscerated by shells fired from three miles away. This could sound like cynicism — and this does feel oddly more like a Vietnam film than anything else — but it delivers instead a clarity that could only come from a text written by a veteran for an audience he knew would be riddled with his fellow veterans with finely tuned bullshit detectors regarding life in the trenches.

The cast relish playing against the clichés: Claflin has never been better than here (not even close), throwing the officer-class stiff upper lip out the window and playing Stanhope as a spittle-flecked alcoholic rage case (just not in front of the men). A character who in a more sentimental take on the period would deliver a climactic speech admonishing an unthinking colonel, here grimly — even eagerly — waits for the war that’s killed his spirit to finish the job on his body. Claflin is smart counter-casting: normally a sunny, grinning presence, he dials down the light in his eyes and turns in haunting work. It’s a shame awards aren’t given out for wordless acting: there’s a scene where he sends men to their deaths where he’s playing about 15 emotions at once.

Paul Bettany does equally strong, if more subtle, work as Lieutenant Osborne, Stanhope’s number two. Incarnating British decency under siege, he mothers Stanhope — at one point tenderly tucking him into bed to sleep off another binge — while clearly barely keeping himself together. As he prepares to mount an unnecessary raid on the enemy trenches, he mordantly observes, “At least the weather’s held,” which would be an early candidate for 2018’s most heartbreaking line if it weren’t for another scene where a character gently prepares another for the fact he may not come back to their dugout alive while never actually saying it straight. This may be sledgehammer stuff — the character in question all but magnetises himself to better attract bullets — but it’s effective as hell.

The technical delivery is skilful if at the lower end of the budget scale, but then again, showing exhilarating combat isn’t the point. Claflin, Bettany et al are playing real people trapped in a situation Samuel Beckett would find hopeless. It actually happened, and real people were responsible for putting them there, and this story, written when there were still people alive at whom to direct anger, carries considerable power.

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Journey's end.

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• Parents Say 3 Reviews
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Common Sense Media Review

Touching WWI drama focuses on humanity over battles.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Journey's End is a WWI-set drama that's based on a 1928 play by R.C. Sherriff. Based more on human concerns than big battle scenes, it's powerfully affecting and a fine examination of both the allures and miseries of war. Expect to see guns and shooting, death, dead bodies, and some…

Why Age 15+?

Guns, some shooting. Bombs and explosions. Characters die/dead bodies shown. Min

Several uses of "f--k" and "s--t," plus "ass," "damn," "hell," and the English s

One of the major characters has a drinking problem; he drinks frequently, heavil

A character tells a story about picking up "two little tarts." A (possibly nude?

Any Positive Content?

Conveys both the allure and the horrors of war in a humane way. But also, death

The characters are brave soldiers who serve their country and show great calm an

Violence & Scariness

Guns, some shooting. Bombs and explosions. Characters die/dead bodies shown. Minor bloody wounds/gore. A man forcibly tries to kiss a waitress (he's about to head to the front lines) but is stopped. Struggling, fighting. Threatening with gun. Shouting. Dead rats briefly glimpsed.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Several uses of "f--k" and "s--t," plus "ass," "damn," "hell," and the English slang "bloody."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

One of the major characters has a drinking problem; he drinks frequently, heavily, and gets falling-down drunk. His story isn't resolved. Other social drinking is shown (wine, whiskey, etc.). Cigarette and pipe smoking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A character tells a story about picking up "two little tarts." A (possibly nude?) pinup girl hangs on a wall in the background.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Conveys both the allure and the horrors of war in a humane way. But also, death is inevitable, and everyone suffers.

Positive Role Models

The characters are brave soldiers who serve their country and show great calm and courage in the face of death. They're more or less trapped, victims of their orders and circumstance, but they do their best. The youngest character is very excited for battle, while the older soldiers are more familiar with what actually happens.

Parents need to know that Journey's End is a WWI-set drama that's based on a 1928 play by R.C. Sherriff. Based more on human concerns than big battle scenes, it's powerfully affecting and a fine examination of both the allures and miseries of war. Expect to see guns and shooting, death, dead bodies, and some bloody wounds, as well as shouting and threatening. A man briefly tries to forcibly kiss a waitress, but he's stopped. There's a brief discussion of a man "picking up two little tarts," and a (possibly nude?) pinup poster hangs on a background wall. Language includes several uses of "f--k" and "s--t," plus "damn," "ass," and "hell." One character drinks heavily and frequently and gets falling-down drunk. There's other social drinking, too, as well as era-accurate smoking. Asa Butterfield , Sam Claflin , and Paul Bettany co-star. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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• Kids say (1)

Based on 3 parent reviews

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Reality of war, what's the story.

In JOURNEY'S END, World War I is under way, and fresh-faced young Raleigh ( Asa Butterfield ) has requested to be stationed with his old school head-boy, Captain Stanhope ( Sam Claflin ). Unfortunately, this means that Raleigh is to be deployed for a rotation of six days on the front lines, in the trenches just opposite a nest of German troops. Stanhope drinks heavily, quickly consuming the short supply of whiskey, but his stature in Raleigh's eyes fails to diminish. Rumors of an imminent attack are coming, and the men, led by the pipe-smoking Lt. Osborne ( Paul Bettany ), wait stoically. Other soldiers include dark-humored cook Mason ( Toby Jones ) and streetwise teddy bear Trotter (Stephen Graham), who loves to eat. Then their commanding officers order a suicide mission to capture a German; even if the men survive, a major attack may be imminent.

Is It Any Good?

This drama about the First World War is quietly moving as it conveys the horrors of war without heaviness, focusing on humanity and relying little on battle scenes. R.C. Sherriff's source play was first performed onstage with Laurence Olivier in 1928 and was previously adapted into a movie in 1930, marking the directorial debut of James Whale ( Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein ). It's tried-and-true stuff, and it still works. Director Saul Dibb ( The Duchess ) stages it with plenty of mud and gloom -- and even wobbly hand-held cameras -- and yet it has enough patience and care that it works beautifully.

Potent little moments, like attempting to clear mud from a whistle, punctuate the story. The cast is especially excellent, starting with Bettany, whose avuncular presence (the men call him "uncle") is downright calming; right before the mission, he coaxes Raleigh to think about other things (hot cocoa and a Lewis Carroll poem). Butterfield is appealingly naïve, and Jones makes a grimly funny cook, providing a commentary on the dishes he manages to put together. Even Claflin -- who usually seems to be cast more for his looks than his presence -- is fine here. Together, the characters manage to discuss things more immediate and personal than war, and, by extension, tell everything there is to say.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Journey's End 's violence . How much is shown, and how effective is it? Is it more or less violent than other war movies?

Why do you think war might be exciting to young Raleigh? How does his opinion change over the course of the story?

How is drinking portrayed? Is Stanhope forgiven for his drinking because of the stress of war? What happens to him -- or what might happen to him?

How does the movie show smoking ? Why was smoking more prevalent during those times? Does the movie make it look glamorous?

What did you learn about the First World War from this movie? Did it inspire you to learn more?

Movie Details

• In theaters : March 16, 2018
• On DVD or streaming : July 3, 2018
• Cast : Sam Claflin , Paul Bettany , Asa Butterfield
• Director : Saul Dibb
• Studio : Good Deed Entertainment
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : History
• Run time : 107 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : some language and war images
• Last updated : June 20, 2023

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In ‘Journey’s End,’ soldiers reminisce and wait to die in the muddy trenches of World War I

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Years ago, in a quiet German forest, a gravedigger for fallen soldiers stilled his spade and said: “In these bones, you see what war is like. I know war now. I’ll tell you what it is. War is young men killing other young men they do not know on the orders of old men who know one another too well.”

That sentiment lingers through “Journey’s End,” a nuanced and forbidding British film set on the front lines of World War I, which killed around 17 million people, many of them young soldiers marched into hopeless battles by misguided generals. The story, adapted from a 1928 play by R.C. Sherriff, is a meditation on duty and folly and a glimpse back to a time before Kevlar vests, laser-guided missiles and public concern over high casualty counts.

British soldiers in trenches on the Western Front — Germans forces are camped 60 yards away — listen and crouch as shells drop in the dark distance. Cigarettes are passed, rats scurry, mud squishes, gas masks dangle and flares pop overhead like apparitions. The claustrophobic drama, which opens Friday in Los Angeles, centers on 2nd Lt. Raleigh (Asa Butterfield), untested and brimming with good cheer, and the man he reveres, Capt. Stanhope (Sam Claflin), who has seen too many bodies and downed too much whiskey.

“They’re there to defend a front line that was indefensible. Your job was to be sacrificed,” said Saul Dibb, the film’s director. “The story’s about the psychological aspect of your waiting for your impending death. It was a chance to look far deeper into characters and the strange intimacy between men, the tenderness, and how men deal with fear. This is men at war with themselves.”

The film has already opened in England, where the Guardian praised it as “forthright, powerful, heartfelt.” The newspaper added: “The first world war is one of the 20th century’s oldest, grimmest tales of futility and slaughter. Dibb and his excellent cast put new passion into it.”

Reminiscent of the unsparing poetry of Wilfred Owen , and the opposite of jingoistic war films, “Journey’s End” is more mournful than thunderous. It knows that courage is most poignant when it’s humble and that honor is best marked by humility. The movie is punctuated by requisite British wit as in the “small tragedy” that fruit ration tins contain apricots instead of pineapples. Officers cling to refinement — they wear ties in their crumbling, candle-lighted bunker — and reflect on the coming ravages across a terrain of poison gas, carbines and corpses.

World War I was a gruesome collision of old and modern Europe, a conflict fought with advanced weapons — mortars, hand-held flamethrowers and machine guns — that shook the continent with mass killing. Much of the fighting was done from trenches, compressing the battlefield as soldiers stood and fired through barbed wire and mist, as if mice in a maze, and waited for onslaughts. The war nearly wiped out a generation of working- and upper-class men.

“I have had so very much out of life,” a lieutenant — a schoolmaster before the war — writes to his wife on the eve of an attack. “But all these youngsters don’t know how unlucky they are. How new they are to their very existence.”

The scene echoes with a middle-aged man’s lament and the stiff-upper-lip English resolve so ingrained in the mythology of last century’s wars. The moment is truthful and eerily quaint, even as one knows that today’s soldiers and their countrymen are more questioning of the duties placed upon their armies in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The soulfulness in the lieutenant’s letter “has nobility to it,” said Dibb, “a sense that you’re withholding your feelings for the sake of other people’s feelings. What died in that trench was deference.”

In his poem “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” Owen captures the scouring, cruel loss of vanquished men:

“What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.”

Like the Academy Award-nominated “Dunkirk,” about British soldiers trapped by German forces on the French coast during World War II, “Journey’s End,” written by Simon Reade, creates layers of tension through music. Composed by Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadottir and British composer Natalie Holt, the score is rueful and ominous, like a phantom floating through a winter’s dusk. It propels a film whose action lies not in relentless battle scenes but in the ticktock of anticipating an attack.

“We wanted to permeate the film with this terrible sense of foreboding, to make it very clear from the start that these were dead men walking,” said Dibb, who has also directed “The Duchess,” starring Keira Knightley, and “Suite Francaise,” the tale of German soldiers occupying a French village during World War II, with Michelle Williams and Kristin Scott Thomas. He noted that more than 700,000 soldiers died in the three-month Spring Offensive in 1918.

Class distinctions reverberate throughout the story. The officers, as was consistent with a British pecking order based on lineage and wealth, were from the nation’s best schools and breeding. The lower-ranking soldiers came from working-class lives of fewer polished syllables. Capt. Stanhope’s courage and tenacity bridged the class gap; he was respected by those in his own rank and those above and beneath him.

“It was a fine line,” Dibb said in making class distinct in the film but not allowing it to distract from the deeper camaraderie shared among the men. “We didn’t want to make the officers feel alienated to an audience by their class, which can happen with the British upper middle class. Most of the actors who play the officers all went to state schools, so they’re playing officers, but they’re not of that class themselves, and I think that helped bridge the gap a little bit.”

The human cost and national calculation of war resonate through “Journey’s End.” They are the same universal themes that Owens’ World War I poetry, still studied in schools across England, personified. Dibb said Owen, a soldier killed one week before the armistice that ended the war in 1918, is not cited in the film, but the movie seeks to embody the air of honor and loss articulated in his verse.

“They are beautifully put poems, but a righteous anger runs through them,” said the director. “There’s a bittersweet tone where there’s so much humanity and beauty in something so wasteful.”

See the most-read stories this hour »

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Jeffrey Fleishman is a senior writer at the Los Angeles Times. Previously, he was the foreign and national editor. A 2002 Nieman fellow at Harvard University, Fleishman was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing. A longtime foreign correspondent, he served as bureau chief for The Times in Cairo and Berlin, and was previously based in Rome for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He also was a writer on film, art and culture. Fleishman has been a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and a finalist for the Center for Public Integrity’s Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting. He is the author of five novels, including “Good Night, Forever” and “Last Dance.”

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Journey's End Reviews

The most fitting and laudable word to compliment the "Journey’s End" ensemble is maturity. Each of the principal players exudes some growth of that trait both on and off camera.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 4, 2023

You don't have to be a student of history to know that the trenches during World War I were horrific places to fight. Journey's End does not attempt to glorify that field of battle, but it also never quite fully commits to the true horror either...

Full Review | Mar 24, 2021

Stripes back to just the essentials and delves deep into the souls of those forced onto the front lines of doom.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 19, 2020

Sherriff's long, wordy exchanges remain as beautifully written and quietly powerful as ever. However, director Saul Bibb has his work cut out sustaining a strong cinematic momentum.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 8, 2020

Dibb's sensitive incorporation of, or tribute to, traces of archive imagery is intriguing and very satisfying.

Full Review | Apr 21, 2020

Director Saul Dibb doesn't quite succeed in making the drama feel fresh, but this is a sensitive and handsomely performed adaptation.

Full Review | Apr 20, 2020

Bleak stuff...however, it's powerfully moving.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 30, 2020

The rat-infested trenches of Northern France are no place for a boy in the spring of 1918. But that's where Second Lieutenant Raleigh naively requests to be sent.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 7, 2019

If you're claustrophobic, best to leave Journey's End off your viewing list, but all others will find treasure in these trenches.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 16, 2019

I couldn't believe how much time was spent debating eating military rations.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Feb 28, 2019

A worthy war movie that's too held back by its stage origins.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 22, 2019

A sober, grim and powerful war story.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 28, 2019

Exceeds expectations and Bettany is sublime.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 24, 2019

The period recreation is vivid, especially when the whistle blows and the men climb over the top and into a battlefield strewn with barbed wire, bomb craters and mud-soaked corpses. It's a gruelling drama, yet a worthwhile one.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 25, 2018

The horrors of war are on display in this tense and affecting film in which we are taken in the trenches and into the lives of the men who wait for the inevitable. Director Saul Dibb has made a sensitive film...

Full Review | Nov 11, 2018

If it's not pacifist, it's certainly a profoundly anti-war statement about men under ultimate stress. One hundred years on, it's never too soon, never too late for that idea.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 8, 2018

It remains pretty damn powerful even if some of its thunder has been slightly stolen by the mighty army of war movies that have come before.

Full Review | Nov 8, 2018

A terrific companion piece (and Armistice Day weekend double bill) to Peter Jackson's similarly set documentary They Shall Not Grow Old.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Nov 6, 2018

Journey's End is a powerful and moving tribute to the men who fought in the trenches.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 2, 2018

The sheer horror of the first World War is captured in sobering detail in this quietly moving adaptation of a powerfully emotive play of the same name.

Full Review | Original Score: 17/20 | Sep 30, 2018

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Journey’s end — film review.

A somewhat detached chronicle of life at a senior citizens' residential facility in a scenic corner of Quebec, "Journey's End" is the latest addition to what is becoming a particularly popular sub-genre of non-fiction cinema.

By The Associated Press

The Associated Press

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BERLIN — A somewhat detached chronicle of life at a senior citizens’ residential facility in a scenic corner of Quebec, “Journey’s End” is the latest addition to what is becoming a particularly popular sub-genre of non-fiction cinema. The rapidly-aging populations of western nations may be a taxing demographic time bomb for economists and governments, but they also represent something of a gold-mine for film-makers.

There’s not much that’s outstandingly accomplished or unusual about this particular example, but it’s sufficiently professional and intriguing to ensure considerable popularity with festivals specializing in — or receptive to — documentary fare, with a similarly warm reception likely further down the line among TV-channel buyers.

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This second film from 33-year-old Quebecois Jean-Francois Caissy (after 2005’s “Mating Season”) is a fly-on-the-wall portrait of L’Auberge des Caps, a former motel perched high on a bluff overlooking a large lake, adjacent to a major traffic route. The institution’s previous role is never specified in the film, but can be deduced from the layout and decor of the rooms, which have been discreetly adapted for seniors’ usage.

Indeed, there’s not very much information that is given to the viewer here: no voiceover, no on-screen captions, nothing that would resemble a conventional “interview” with the subjects (and no score, apart the music which accompanies the closing credit-roll). Caissy is very much in the business of showing rather than telling, and he records the activities of his subjects — who, according to the film’s press-notes, include his own grandmother Elisabeth Caissy — with an anthropologist’s calm, patient rigor.

Caissy downplays elements which other directors might well have emphasized: a cute, fox-like dog whose free-roaming, independent ways are a deadpan delight; a red-haired lady resident who’s in sprightlier health and seems rather more active and engaged than many of her peers. But these attention-grabbing “participants” aren’t given any kind of special prominence in Mathieu Bouchard-Malo’s editing.

Transferred from HD to 35mm, Nicolas Canniccioni’s cinematography meanwhile explores a drab palette of faded pastels to evoke the slightly airless atmosphere of senior-citizens’ personal space, though always with an underlying sense of dignity and appropriate respect, marbled with an inevitable elegaic poignancy.

Taking its cue from the sedentary pace of its subjects, “Journey’s End” (advertised in Berlin under its Francophone title “La Belle Visite”) ticks along at a gentle tempo that may strike some as slightly soporific, but which yields sufficient droll delights to keep us watching throughout the brisk running-time.

And Caissy saves the very best till last, as Canniccioni’s camera follows dutifully behind one old gent as he wordlessly conducts what we presume is his nightly solo walk around the building. It’s an audaciously extended single shot that recalls Belgium’s Dardenne brothers or the Argentinian slow-cinema style epitomized by Lisandro Alonso, and hints at a formal ambitiousness which Caissy would do well to develop next time around. Venue: Berlin International Film Festival (Forum) Production companies: Les Films de l’Autre, Montreal; Maria Films, Montreal Director: Jean-Francois Caissy Producer: Jean-Francois Caissy Director of photography: Nicolas Canniccioni Music: Julien Bilodeau Editor: Mathieu Bouchard-Malo Sales: Les Films de l’Autre, Montreal No rating, 79 minutes

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Joann Sfar, Thomas Bidegain to Adapt ‘Journey to the End of the Night’ for the Big Screen With Aton Soumache, Alain Attal Producing (EXCLUSIVE)

By Elsa Keslassy

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“Journey to the End of the Night,” a literary masterpiece penned by controversial French author Louis-Ferdinand Céline, is being adapted for the big screen by Joann Sfar (“The Rabbi’s Cat,” “Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life”) and Thomas Bidegain (“A Prophet,” “Emilia Pérez”).

Well-established producers Aton Soumache (“The Little Prince”) and Alain Attal (“Beating Hearts”) are developing the project through their respective banners, Magical Society (jointly led with Sfar) and Tresor Films.

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Popular on variety.

The book is a darkly comic semi-autobiographical work following the journey of disillusioned anti-hero Ferdinand Bardamu across decades. The book charts Bardamu’s adventures, from World War I to French West Africa and New York, where he finds work on an assembly line at Ford Motor Company before moving back to France and becoming a doctor in a poor Paris suburb.

Sfar and Bidegain’s adaptation will explore the protagonist’s inner journey and dark existential quest in the wake of war and social misery.

“I read ‘Journey’ when I was 15, and it’s one of those masterpieces that shaped me; I read it without knowing anything about Louis-Ferdinand Céline, and you can imagine how that complicated my life later on. I can’t unlearn this book,” Sfar says.

He says Bidegain is his favorite screenwriter because they share the “same tastes, the same laughter, and the same dislikes.” Sfar says he’s “always worked on symbols that unite or divide French society—Gainsbourg, Saint-Ex, Japrisot;” and with this adaptation of Céline, he’s reached a “point of maximum tension.” “That’s where we need to dig,” says Sfar.

Bidegain says the novel “remains a relevant key to understanding our times.” “The list is long of those who have grappled with Bardamu’s adventures, his desperate humor, his clinical insight, the novel’s impossible picaresque structure, the unwieldy figure of its author, and the Himalaya of Céline’s language,” says Bidegain, whose recent screenwriting credits include Jacques Audiard’s Cannes prizewinning musical thriller “Emilia Pérez.”

“It took a giant like Joann for this project to come to life. Our joyful meeting swept away any doubts — our shared desire for cinema, to create images and meaning, our irreverent fascination with this great work… And here we are, hard at work, full of enthusiasm,” Bidegain continues.

Soumache and Attal, who are also both Jewish, said in a joint statement that the project to adapt Celine’s novel felt like an “immense responsibility, but also an unprecedented creative adventure.”

“Alongside Joann Sfar and Thomas Bidegain, we have the ambition to translate this literary masterpiece onto the screen with all its power, depth, and complexity,” they added.

The pair said they have “gathered an exceptional artistic team to capture the tormented and masterful essence of Céline’s work.” They also suggested they will take some liberty with the novel to deliver a “cinematic reinterpretation of Bardamu’s existential and tragic journey,” which will showcase Sfar and Bidegain’s “unique and singular vision that will resonate with a wide audience.”

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