Journey's End - A Video Essay

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Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=657tbhHZGzg
Script:
The film ‘Journey’s End’ is a gripping narrative about frontline soldiers towards the end of the First World War. The synopsis reads:
The movie depicts a weary young officer, Stanhope, on the arrival of an old friend, Raleigh, whom he had known from back home in England. Raleigh realizes quickly that Stanhope was not the man he once was, and he was now just the husk of the man he used to be, but who would not face such a drastic change under the circumstances?
The film shows scenes of brilliant acting by the cast, such as this one between Sam Claflin (Stanhope) and Tom Sturridge (Hibbert):
Hibbert’s unwillingness to go on with the war and go up the steps to the trench has Stanhope intimidating him to get up, but it doesn’t work as Hibbert sees it as a mercy. Hibbert calls his bluff, and Stanhope puts the gun down. He then convinces Hibbert that he, as well as other members of the company, feel the exact same way he does, which gives Hibbert the small push forward he needs to ascend the steps to the war.
This scene proves that men were broken by the war, psychologically, and sometimes physically. Which brings me back to Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front, as I detailed in the last essay, he says:
“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.”