1917

This ultra-low budget film claims to have been produced for less than $5,000 and is a significant accomplishment given such a limited budget. Director, Joshua Gallas, is a talented force to be reckoned with and this ambitious little film, set in 1917, is a solid and very strong calling card for this new directing talent.

The film is set in Texas and the visuals are filled with terrible moments of atrocities. Murdered men, women, and children lay in the bare dirt, the result of a genocidal civil war in an unknown locale. Our hero character admits to having committed terrible atrocities that he was told to be proud of because it was his duty. But his conscience knows better, and he deserts the army to flee for a new life in America.

This new life is not much better. He works for a tyrant who has a cattle farm, and is abusive and cruel towards his employees. Our hero is haunted by his past, and as he sees evil in the new world that he has chosen, he also has flashbacks of the terrible crimes that he must live with from the old.

Something I really liked about this film and the director’s choices was how he did not show gratuitous violence. Instead, we see reactions and movements as a result, but we never see the actual violence. Sometimes what you do not see is more frightening that what you actually see, so it is in many ways more effective. Through this story, we see how the traumatic past of our main character influences the terrible present that he is living in, and how he takes control of his life and future by avenging both.

Although our hero’s past is not identified, I believe our main character was involved in the Armenian Massacre of 1915, and he was involved in the murder of men, women and children from that horrific time in history. In an effort to renew himself, he flees to a new country that is ‘so big, that it makes a man’s past feel small’. The Armenian Massacre is the second most studied case of genocide after the Holocaust, and is often overshadowed by the latter. When our hero character builds a new life in this new world in Texas, America, but sees that man’s dark side is also present in this new country, he must find a new way to find resolve in his own life. When confronted with the opportunity for revenge with the landowner, our hero character is given the chance to kill the man but instead, chooses a more noble road, and allows the man to live. He proves to himself that he is not the murderer that his past actions suggested.

This film is a very ambitious story and is deserving of consideration for several awards. Given that 1.5 million Armenian lives were lost to genocide by the Ottoman Empire, it is a terrible relief to see that these murders are not forgotten and that a story like this helps us all to remember.