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These are snippets from Reviews of Paul's first major film, The Trench. If you have subscribed to our Greeny club, you can get the full text of these reviews on the Greeny The Trench Reviews page
Set during the 48 hours leading up to World War One's disastrous Battle of the Somme in 1916 (where the British army had some 60,000 casualties on the first day), The Trench focuses on a group of young men as the reality of war slowly begins to dawn on them. Seen through the eyes of 17-year-old Billy (Eastenders heartthrob Nicholls), the film deals with the platoon's squabbles, boredom, fear and patriotism before the 'big push' leads them over the top in the first wave of attackers.
As for the performances, all eyes will be on Nicholls, who ultimately gives a credible turn, shaking off bad memories of tinfoil-covered Joe Wicks once and for all. Impressive support comes in particular from Human Traffic's Dyer, as a foul-mouthed soldier, while Love is the Devil's Craig plays the Sergeant, a compassionate but hard-faced man struggling to keep his men from thinking too much about their fate.
Much in the way Saving Private Ryan manipulated one's emotions through overwhelming scenes of terrifying carnage, The Trench's inevitable outcome - along with some gruesome interludes along the way - remains both moving and shocking. It takes a significant amount of time before characters come into focus, and when they do, they feel rather one-dimensional. In saying that, though, The Trench remains an impressive début.
Reviewer's Rating: 
William Boyd, novelist and occasional and occasional screenwriter (notably Chaplin), here picks up the directorial reigns for the first time. Working from his own original screenplay, he delivers a sombre look at a handful of soldiers in the 48 hours leading up to the bloody 1916 Battle Of The Somme.
Billy Macfarlane (Nicholls) is the youngest of the platoon, having enlisted at just 17, in part to be with his older brother Eddie (Tam Williams). But Eddie is soon wounded and on his way back home, leaving his innocent brother behind to face the slow, inevitable countdown to the doomed push forward. Waiting with him are a motley crew of recognisable types - the solid, seen-it-all sergeant, the cowardly officer with the quivering stiff upper lip, the Shakespeare-quoting cynic, and just for variety, a fat Scot who, despite his obvious girth, is the chosen to go on a secret night-time reccy.
The film's most powerful moments come from its generally fine ensemble, in particular, the always excellent Craig as the career sergeant. Former EastEnder heartthrob Paul Nicholls is good at doing doomed innocence, but is given little opportunity to do more.
Boyd's movie is sincere and at times worthy, but the territory he seeks to map out has been better covered before in places as diverse as Paths Of Glory and, unbelievably, Blackadder.
Reviewer's Rating:
The Somme, June 1916. There's a constant barrage of shelling and gunfire. The Germans are just 400 yards away. And in a British trench at the front, a platoon of teenage boys spend their last 48 hours bickering, joking, lusting and reminiscing before going "over the top" to be mown down during the bloodiest slaughter in British army history.
Quite why anyone imagined this would make a good cinematic experience is something of a mystery. At first, you think its artless, non-widescreen photography will lose little on the small screen. Then you realise the whole thing would work perfectly well on stage. Finally, it becomes apparent that with its talky structure and careful mix of regional accents, little tweaking would be necessary to turn 'The Trench' into a successful radio play.
Boyd wisely casts a bunch of fresh-faced teens rather than established stars as the doomed privates - the biggest name being former EastEnder Paul Nicholls - and gets strong performances from his whole platoon despite the script's regrettable tendency towards caricature
The stifling claustrophobia and pointless waste of human life are well-conveyed, and the film's final moments when the soldiers emerge blinking into daylight after an eerie silence has descended onto the battlefield are as shocking as they are predictable.
But Boyd's earnest approach sits ill with material so frequently mined for its rich comic potential, which has the unfortunate effect of leaving the viewer waiting for punchlines that never come.
William Boyd's "The Trench" takes place in the midst of the Somme, but wants to communicate the story without telling it. Text about the fighting opens and closes the picture, while the bulk of the running time deals with anxious anticipation in days previous to the first attack.
This concept, in itself, is hardly scintillating. Would there were some interesting drama! The main character is cherubic Private Billy MacFarlane, who enlisted at age 17 to accompany his older brother Eddie. Now, however, the sibling has been sent home with "a Blighty one", and Billy has nothing to do but fantasise about a post-office clerk and wait for his number to be called. Meanwhile, Sergeant Winter, the tee-total professional soldier who keeps the fatigued men in line, develops ominous suspicions about the impending fight, and grows ever more longing for his absent family. Winter's opposite, the weak Lieutenant Harte, simply turns to the bottle and hides from as many men as possible.
Understandably listless with the empty characters they've been given, the cast can't be bothered creating careful performances, and embellish every unimportant line as if this were a stage play. It feels like one in other respects, too, since the sound and production design rarely create a convincing sense of atmosphere. "The Trench" is a one-set piece, and that set is embarrassingly synthetic.
Aside from the ludicrous feel of the ambience, the lack of satisfying content causes "The Trench" to be very boring. At times I realised a horrible thing: I wanted everyone to get shot, just to see something happen.
Reviewer's Rating:
A chilling portrayal of life and death on the front lines of World War One
In the early hours of July 1, 1916, a long line of British soldiers left their trenches in northern France and advanced slowly towards the German front. The military high command estimated that the dramatic increase of allied artillery shelling had largely destroyed the German positions, and that the advancing soldiers would find mostly abandoned fortifications. Their assessment was catastrophically wrong.
By the end of the day, in the greatest single loss of life in British army history, 60,000 lay dead or wounded. That day's slaughter inaugurated what became known as the "battle of the Somme".
The Trench is set during the last 48 hours before the Somme offensive. Directed by the novelist William Boyd (A Good Man in Africa, Brazzaville Beach, Armadillo, New Confessions), the film focuses on a single platoon of British soldiers as they hold their position on the front. We catch glimpses of their existence in the cramped dugout tunnels they inhabit together - the lonely sentry watch; drill-time and other daily trench duties; the boredom of waiting for an attack that never comes.
Prominent amongst this group is the 17-year-old Billy MacFarlane, played by Paul Nicholls. This young soldier personifies many of the recruits to be found, not just in the British army but throughout Europe. Although he seems to have been influenced to enlist by the decision of his elder brother Eddie, who is in the same platoon, he does not regret joining the army. But he feels a lingering doubt, a sense of loss for what he has left behind.
Platoon leader Sergeant Winter (Daniel Craig) has a strong belief in rigid discipline. He neither shares the patriotic enthusiasm for the war of his immediate circle nor the somewhat naïve sentiments of the trench soldiers. He is uninterested in the "glory" of battle, but neither is he afraid to make the ultimate sacrifice. In contrast, Winter's immediate superior, Second Lieutenant Hart (Julian Rhind-Tutt), cuts a rather pathetic figure. He spends most of his time holed away in his quarters, swigging whisky. He seems to be completely unsuited for the front line.
The film begins with the men "holding position", but soon they are ordered to storm the enemy lines. After their long wait, the men greet this news with a sense of relief. After all, they are led to believe "the big push" will involve minimal danger, little more than a walk straight across no-man's land to take control of the ruined enemy defences.
On the morning of the offensive there is a palpable tension in the air. Billy turns to Winter for reassurance. Winter's resolve weakens. The signal is given. In the final scene we see the slow steady march of the soldiers over open fields devoid of any cover. The gunfire starts. One by one they fall.
The Trench is in many ways a compelling and evocative film. Both the monotony of life in the trenches and the rising sense of trepidation felt by the soldiers towards the end are captured well.
Boyd has written with conviction and passion about the war in his novel New Confessions. It is evident that he is someone who cares about seriously conveying the authentic feelings of the ordinary soldier. The actors in the film were made to spend time in full uniform in a period trench, maintained by military enthusiasts in a farm in Essex, England. The cast is generally good, particularly Craig and Nicholls.
The film has its weaknesses, however. Boyd's inability to develop any of his characters in the film ultimately damages it. Although there is sympathy for the characters, they have little individuality. The resonance of any of their personalities is wholly absent, so we are left with little more than a rather sketchy picture of a group of young soldiers preparing for a military assault. There are also many missed opportunities and loose ends.
The Trench, despite it's disappointments, is to be welcomed in sincerely seeking to depict an important episode of history that still has the power to affect us some 80 years on.
The Trench is a brutal song of innocence and experience - and a moving memorial to those who died on the Somme.
JULY 1, 1916 - the Battle of the Somme - was the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army. "So ends the Golden Age," it says in the written history of one battalion. Sixty thousand casualties in one day, the flower of a generation, with officers twice as likely to fall as anyone else.
The Great War was the first war to involve the whole of British society: mass conscription meant that it wasn't just a matter for professional soldiers. From Asquith's son and courageous aristocrats, to countless battalions of "New Army", boys from places like Barnsley who died in the mud with their pals and their social betters. The trenches are scars on the national psyche; the War was the fulcrum of the modern age.
People like me can't imagine it. To stand at the lip of a muddy bank and wait for the whistle. To walk into a fog of razor-wire and bullets with those around you cut to pieces and yours coming next. A millennial obsession has grown up here as to what it might have been like: Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy; Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong; new biographies of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen; big-budget television documentaries; smallish films; and touring productions of Oh! What a Lovely War. Sounding the century - the current pastime - keeps leading us back to a nightmare vision of the Somme. We can't get over it. Perhaps we never should.
The novelist William Boyd has chosen the subject for his directorial debut, The Trench, a film set over the last 48 hours before the big push, and he has come up with something tense and original. For the most part his own script avoids the dangers of an edifying lyricism. This is no anthem for doomed youth so much as a brutal song of innocence and experience. He takes us into a hole in the ground, a sand-bagged arena of boredom and fear, a place of loyalty and childishness and imminent disaster. In doing so, I believe that he offers something that will linger after the smoke of our millennial celebrations and wonderings has disappeared.
Billy Macfarlane is a 17-year-old squaddie, standing-to and lying low in a trench with the other soldiers. Like most of the boys, his stock of adult experience is low: he thinks of a girl he met in the post office as the flares burst overhead.
Macfarlane is played by Paul Nicholls (best known as Joe Wicks in EastEnders), who brings an open-faced, guileless quality to the part. Quite brilliantly he conveys the unspoken truths of his age and situation. He is happy to be one of the lads, displays a natural deference, is innocent of introspection and has no sense of the bigger picture. We watch him learning something about life in the face of death, but he remains, as he ought to remain, a sketch of a man, buoyed up with ignorance and lashed to uncertainty. He only wants to do the right thing.
Boyd shows strength as a director. Nearly all of the film is set within the confines of the dug-out, and so we search the faces and speech of the platoon for evidence of feeling. The overarching theme is claustrophobia - the tedium, the narrow space, the waiting - and Boyd brings texture to this experience of sameness by drawing out differences in the characters of the soldiers.
Sergeant Winter (Daniel Craig) is a long-term professional. He has been in no man's land before and brings a degree of harsh pity to his handling of the young men. There is a suggestion of wintry hinterland about him: his experience of war has both raised and reduced him. Second Lieutenant Hart (Julian Rhind-Tutt) is a pink-eyed nervous wreck, a genteel officer who hangs back in the reserve trench reading Tennyson and drinking whisky from a flask. He is a moving study in grace and disgrace under pressure.
In Goodbye to All That Robert Graves describes the foul language of the trenches, to which one soon became addicted. The Trench is the first film properly to convey this aspect. Gillies MacKinnon's otherwise admirable film Regeneration had most of them speaking as though they were in Upstairs, Downstairs. Boyd has them speak as they would in life, and somehow it brings the young men out of the sepia photographs, out of the archives of the Imperial War Museum, and into the light of the here and now.
The soldiers are Scottish and Geordie and cockney together in one small space. To hear them speak and see their bright eyes as they go at it is possibly to see them for the first time. It is this more than anything that makes The Trench feel contemporaneous with our own, modern fascinations.
The film never careers into blaming. That is a big part of its appeal. General Haig is out of sight if not out of mind. As they finally go over the top you see these boys and men going forward into a green valley. We are brought to see that this is France in July: the mud would come later. And so these characters who we have briefly known step into a verdant future about to go black with slaughter. The Trench is a movie that helps us remember them; it helps us remember ourselves as well.
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This Page created: 27 August, 2000
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