Truth is stranger than fiction, as it has famously been said. That certainly holds when it comes to the plot of director Sam Mendes’s new WWI epic, 1917, which just won Best Motion Picture – Drama at the Golden Globes and gets its wide release on Friday. (Mendes also cowrote the script alongside Penny Dreadful staff scribe Krysty Wilson-Cairns.) To be clear, there are no aliens or overlapping universes to contend with across the film’s 117 minutes, just the daunting, terrifying absurdity of war.