I don’t think Dean-Charles Chapman qualifies as pudgy, based on the pictures I’ve seen. Stocky, maybe.
What may have thrown you off is that both the lead actors were wearing brown leather jerkins — thigh-length vests — over their tunics, with their web gear over that.
The jerkins were issued as cold-weather gear in both world wars and, I believe, at least through the 1950s.
They were popular with the troops, as they kept your chest warm while being less bulky than the issue overcoat.
I don’t believe that the US Army had any equivalent uniform item.
“1917” is set at the start of the Arras offensive in April of that year. It was quite cold on the Western front — I just listened to an interview with Nigel Farrage, who’s a serious Great War buff, and he said that there was actually still snow on the ground.
My biggest nit to pick about “1917” was the presence of turbaned Sikh infantrymen in one scene. Actually, the British high command transferred all of the Indian Corps’ infantry units to the Middle East at the end of 1915.
As you would expect, the Sikhs, Gurkhas et. al., fought hard and well at Neuve Chappelle, Festubert, Aubers Ridge, Loos and smaller actions in 1915.
“...as pudgy, based on the pictures I’ve seen.”
Ok well then I ll go back and see it again with the understanding that yo don’t see him as fat and I am wrong in my view that no ww I soldier eating at his mothers table from the farm, not McDonald’s and processed food, gulping soda and beer sitting at the game console, surrounded by eight hard working farming hungry siblings competing for that food and after six weeks at boot camp, average weight loss 15 pounds, and marching around the French countryside for months on end lining up for sparse rations, I can, again, suspend disbelief and imagine that, because you find him not fat by today’s film standards, I am incorrect in my viewpoint, none of that matters.
I am wrong. Thank you so much for bringing that to my attention. Now I can go enjoy the movie in mind numbed ignorance.
And as for this:
“ What may have thrown you off is that both the lead actors were wearing brown leather jerkins — thigh-length vests — over their tunics, with their web gear over that.”
Yes, indeed, I can imagine I was born yesterday, that I have never seen anyone with layers on, such as the neighborhood boys playing hockey at Schmitz Pond in 21 degrees, or been outside in combat gear myself with fellow airmen, some quite pudgy by 1917 standards for tge reasons listed above
I am always so glad for someone to come along to remind me how ignorant and skewed my view is
I must go watch it again for that reason alone, realizing that his fat face is my inexperienced eye that he is actually as undernourished as they all would have been in that situation and it’s perfectly normal for him to appear fat to me but he is not so to you so I can erase my memory, experience, common sense and knowledge as a health care professional that seeing him bounce and waddle is normal to you
So I am incorrect
Thank you for this.