SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
Accomplished work from legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins transforms 1917 into a terrifyingly intense and raw war film, but one whose story and heart sometimes struggle to keep up with all the spectacle.
In creating 1917, director Sam Mendes took inspiration from the stories he was told by his grandfather, who served in the First World War as a runner carrying messages between trenches. That the events described to him are given a special, visceral kind of life on the screen is a testament, not only to Mendes’ brilliant direction and imagination, but to the impressive technical skill of his editors and cinematographers. Its brutally simple premise, of two soldiers making a hazardous journey across enemy territory to deliver a message halting an attack before dawn’s light, is transformed by their efforts into a striking and powerful experience. While its story can’t always keep up, 1917 remains a technical masterwork. If modern cinema is an art gallery, then this film more than earns a spot on the wall.
From the director’s chair, Mendes makes a number of decisions that reinforce 1917’s place as a technical marvel. Its A-list stars, including Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth and Andrew Scott are given cameo appearances, highlighting an implicit understanding that a sudden influx of star power would rob his film of its vital immersive qualities. The gulf between hiring star actors to boost ticket sales and the need to treat horrendous past conflicts with the respect they deserve is bridged. Good casting of hidden talent proves to be a boon in the case of George McKay and Dean-Charles Chapman; two almost-unknown actors who are capable nonetheless of lending appropriate impact and gravitas to the film’s many set pieces.
But ultimately, the story’s pacing doesn’t quite match up to the film’s technical ambitions. There’s a certain video game energy; much like the latest first person shooters to hit the market, it dedicates itself to impressing with graphics, spectacle and imagery. In comparison, story serves its purpose but comes across as perfunctory, as if it exists only to string together set pieces. The film artfully builds hair-raising tension and due to remarkable attention to detail we remain immersed in this recreated world, but we walk in step behind our lead characters rather than directly in their shoes. When they’re on guard we’re on guard, but when they’re scared or angry, sometimes we inexplicably don’t feel the same way. This random hollowness, the result of certain events that come across as a little contrived, is confusingly neither exception nor rule. Due to the way the film is structured, we don’t learn much about our characters and so the only way we can connect with them is through the uncertainty they feel, and the uncertainty we feel as a result of following directly behind them. It’s not the most solid foundation to build upon.
Spectacle comes first. The choice to use tracking one-shots is not a new one by any means, but the coordination required to create even short sequences is immense. 1917 is, aside from a single cut roughly midway through the film, an audacious one-shot sequence that lasts nearly two hours. Perhaps more importantly, it feels like one uninterrupted sequence too, given the technical wizardry happening behind the scenes in order to stitch together the different scenes and set pieces. It’s practically seamless and unless you’re actively searching for hidden cuts, which are already fairly sparse, you won’t notice the places where the film’s editors have pieced together the final film.
This is further enhanced by phenomenal visual and sound design, which ensures that this epic war story is actually worthy of that title. It’s awash with powerful imagery; pale flower petals drifting in a still breeze, our protagonist silhouetted against the broken door frame of a ruined farmhouse as he checks to see if an enemy lurks within, or running from an enemy in the night in the shadow of a looming monolithic church set ablaze. An extraordinary sequence, where he runs through the ruins of a French countryside town, lit only by the white-hot glow of flares and accompanied by swelling music by Thomas Newman and the harsh cracks of single-shot rifles, simply has to be seen to be believed. 1917 ebbs and flows between large-scale and small-scale encounters, and shines equally in both. The tension and uncertainty is omnipresent in a world where either danger or silence lie in wait around the next corner, and relief and respite are only fleeting in comparison. It’s utterly riveting.
Mendes sets about creating an experience: an exercise in the visceral recreation of the violence, chaos and sheer senselessness of a war that for many now exists only in museums and history books. The audience becomes the silent observer to something paradoxically both simple and impressively complex, and immersed in a richly detailed world by no means any less exciting than the approaches taken by other war epics.
Comments