1917 -- Review

1917

“1917” is a 2019 epic war film directed, co-written and produced by Sam Mendes. Mendes has a solid directing resume with films like “American Beauty”, “Road to Perdition”, “Revolutionary Road”, “Away We Go” and “Skyfall”.  His latest effort stars George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Mark Strong, Andrew Scott, Richard Madden, Claire Duburcq, Colin Firth, and Benedict Cumberbatch which is largely a film based in part on the personal accounts told to Mendes by his paternal grandfather and WW I veteran Alfred Mendes.

From his childhood stories Director Mendes has created a fictional tale that chronicles the story of two young British soldiers named “Schofield” and “Blake” during World War I in the spring of 1917 who were given a mission to deliver a critical message to the 2nd Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment calling off their planned attack on the German forces. The message warns of an ambush during a skirmish soon after the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line during Operation Alberich. The Germans have feigned this retreat to the Hindenburg Line and are in reality prepared to kill the entire battalion of 1,600 men, “Blake's” brother among them.

REVIEW: “1917” is brilliant, but not for the conventional reasons you might naturally draw from previous war films like “Saving Private Ryan”, “Platoon” or “The Deer Hunter (my favorites among many more). Here Mendes delivers from a totally obvious British perspective a firsthand accounting examination through the horrifying prism of war what hell on earth looks like and by doing so he gives all of us something that is far more organic to look at, more organic to feel and sense, more organic to be frighten by and certainly something far more organic to contemplate and reflect upon.

Running 2 hours the film is delivered on to the screen in one of the most difficult and challenging technical formats called the “continuous one-shot technique” WHAT? Imagine one continuous technique shooting being a seamless visual without any  transitions or editing from  one person to another or one background scene to another.You the viewer are watching the entire film story unfold as if you are in real time riding along, walking along, hearing along and speaking along with the actors in their same real time moment.  Now of course there are a few  spliced in edits  but you won’t see them unless you know what to look for, but they are there.

HINT WHAT TO LOOK FOR: Say for example when a character is seen walking in a very brief second behind a very large tree with the camera panning their movement from left to right. When he or she disappears behind the tree albeit even for a millisecond that was a hidden edit scene though it appears you never lost sight of the subject at all. Another example is you seeing again a character moving from a lite area into a brief second of darkness in a hallway and back to light gives you the viewer that you are behind them the entire time while entering the room. The fact is that scene may have ended for that day’s shooting right there. I offer all of this because with the exception of the characters walking from daylight to night time back to daylight does Mendes show any real scene transitioning. I also offer all of this in that the story gives the seamlessness of time of about a few hours. In reality it takes to 3-4 months to shoot an entire film, but if you are you using the continuous unedited technique you have to wait  for hours if not days, maybe even weeks, especially with exterior scenes to recapture the exact same weather and sunlight conditions to make the film feel like it’s in real time all over again. 

Having explained this arduous visual aspect to movie making here, I can now say all of this technical effort pays off in an unforgettable way in that we inhabit the two soldiers lives as our own, immediately experience along with them as they traverse a war torn country side in the most immersive enduring moments of hell of mud, darkness, dampness, rat infestation, foul decapitated and mutilated bodies as you will ever recall or have ever seen in any war film. The end result is war is chaotic hell soaked in blood and destruction. It also is unlike any experience any human can inflict upon another human. Living and breathing second after every second with the reality that any one step, any one wrong turn, any given time of day or night, any wrong decision could be your last resulting in your immediate death.

“1917” does not ask simply for you to watch its story, rather it pulls you end to live it and  endure it. To see and smell the hell and by doing so Mendes has delivered one of the best achievements in war film making ever and certainly one of the 5 best films for 2019. It is relentlessly intense, emotionally moving and stirring, astonishing and stunning to look at, viscerally gripping, horrifying, and has a set production that was nothing short of utter genius in recreating a landscape that was decimated by the destructive ravages of a bombing war.

Famed film critic Roger Ebert once said every now and then a very rare film comes along  that is so emotionally potent and powerful it draws you in to the events on the screen. If you are reading this and you’re a friend of mine, then you will take my word as in the past and see this in the theater. But if you still think it’s worth waiting to see this at home a year from now on basic cable ………………..don’t bother and I would recommend to the theater authorities all of your future movie going privileges should be revoked (not really just being overly dramatic to get you to go).

 See “1917”,  it is mandatory, compulsory, audacious and mesmerizing big screen viewing at its finest.

4.00 Stars