Certification. 15
Running Time. 1 hour 59 mins
Director. Sam Mendes
Cast. Dean-Charles Chapman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, George MacKay, Andrew Scott, Mark Strong.
Rating. 87%
At the 92nd Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on 9 February 2020, 1917, along with The Irishman and Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood received 10 Oscar nominations. Only Joker received more, with 11 nominations. In the end, however, the big winner on the night was Parasite - a quite simply extraordinary piece of cinema. In any other year, I'm certain 1917 would have dominated the proceedings.
1917 centres on two young British soldiers, Lance Corporal Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Lance Corporal Will Schofield (George MacKay), who are enlisted to make their way through enemy lines. The soldiers carry a message for Colonel Mackenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch) of the Second Battalion, Devonshire Regiment who is poised to launch a flawed assault on the German forces.
Filmed as to appear as one continuous take, the initially unnerving effect serves to immerse the audience in the claustrophobic squalor of the trenches. Like Alfred Hitchcock's Rope or Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman Or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance), director Sam Mendes uses several takes and set-ups, seamlessly joined together to give the appearance of a continuous point of view. The restriction of the one continuous take is that the camera is only able to point in one direction at any given time. This enables the director to dictate what the audience sees, essentially the viewpoint of Lance Corporal Blake and Lance Corporal Schofield. The end result is astonishing. A truly immersive experience that drags the audience through the trenches and battlefields of northern France and graphically illustrates the unfolding horrific experience of the two young soldiers.
The other technical elements of 1917 are a filmmaking masterclass. Sam Mendes has surrounded himself with some of the most talented craftsmen in the business. Production Designer, Dennis Gassner created thousands of yards of genuine trenches and dust-laden mineshafts. Costume Designer, Jacqueline Durran replicated the sturdy World War I uniforms and haversacks of the British Army, complete with webbing, leather accessories and the distinctive Brodie helmets. Thomas Newman's melancholic but unsentimental soundtrack is a bold accompaniment to much of the action. The evocative Up The Down Trench in particular is unnerving and highly dramatic. Finally, Director of Cinematography, Roger Deakins justifiably received an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Cinematography for the fluid cinematography employed in 1917. Regarded by many as the best contemporary cinematographer, Deakins adeptly captures the claustrophobia of the trenches, the body-strewn carnage of no man's land and the scorched earth of the battlefields. But his crowning glory is a flare-lit night-time sequence in a bombed-out and seemingly abandoned village that is surreal, abstract and beautiful.
The sporadic bursts of violence are all the more powerful for their scarcity. More affecting is the attitude toward the atrocities witnessed by those involved. The characters (and the camera) rarely stop moving, pausing only briefly to dust themselves down and take a breath. As Mark Strong's Captain Smith says, "It doesn't do to dwell on it." The trauma doesn't come from the blood and gore, or the casualties and corpses encountered, but instead in the eyes of those experiencing it. This trauma is perfectly conveyed by Lance Corporal Schofield, a veteran of the Somme. And George MacKay manages to simultaneously convey fatalism, ravaged innocence and world-weary exhaustion in a solitary glance [A quality unearthed in an earlier role - the "combination of naive awkwardness and wide-eyed lunacy" of Bodevan Cash in Captain Fantastic].
Sam Mendes' 1917 operates with minimal story, but the theatrical impact is pure, distilled urgency. The opening hour of 1917 is as tense a piece of cinema as I can recall, as the action moves from one hellish environment to the next. Genuinely, a nail-biting watch.
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