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George MacKay is lost in the horrors of war in Sam Mendes' one-shot 1917 |
Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: George MacKay (Lance Corporal Will Schofield),
Dean-Charles Chapman (Lance Corporal Tom Blake), Benedict Cumberbatch (Colonel
Mackenzie), Colin Firth (General Erinmore), Richard Madden (Captain Blake),
Andrew Scott (Lt. Leslie), Mark Strong (Captain Smith), Claire Duburcq (Lauri),
Daniel Mays (Sgt Saunders), Adrian Scarborough (Major Hepburn), Jamie Parker
(Lt Richards), Michael Jibson (Lt Hutton), Richard McCabe (Colonel Collins)
No film can even begin to capture the unspeakable horror of
war, and those of us who have never been in the middle of it can only imagine
what it must have been like for those who have. Based on the experiences of his
grandfather Alfred, Sam Mendes’ World War I story tries to immerse the viewers
in the experience by staging a film designed to play out in real time, in two
epic takes (actually a series of very long takes seamlessly spliced together).
It’s a technical accomplishment, but also a film partly dominated by the
precision of its construction rather than the emotion of its telling.
One day in April 1917, two young Lance-Corporals, brave and
selfless Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and more war-weary Will Schofield
(George MacKay) are tasked with a desperate mission by General Erinmore (Colin
Firth). The next morning, a British regiment will walk into a trap set by
German forces. Blake and Schofield must take a message through no-man’s land,
cancelling the regiment’s planned attack, or 1,600 men will die – including
Blake’s brother who is serving with the regiment.
Mendes’ film is a triumph whenever it is in motion. The
time-limited race to travel across miles of hostile land – through no-man’s
land, booby-trapped abandoned trenches, hazardous open fields and ruined towns that
have become battlegrounds – works a treat whenever our heroes are constantly
moving forward. Drawing a strange inspiration from Lord of the Rings, with its quest structure and Schofield as a
Samwise to Blake’s Bilbo, the film is compellingly completed with the
over-the-shoulder, walking-alongside intimacy of the camera work that follows
every step of this journey, that never pulls ahead or shows us something that
the soldiers can’t see and keeps us nearly constantly (bar one stunning shot of
a ruined town lit only by firelight and early dawn) at the level of the
soldiers.
It’s an epic experience film, and Mendes’ camerawork and
ingenuity in the shooting create the impression of a one-take film – some shots
seem to travel at least a mile, through winding trenches, with our heroes. The
effect is justified by the desire of the film to throw us into the experience
of the soldiers and to create the impression that we are sharing a journey with
them – and hammers home the time pressure these men are operating under as we
experience everything first hand, including the only undisguised cut (and time
jump) in the film. The horrors of the war are superbly shown – dead bodies,
many bloated or deformed by exposure, litter the frame but tellingly bring
little comment from the soldiers, demonstrating how accustomed they have become
to such sights. Each frame seems covered with muddy surfaces, and sharp
freezing chills. Technically it’s a marvel, and you have to admire Mendes’
ambition in even attempting such a thing.
Perhaps, though, that is one problem with the film. You are
so impressed with the showy intelligence and grace of the camera movements, the
ingenuity needed to keep the camera rolling through takes lasting ten minutes
or more and travelling miles at a time, that move in and around confined rooms
and trenches, that you at time spend as much (if not more) time marvelling at
the brilliance of the film making as you do feeling the emotion of the story.
While the long takes add immeasurably to the many moments of peril, dread and
terror that the characters go through (helped also by Thomas Newman’s eerily
unsettling score), they also become as much about admiring the technical
brilliance as they are investing in the story.
Of course, the story has been boiled down to something very
simple and elemental – and it avoids many clichés you half-expect from the
start. But the film itself gets slightly less interesting when the relentless
march forward stops, when the characters slow down or take moments of
reflection. A section in the middle of the film where the action pauses around
a young French woman hiding in a bombed out French town doesn’t quite work, and
has a slight air of spinning plates – you could have allowed a longer break in
the single take effect to take us from one event to another. In fact you wonder
if a film that had more of a time jump or had been constructed around 3-4 clear
long takes with time jumps might have worked better.
This is not to criticise the two actors who embody the
leads. George MacKay is superb as a soldier who experiences immense suffering
and torment on a journey he is less than willing to undertake from the first,
and finds himself opening up his emotions and feelings more and more as the
film progresses. Dean-Charles Chapman is a good match as a slightly more naïve
youngster, desperate to do the right thing and selfless in his courage. These
two move on a journey that essentially sees them handed over from one big-star
cameo to another (something that is sometimes a little distracting, if
necessary to allow these brief appearances to have character impact) with Firth,
Strong, Cumberbatch, Madden et al all delivering terrific work in a few short
minutes on screen.
Mendes’ direction technically is faultless, and the style
chosen really adds huge and unrepeatable visual benefits, all superbly caught
by Roger Deakins’ sublimely beautiful photography. At one moment a flare is
fired – and we see it arch out of shot and then repair behind us in real time
as the characters move forward. At another, an aerial dogfight goes from
distant to alarmingly close. The countryside recedes hauntingly as a ride is
hitched from a motorised regiment.
The single-take effect does make it far easier to relate in
these moments to the soldiers. It works less well at smaller moments – and
arguably could have been replaced by a more conventional style here to give
even more impact to the rest – but its execution is perfect. Maybe too perfect,
as it doesn’t always make room for the heart. Hollywood’s directors seem more
and more drawn to the long take for the immersive, big-screen quality they
carry – four of the last five Oscars have gone to directors whose films are
almost entirely made up with them. But they create – as is sometimes the case
with 1917 – something that is a
product for the largest screen, immersive experiences that perhaps lack
rewarding depth on later revisits.
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