Film Review: 1917
Kayleigh Lau reviews Sam Mendes’ new war epic 1917.
Sam Mendes’ award-winning war epic 1917 unexpectedly opens in a field of spring flowers. It is only in retrospect, however, that we realize this is the only true moment of peace in the whole film - peace that we can never get back. From this moment on, everything else moves forward, whether or not we’re ready to keep up.
From the very beginning, Roger Deakins’ masterful camera work asserts itself: the famed “continuous” one-shot immediately sets a breathless pace as our characters Blake and Schofield rush insistently into war, charged with a mission to enter no-man’s-land and help call off a scheduled attack that would lead into a German trap. It is all the more impressive as we remember that this cinematic illusion of seamlessness is only made possible through sheer attention to detail. Clouds in the sky were perfectly matched during filming from one take to the next, and the sunlight timed exactly to carry throughout one entire scene.
In an especially crowded 2019-2020 festival and awards circuit, 1917 has been picking up steam for a long time, receiving the Oscars crown for Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects and Best Sound Mixing, and winning 2 Golden Globes for Best Director and Best Motion Picture in the Drama category.
In its subject matter and ambition, the film may recognizably draw comparisons to Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. Both play with the war of time, and redemption, in their own innovative ways. Both films have much to say on the unnerving relativity of each minute spent in the battlefield, where an hour in a fighter jet feels like a day on the mole in Dunkirk; but also where 1600 lives hinge on mere moments, and a single day rushes by in a mad frenzy of traps, snipers, and flare-lit explosions in 1917’s striking escape scene. Thomas Newman’s soundtrack serves effectively as the ever-present clock to the narrative, droning and ticking the minutes away while providing a background soundscape of terror.
Amidst the grand choreographed set pieces and sweeping fields of the battle at Ecoust, it is the quiet or transitory moments which are the most powerful in this work. The fleeting beauty of the French countryside as the characters single-mindedly move through it. The continuous backward tracking shots as the camera and characters navigate through the trenches communicate a very real sense of claustrophobia, as the scale and the sheer excess of mud in the networks unspools itself behind them. Even then, the camera encourages a progressive intimacy as a witness. It narrows its lens and we see only what these characters do, taken along on a journey of anxiety and discovery at the same time as they are. Plot-wise, it’s a fundamental quest narrative, but wrapped up in the shape of a war movie in the tradition of Saving Private Ryan – a mission with otherwise astronomical odds, personal sacrifice and, in this case, two ordinary men having to transform into heroes against their will.
George MacKay as Schofield easily carries and compels the movement of the film, playing a man surviving the impossible at every turn. His face projects everything from war-torn despair and desperation to tentative hope in the absence of words — even if these moments of emotion and inner life come fleetingly amid the action. However, for all the characters’ many trials, audiences will always be subtly aware of the mission’s final, telegraphed outcome, which downgrades our perception of its stakes. With a film as visually intricate as this one, the camera and the human movements on screen can sometimes feel like a choreographed dance, every event and character hitting their marks in crisp succession, and we sense this most when point-blank bullets magically miss or direct explosions leave characters untouched. When it matters though, the film’s “resolution” is layered with far more ambiguity and wistfulness than the triumphant archetypes of the standard war saga.
By the end, 1917 returns to its quiet interludes and human connections, which are at the heart of every good war movie. In the 103 intervening years, it’s easy to think how far warfare has evolved from the trenches of World War 1 to the faceless drone combat of today; but the tension and the human cost will always remain the same.