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1917

by 78 Comments

Year: 2019
Director: Sam Mendes

“From the director of Skyfall” yells the poster and the trailer, which is true but not the point.

The story is simple enough, though I won’t go into much detail because it’s hard to avoid spoilers (steer clear of Wikipedia and the trailer, come to that). Two lance-corporals are given the job of slogging their way over nine miles of what may or may not be no man’s land to deliver a message to a Colonel who is due to lead his men over the top in the morning to chase what he thinks is the Germans in retreat. In fact, it’s a cunning German tactical withdrawal and he’s leading his men to certain death.

The much noted “one continuous take” is a bit of a misnomer. What it actually means is that there are no cutaways back to base, or back to Blighty – the story starts at A and continues uninterrupted to Z, where it ends. The action of the film takes, at a guess, 12 hours, so QED. No matter, it’s a brilliant, continually absorbing and gruelling two hours. There were times I just wanted it all to stop, thoroughly gruelled, not unlike the men in the film.

The photography, by Roger Deakins, is brilliant. Without going overboard, the colour has a drabness that seems entirely appropriate. Thomas Newman’s music, largely electronic, gives depth to what you’re seeing without being overbearing. The production design is almost beyond belief, although how much is CGI I can’t say. The ruined landscape, the mud, the ruined buildings, the corpses, the dead horses…you’re right there. The occasional touch of sentimentality brings welcome relief.

The cast of thousands play their parts well, especially of course our two reluctant anti-heroes, played by George Mackay and Dean-Charles Chapman, who we come to know very well. The familiar faces – Colin Firth, Andrew Scott, Mark Strong, Cumberdick Bendybatch – are welcome and don’t overplay their hands.

Apparently, Mendes was inspired to make this film by his grandfather’s stories. I never got to hear my grandfather’s stories, even assuming he was happy to tell them, because he was killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915, when my father was just 2. They never found his body. Looking at the corpses hanging on the wire and sinking into the mud, unlikely to be retrieved and buried, it was impossible not to think of him. But you don’t have to have a personal connection to find this film an astonishing, bravura piece, probably the most vivid portrayal of the WW1 nightmare ever.

One tiny niggle: an astonishing number of bullets in the last half hour fail to find their mark.

Might appeal to people who enjoyed:

“Enjoyed” is relative, of course. Other gruelling war films I suppose, eg Saving Private Ryan, plus of course They Shall Not Grow Old. But actually everybody who loves great film-making, as long as you have the stomach for it.

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Comments

  2. It clearly couldn’t be one take. However it is filmed like one take. And some of the actual takes run into (I think) 8 or 9 minutes. That is an extraordinary technical achievement when you consider, cameras, sound, special effects, choreography and, of course, the actors.

    I went in knowing almost nothing and thought it was magnificent. Probably best film I have seen since “They Will Not Grow Old” (and I saw about 30 in the cinema in between) am sensing a theme here. I have a theory about your niggle, but to mention it here would be a spoiler.

  3. I saw it yesterday, and its impact will continue for some time, I reckon. I wasn’t so taken by Dean Charles-Chapman’s acting, and so felt that the punctuation points provided by Daniel Mays, Scott et al were all the more vital. Andrew Scott in particular: what a bloody great actor.

    • I was never particularly fond of Scott until Fleabag. I think it’s his voice that grates. But I thought he played his part perfectly in this film. I’ve seen a comment he made about the pressure of it, because he entered towards the end of a long take and the first time or two he spoiled it by being unable to get the cigarette lighter to work.

  4. Saw it last week. I thought it was a film of two halves. The first half, which after a brief set-up is almost entirely between the two principals as they trek across no-man’s land, is astonishing. The long takes, empty ruined landscapes and the focus on the pair add to something completely new in films about WW1.
    Then…there’s a pivotal moment relying on series of unlucky coincidences. From then on the shots get shorter, the ‘action’ brings in yer Andrew Scotts, Mark Strongs and the thing becomes a war film. Very well short, edited and acted – but a war film.
    The first half. That’s something else. It’s a film about war, as opposed to a war film.

  5. Story: 3 stars (Gallipoli meets Saving Private Ryan)
    Cinematography: 5 stars

    I found the fluidity of the “one continuous shot” illusion absolutely captivating. Quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. But the story was a bit ridiculous in places. I thought it would have been better not to have big name cameos. Especially Cumberbatch. His character’s predictable last minute bit-of-a-baddie role was just plain silly. As was the Germans’ appalling aim with rifles. But the main two guys were well cast. Why do you call them “anti-heroes”, Mr The P? Very much traditional heroes, I would have said.

    • I think what I meant was that they were volunteered and were pretty grumpy about it, and saving his brother’s life very quickly became Blake’s main motivation. In fact you might say that choosing Blake was pretty cynical on the General’s part. Didn’t intend to undervalue their bravery.

    • Thanks Mike. A mate wrote this on FB

      Just saw 1917. Very disappointing. Wooden acting throughout with zero character development, set in a predictable plot that elicited almost no suspense.

      This surprised me so I guess I will have to go and form my own view.

  6. Great review, thanks.

    I saw it in an iMax at the weekend, which is definitely THE best way to see it. It was a brilliantly made film and astonishing on a technical level. By contrast with a lot of movies these days, the story was also refreshingly simple and unpretentious. And yes, the cinematography was gorgeous (maybe the wrong word when you are talking about landscapes with dead horses and decomposing bodies, but you know what I mean): the ruined town with flares flashing it was a particularly brilliant image.

    My misgivings, however, are that, as astonishing a technical achievement it is, I’m afraid it feels derivative of other films. This dilutes it a bit. One long take showing a survival story across and unforgiving landscape? The Revenant. War film with brutally realistic violence and a mission to reach someone in enemy territory? Saving Private Ryan. Pumping soundtrack with a “ticking clock” motif throughout? Dunkirk.

    In fact, the soundtrack might be one of my biggest bugbears – almost ruined it for me in fact. It just NEVER stops. The in-scene sound design is actually very well done (atmospheric noises, squelching mud, clumping boots, breathing, flares firing off…) but you hardly get a chance to hear it as there is a constant swell of “tense” music underneath it all. There are lots of long, quiet scenes (mostly the early ones) which would be masterful (and quite tense enough) without the music screaming “THIS IS TENSE” at you without a break. It really did my head in. Thomas Newman is a decent composer at times, but here he just resembles Hanz Zimmer with his dial stuck at 11. I love silence in films and I love directors and composers who know how to use silence properly – this doesn’t.

      • I’ll have to agree to differ! I feel sometimes I’m very sensitive to these things. An intrusive soundtrack can ruin things. It MIGHT have been better if it was all orchestral (the orchestral bits were actually pretty good) but it too was too much of a wash of generic synthesised chords and plinky, echo-y piano.

        Weirdly, one over-intrusive soundtrack people usually complain about is Interstellar, but that’s one case where I felt the soundtrack was handled brilliantly. It built up superbly, left plenty of quiet spaces, but knew just where to get loud (and even drown out the dialogue in parts – a brave and justified artistic choice).

        If you are going to have a soundtrack clogging up every minute of a film, then it has to be something really spectacular to justify it – think John Williams in Star Wars or Bernard Hermann in Vertigo.

        Anyway, sorry to go on about it, but just a pet obsession of mine!

    • After the ear-splitting volume of the ads and trailers in the Vue where I saw it, the soundtrack volume was a blessed relief, I can tell you. I’m taking earplugs next time.

      • That’s a real problem, I agree. The ads are always as loud as possible in cinemas. I can understand why, as they are all shouting for attention, but it would be a lot kinder to patrons to make sure the volumes are level and acceptable.

        Unfortunately, it’s probably just too much to ask. Any film-maker worth their salt is going to ensure their creation has a nice dynamic sound range, which actually means the overall level is probably going to be quite low (to allow enough headroom to let the silences breath and the noisy bits boom), whereas ad-makers just want to hit you over the head with as much noise as possible as quickly as they can, and won’t care about an artistically satisfying soundscape.

        • I complained about it to Vue once, and they had the brass neck to tell me that it was what customers wanted. How do you know, I asked mildly…they didn’t reply.

  7. Stunning, wonderful, must-see, great soundtrack, great acting, amazing cinematography, best thing I’ve seen at the flicks in donkey’s.

    Has stayed with me for days.

    11 stars.

  8. “I just wanted it all to stop”, I know exactly what you mean @mikethep, I`ve had that feeling many times when watching a movie, even though I know the outcome. Your`s is a great review, I`ve not seen the film but will watch at home when the Bluray comes out.

  9. I’m in the ‘love’ camp. If I was being picky, I’d agree with Arthur that it was weirdly reminiscent of other films (Apocalypto, for me). Plus I occasionally found the one-shot deal a bit of an ‘ooh isn’t that clever’ distraction. Ditto the A-list cameos. Loved the soundtrack though.

  10. Absolutely mind bogglingly brilliant.. My Grandad survived Ypres. As a teenager I used to love the stories he told of his time in the war and the sheer horror. He used to tell me that the trenches were actually more scary than facing the Germans. This film graphically shows that to be the case – ghastly.
    One last thing – the scene in the forest towards the end of the film was extremely moving – easily the highlight as it showed naked emotion and a will to live in the face of appalling horror.
    Brilliant.

  11. Outstanding movie. I saw it at a Vue cinema, on a large screen, last Friday evening. Place was packed but you could have heard a pin drop throughout. I didn’t even notice a soundtrack, because I found myself so absorbed in what was happening on screen. At the end, as the credits rolled, there was an unbroken hush throughout the auditorium. It was that good.

    One small observation; anyone calling into question the accuracy of the German conscripts’ shooting during that chase scene has obviously never spent any time loosing off rounds from a WW1 infantry rifle. I have. I would have been much more surprised if they’d actually hit their target.

    Oh, and one more thing; anyone who read the review in New Statesman and wondered about going to see the film needs to understand that the review was talking utter crap. Critical cobblers from someone who’s seen too many films for free for professional purposes and has forgotten that most of us are relatively speaking mere civilians when it comes to a trip to the flicks. Ignore the review – go and see it and make up your own mind.

    • Yet it only took Schofield two or three shots to hit a baddie through an upstairs window in a building a few hundred feet away, while ducking and standing and ducking again. That was lucky.

      • He only clipped the guy in the tower, because he was alive enough to fire back a little later on at close quarters, and secondly, when taking pot shots at the chap he was bracing his rifle arm against the top edge of the dock, which makes aiming a heavy bolt action rifle about a million times easier than when running along in pursuit of another and aiming – at best – from the shoulder. Also, shooting down from a high vantage point involves looking over the edge of whatever cover you have, inevitably exposing yourself as a larger target than you’d like.

        All the same, let’s remember it isn’t a documentary.

        • Don’t get me wrong, I loved the film. As mentioned above, I found the cinematography utterly captivating and brilliant. But take away that gobsmaking bravura and the story itself really wasn’t much cop and in parts was downright silly. The ending (Cumberbatch’s “not interested, get out” and the perfectly conserved letter) was the silliest bit.

          • Yes, when he fell into the river and was carried downstream, my immediate thought was ‘well, no-one’s going to be able to read that letter now’.

            They must have laminated it beforehand.

            • Again, that, along with the encounter with the family felt like the studio had gone ‘Ok you can have an hour for your bravura one-shot, two tommies, no action film, if you give us what we want in the second hour – leaps into rivers, encounters with women, heroic sniping, cameos – all that stuff’

      • I got the impression that he’d heard about the uninterrupted take approach and spent the best part of two hours fretting about it, only to realise as the denouement arrived that he’d forgotten to lose himself in watching the bloody film.

        I was aware of it as I watched, but no more so than while watching marvellous pieces like “Children Of Men”, where one or two scenes are even better devised and executed than those in “1917”.

  12. Saw it on Saturday with my son and Sharon.

    All 3 of us admired it immensely. A difficult film to enjoy, it is nonetheless magnificent in its ambition and delivery against that.

    The lighting nd the sound when he is trying to escape the town is some of the most stunning cinematography I’ve seen in a very long time.

    Would recommend. 12/10.

  13. Little-known (and seemingly ill-informed*) actor Laurence Fox opined that having a Sikh soldier appear in the film is “Institutional Racism” on Sam Mendez’ part. Lots of attention now coming to him, which I suppose he’ll think is nice.
    Naturally, The Maily Dail have given the “furore” full coverage in their tawdry rag.

    I think this sums up my attitude to the story.
    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/commentisfree/2020/jan/20/id-never-heard-of-laurence-fox-until-he-started-lecturing-us-about-racism.

    *Over a million Indian troops fought in WW1 and about 70,000 were killed. Many thousands were wounded. A lot of them were Sikhs.

        • Yeah, he did. But I don’t think that justifies some of the abuse he’s received though. He claimed that the vilification of Meghan Markle in the press wasn’t racially motivated. (I don’t know if that’s true or not. It wouldn’t surprise me, as I think the British tabloids are disgusting, but surely he’s entitled to his opinion as to their motives?). He claimed that GB is one of the most tolerant countries in Europe (again, I don’t know how true that is, but GB is certainly a gazillion times more tolerant and welcoming to ethnic minorities than Italy). And he said that accusations of racism get thrown around too easily (I’d certainly agree with that!). Talking about 1917 in a podcast, he said that having a Sikh distracted attention from the main story (nonsense in my opinion) and that “forcing diversity” in films is a kind of racism (again, nonsense IMHO). Not particularly outrageous comments. Wrong, stupid, ignorant maybe. But racist? Worthy of hatred and abuse? Frankly I find Lily Allen, who tore into him for “forcing his opinions on people”, far more annoying.

    • There were a number of black soldiers in the troops we saw and I imagine that factually that wouldn’t be accurate. But so what? It’s fiction. In the scene with the Sikh soldier I thought the film was deliberately giving us a small group which included not only the Sikh, but soldiers from Scotland, Wales, Liverpool, Newcastle, London – quietly making the point that these soldiers and those who gave their lives were from everywhere.

      • My maternal Grandfather served in India in and prior to first World War training the very Sikhs who would fight in this war so for me that wasnt a token gesture although it might have been intended thus.

      • African, Indian, West Indian etc. soldiers were ordinarily pretty strictly segregated from white soldiers. They had their own regiments (with an all-white officer class).
        Stragglers might end up together post-action, but would pretty soon be sent back to their own units if deemed fit to carry on.

    • Here’s a quote from Dr Simon Walker, a military historian at the University of Strathclyde:

      “Therefore by the middle of the war it would not be unusual for Sikh soldiers to serve side by side with their British comrades, as was necessitated by the demands of the war and losses.
      ‘This was visible in Britain, as burial practices were briefly changed to allow open air cremation for such soldiers”

      It’s from this very interesting article in about troops in the First World War from what was then the Empire, in, er, the Daily Mail.

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7915341/Laurence-Fox-admits-didnt-know-Sikh-soldiers-fought-shoulder-shoulder-British.html?ito=amp_twitter_share-top

  14. Brilliant film, and a real big screen cinema experience. I share Moseley’s feeling that the first half of the film is the best – it spoke powerfully about the experience of these young men in the trenches, whilst the second half became essentially a somewhat far fetched war adventure story (albeit a very good one). I loved the ‘one-take’ camera work but did find myself at various points thinking about that rather than being lost in the narrative. What it did really well though was to shrink the world we were experiencing to just these two soldiers and what they could see immediately around them, -I thought that was very effective. But whilst utterly gripped throughout, and horrified by what so may young men had to go through in this awful war, I wasn’t as moved as I thought I would be.

    As well as the parallels mentioned by others I was reminded on more than one occasion of Apocalypse Now – the expedition to track down a potentially rogue commander; the general sense of chaos and nobody being in charge – not to mention the surely deliberate nod in the naming of one character as Kilgore.

  15. Apropos of war films and immersion the one shot formalism is one way to make us identify with the characters and the context. Last night watched the first half of The Deer Hunter with the family. Here’s another approach: build up the characters and their relationships so we understand who they are, where they are from, what drives them – and then hurl them into the chaos and brutality. The rest of the film has all kinds of issues and has dated horrendously (I am forecasting, actually the war sequence was dated horrendously when I saw it 10 years ago) but as an exercise in establishing characters, relationships, time and place through a set-piece has the hour-long wedding and hunting party sequence ever been bettered in film? I froze it when the piano playing in the bar finishes and as they sit around pensively we hear the sound of the helicopters. Good luck in selling that idea now ‘ No it is a war movie, it just takes them an hour to get to the war’.

  16. I think that after watching 1917, all the other people nominated in the ‘best cinematography’ category might as well not bother writing speeches. The only other time I’ve said that was after watching Blade Runner 2049, which Deakins also photographed (and won an Oscar for). It’s no surprise that the best looking Bond film was shot by him too.

  18. Meh. Quite enjoyed it as a straightforward war movie, but its by no means a cinematic masterpiece. The script is pretty limp and predictable and the character development is poor; I found I really didn’t much care about either of the two main characters.

    Many have praised the realism, but other than the short scene in a deserted no-man’s land as the two lads go over the top for the first time, I thought it all looked a bit too shiny and pristine. Trenches with perfectly structured walls looked as if the designers had only just driven the mechanical digger off the set as the camera started rolling.

    The film very quickly settles into a series of action set pieces which seem unconnected and illogical. The empty German trench episode feels as if it is straight out of a video game (Ohh, rats…nasty! Watch out! Tripwire! Explosion! Uh oh! The roof’s collapsing! Get out!) The unrelated-to-anything-else scene in which our hero finds refuge with a mother and her baby is particularly bizarre – the woman goes from total fear to possible romantic attachment within 45 seconds. Emotionally affecting it ain’t.

    The so-called ‘single shot’ camera take is pretty engrossing (although pushing our way through yet another crowded trench got a bit tiresome) but ultimately the film feels like watching over someone else’s shoulder as they have a go on the latest first person shooter Playstation game.

    • Actually, I didn’t get that bit. Was it just dumb luck that they happened to be in the trench at the same time as the rat set off the tripwire? Or did Hun intend for them to disturb the rodent which they knew would in turn obediently trigger the trap?

      • I think the hanging bags were stuffed with various things of interest to rodents who would likely munch what they wanted in situ until the time that someone – assumed to be a Tommy – also ventured into the abandoned tunnels, at which point the likely rodent behaviour would be to run like hell to escape the likelihood of a hob-nailed exit; result, trip wire tripped, boom.

    • The woman, as you put it, is self evidently suffering from deep trauma, and is hiding in a cellar with a baby she’s found somewhere – it isn’t hers, she knows nothing about it – not even her name – apart from the fact that all she and the baby currently have is each other – did you not twig that? She is completely and utterly desperate for contact with another sympathetic human being. One arrives, and her world improves immeasurably; from human decency he gives her enough tucker to keep her and baby going for days. It’s hardly surprising if she’s subsequently devasted when it becomes apparent that he’s going to immediately bugger off on some – to her – vague and incomprehensible mission.

  19. Yes. And as it seems that spoilers are not an issue here then (scroll down)

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    I think he is fearlessly running through bombs exploding and hundreds of bullets that miss him, because after all that has happened to him he has realised that he has become undestructible.

    • I’ve been pondering this business of being a film of two halves, which seems to exercise some people. It’s almost as if the second half, signalled by their arrival at the farmhouse with its cherry blossom, in a miraculously untouched landscape, is a dream. True, reality breaks in with the troops in the trucks, but their sudden appearance is in itself dreamlike. Where did they come from? Why didn’t we hear them coming?

      Pretty much everything that happens from then on is dreamlike – the woman, the troops in the wood – or nightmare – everything else.

      No idea if that was what Mendes was about, but does that make sense?

    • I didn’t see it like that at all; after all he’s been through in the previous half a day or so, he’s looking at 300 yards of packed trench with seconds to go – he has no likely prospect of getting to his goal before they go over the top. He’s become fixated upon seeing his pal right and upon delivering the message come hell or high water, so in a last ditch “fuck it” state of mind he hops out of the trench and runs like stink the last 300 yards. He knows he may likely cop a German bullet or a lump of shrapnel, but at least he’s doing everything in his power to get the message through. When he makes it, he’s not going to take no for an answer, and makes sure his message is passed on, out loud, in no uncertain terms and in front of many witnesses, as suggested to him earlier. It’s heroic behaviour. It’s madness. But it isn’t rampant delusions of invulnerability.

  20. So then, we ordered Maurice to remove all the hangings from the north facing wall of our modest (tee hee) chateau and fire up what I think he calls a “projector”.
    We invited a few select friends round and after a modest (tee hee) supper of stuffed quails and a sanglier that had foolishly crossed our vineyard that very morning, all washed down by a few dozen bottles of Paul Mas’ Terrasse du Larzac, we settled down to view 1917.
    Have you all gone gone fucking certifiably doohlahlay? What a pile of pretentious waffly poo! Cliché after cliché after cliché. Wooden acting after wooden acting after wooden acting. Dear god in heaven, even Jack Ryan Series 2 (not a patch on Series 1) has more bite, more relevance and here I struggle for the correct phrasing, ah I’ve got it – more believability than this overrated piece of twattery.
    I haven’t been so disappointed since Anne Roberts said she would call me back and next thing you know she’s walking down Union Street hand in hand with smarmy “I’ve Got A Sports Car And You Haven’t” Ted Small Willy Barlow.

  21. Entertaining film due to the ‘single shot’ thing but I had to suspend all my critical faculties while watching it. Of course the Germans were terrible shots and it’s possible to run through artillery shell explosions without so much a scratch, let alone being knocked down or concussed. Unlike say All Quiet on the Western Front, I didn’t know who these guys were and why there were there – so I didn’t really care for them. Some of it was just silly. He’s desperate to get the truck out from being bogged in mud then a minute later he hops off and says “it’s OK, I’ll walk”. As someone said, a lot of it was like a PC war game sequence. Kill the German in the bunker and and move on to the next stage. And the notion that public school educated officers would spend ages doing the ‘exposition’ explanation to some expendable lowly ‘other ranks’ is a bit of a stretch.

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