1917 Takes A New Point Of View On War Films
Starring Dean-Charles Chapman, George MacKay, Colin Firth, Andrew Scott, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Richard Madden
R
Drama
Run time: 1 hr, 59 min
Directed by Sam Mendes
In select theaters December 20, 2019; widespread January 10, 2020
When award season starts, it’s almost tradition to brace yourself for the onslaught of war films coming into theaters. So when a war movie trailer shows up that appears least a little out of the norm, it’s pretty exciting. The trailer for 1917 highlights those big action sequences that we’re used to, but with a couple of twists. For one thing, the directing aims to make the whole movie look like a one-shot film, moving seamlessly between scenes as if we were there ourselves. For another, you don’t get the normal perspective on war that we are often given - the brutal fighting and the showers of gunfire.
1917 follows Dunkirk in terms of tone, providing whispers of the enemy rather than directly showing them off across the battlefield. In this film, two young soldiers (Chapman and MacKay) have to cross no-man’s land to get to another British troop that a higher-up is certain is about to walk into a trap by the German army. The suspense and the quiet of the deserted battlefield are more the enemy than anything else, knowing at any point something horrible can happen. The two soldiers could come across a land mine, or a hidden soldier positioned solely to take out any stragglers. With the German troops hidden, they provide an even larger villain than if they had been standing in front of the soldiers, shooting.
Considering how much of this movie leans on the two main characters - played by young actors I mostly wasn’t familiar with, I wasn’t sure what to expect when it came to the emotional weight of caring about these two soldiers over any others. However, they incorporate the audience so easily into their lives that we get to see their personalities straight off the bat. They’re a bit hardened, wary of every step they take, but also trying to survive mentally with gallows humor and stories about their lives in an effort to distract themselves from the very real danger they are constantly in. By quickly getting glimpses of their personalities, we are drawn in, desperately hoping these two boys get to where they need to go.
Since we are following these two specific people, I can appreciate why Mendes was determined to get the one-shot feel for the movie, but I’m not sure it really made much of a difference to me. I was constantly half-looking for places where they may have cut the film to curate that aesthetic and it took me out of the moment a bit more than I’d like. It is clearly an impressive feat of directing, but I could see some scenes where a wider, sweeping shot or an aerial view could have added more to the story.
Overall, this isn’t your standard, run-of-the-mill war story. Sure, there are the dead bodies and dim colors we’re used to with films about the battlefield, but this one almost feels like a video game, with the two main characters trying to get from checkpoint to checkpoint, each of which is held by one of the famous British actors you probably recognized in the trailer. No matter how you view it, you are rooting for these soldiers the whole way, and - since it is a fictional mission we’re watching - on the edge of your seat as you realize there’s really no guarantee of which way the chips will fall.