The WW I thriller 1917 is a only a solid movie, despite groundbreaking technical achievements. The story is simple – two British soldiers must race across nine miles of enemy territory to prevent a doomed attack. One of them has been cynically selected because his brother would be one of the soldiers to walk into the German deathtrap. Will they survive a series of perils and make it in time?
There are moments which are essentially the equivalents of video games or amusement park rides, especially a tunnel cave-in, a crashing biplane and an unexpectedly roaring river. Now, a viewer knows that there is NO MOVIE HERE AT ALL if at least one of these guys doesn’t reach the objective, or at least come heartbreakingly close; that knowledge removes some of the tension from the dangerous situations in the first three-quarters of the film.
The screenplay, co-written by director Sam Mendes, is very lame; unbelievably, it has been nominated for an Oscar. One of the leads regards his tranquil surroundings with “I don’t like this place,” which is movie foreshadowing as obvious as “It’s quiet…too quiet.” I don’t consider it a spoiler to let you know something bad happens in “I don’t like this place“,
On to the technical achievements. Mendes has constructed the film as if it were one, continuous shot. This is NOT a gimmick; the continuity and the illusion of a single shot is all in service to the story by reinforcing the POV of our protagonists. It is brilliantly photographed by cinematographer Roger Deakins.
Deakins is a lead pipe cinch to win a deserved Cinematography Oscar. He won in 2018 for Blade Runner 2049 and has 12 other Oscar nominations. 1917 is in amazing achievement for Deakins.
At one point, a protagonist is creeping through a decimated town that is filled with enemy snipers. Every so often, a flare lights up the ruins as if it were daylight, and our soldier has to sprint toward darkness, essentially racing the flares. It’s a remarkable visual, and I never seen anything like it before.
There are scenes where we follow the soldiers down miles of trenches – a remarkable job of production design. Mendes also seems to have gotten all of the period details right.
George MacKay is excellent as one of the protagonists, Corporal Scofield. As a character, Scofield spends the movie in fear, determination or both simultaneously, so MacKay doesn’t need to use much range, but he is compelling. MacKay has the kind of face that is well-suited for a character haunted by dread and tragedy.
The always-charismatic Benedict Cumberbatch makes the most out of his two minutes on screen. as does Andrew Scott.
I admired the movie wizardry of 1917, but I wasn’t thrilled or moved by it. 1917 won a Golden Globe and has garnered a zillion Oscar nominations. I see 1917 as this year’s Avatar, a technical marvel that no one will be talking about in five years.