1917 was written and directed by Sam Mendes and tells the tale of two soldiers in the middle of World War. One who are sent across enemy lines and deep into their territory to give an urgent message that will result in the saving of 1,600 lives.
I’m sure you’ve heard by now that it’s designed to look like one shot the entire film following these two soldiers through a war. Sometimes when you watch a film you can at least have a basic comprehension of how they made it and while there’s moments where you can tell there’s a cut maybe darkness obscure the screen for a second or they pass by an obvious CGI tree that has blended one shot with another but beyond that.
It’s staggering to imagine shooting this movie this is a gargantuan technical achievement and it can’t be ignored it feels in a way sort of like a video game because for a lot of the movie you’re following behind someone who’s walking but it always feels very tangible and very authentic a costume design and production design the sets is they’re just fcuking on point everything looks really really period-accurate and the two lead performances from Dean Charles Chapman and George Mackay.
Gross you very well in these characters lives something is always going wrong – they take a page out of the Breaking Bad book there’s always a problem they go underground and they might encounter a tripwire that’s okay though they can walk over it right actually no there’s rats everywhere and those rats are probably going to set it off if they’re not careful every time these guys try to get past something it’s fucking nerve-wracking because something is always going wrong for the you never feel like they’re safe that’s something they did really well with this movie they always feel like they’re being watched or if they turn the corner too quickly someone’s going to see them you rarely ever get that moment where you don’t think that somebody could snipe them at any second it feels like there’s danger constant.
There’s one sequence in the movie in particular where one of the characters is running through this rubble and flares are going off in explosions and you hear gunfire in the background and you think at any second one of these bullets could hit this guy and the music is rising in the background and the tension – it’s really intense this film is a remarkable achievement although similar to Dunkirk which I also really like character wise it’s extremely lacking Dunkirk decided to be a thriller and it didn’t care too much about building character it just had people in the middle of a terrible situation and because of how great the filmmaking was.
I was on board same with this movie they’ve done very little to give character to these two people one of them has a brother who’s gonna be saved hopefully if they can deliver this message that’s about it and so there are moments where even though these characters are in constant danger you don’t care as much as you could and that’s a little difficult to do because this is obviously a technical experiment the idea of can we do this and I think just them achieving that is good enough but if there was a little bit more character for these guys I think this could potentially creep into all-time status for World War 1 films especially nevertheless it’s still a really damn good movie and very impressive to watch I’m gonna give 1917 and a – definitely check this one out in the theatres. It is worth the big-screen treatment guys.
1917 Trailer
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