‘1917’ Film Review: Sam Mendes’ WWI Saga More Thrilling Than Thoughtful
The “one-shot” intensity of his battle tale overshadows any ideas the filmmaker might have about war itself
Alonso Duralde | January 10, 2020 @ 11:45 AM
Last Updated: January 10, 2020 @ 11:49 AM
Universal
Films designed to look like one uninterrupted take — whether they’re really one long shot, or just cleverly edited to appear that way — can be sweeping and engrossing or merely a novelty. At their worst, they inspire sentiments similar to what a friend of mine once wrote on social media: “Hey directors, I don’t buy a ticket to your movies so I can be your editor.”
The premise of crafting a feature that appears to be a single camera movement gets a boost from Sam Mendes’ “1917,” which follows two British soldiers during WWI on a life-or-death mission through No Man’s Land to the front lines. Under the guidance of legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins, that camerawork leads to moments of genuine suspense and wartime horror, with only occasional instances of gimmickry.
Bookended by sequences involving people running through crowded trenches of soldiers — the obvious lack of tracks for the moving camera adding to the physical burden of Deakins and his camera operators, who had to shoot these scenes handheld — “1917” gives its very linear plot a palpable sense of immediacy by almost never stopping its forward momentum.
We open in a tranquil field, in which napping Lance Corporals Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman, “Game of Thrones”) and Schofield (George MacKay, “Captain Fantastic”) are awakened and sent to report to their commanding officer (Colin Firth), who has a mission for them: A massive mobilization of British troops, including Blake’s brother, are unknowingly heading into a German trap. With telephone lines down, it’s up to the two young soldiers to traverse dangerous ground and physically deliver the order to stop the battle from happening.
And then they’re off and running, through barbed-wire and craters, bombed-out towns and elaborate tunnels. When our heroes are not directly under fire, every lull in the action is merely a prelude to the next catastrophe, which boosts the state of tension throughout. Between the unexpected bursts of violence in the script by Mendes and co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns (“Penny Dreadful”) and the fact that most of the mission is being presented in what appears to be actual time, “1917” offers few opportunities for the audience to exhale.
As such, the movie is more successful as a thriller than as a thoughtful examination of war and its horrors; Mendes seems less interested in bigger ideas about the nightmare of battle and its effects on his characters than he is in Hitchcockian audience manipulation. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that, but it does differentiate the film from earlier WWI tales like “Paths of Glory” or “Gallipoli” or “La Grande Illusion,” which used the conflict as a way to discuss class or military injustice or the last gasp of the European aristocracy.
“1917” is certainly a technical marvel, not just for Deakins but also for the brilliant sound work, visual effects, and Lee Smith’s editing, which hides the cuts that would have broken the “one-take” spell. (If there’s one element that doesn’t work here, it’s Thomas Newman’s score, which tends to lay it on too thick, particularly during a third-act sequence in the ruins of a French village.) But the craft on display doesn’t take away from MacKay and Chapman’s performances; their exhibitions of bravery, terror, loyalty, determination and desperation are never overshadowed by the camerawork.
Mendes also works in a series of cameos for well-known actors to play officers; in addition to Firth, the chain of command also includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrew Scott, Richard Madden and Mark Strong. Each of these pros knows how to make an impression with just a few lines of dialogue, and each becomes an important story checkpoint along the way.
“1917” will at some point make a great double feature with “They Shall Not Grow Old,” the 2018 documentary in which Peter Jackson took 100-year-old war footage and colorized it, corrected the frame rate, and bumped it up to 3D to make the conflict more immediate for contemporary audiences. Both films give 21st century viewers a very different way of looking at World War I, and the technical wizardry behind each film’s creation might be the tiniest bit more interesting than the actual content.
'1917' and 12 Other 'One-Shot' Movies, From 'Timecode' to 'Birdman' (Photos)
Filming a long, extended take in a movie is one of the best ways to win some acclaim and show off a bit of your directorial prowess. But it's often so complex and so ambitious that only a handful of directors have ever dared make their movie to appear as though it was filmed in one continuous, unbroken shot. Sam Mendes is the latest to attempt the feat for his World War I epic "1917," and boy did he nail it. Here are some other films that helped pave the way for him.
"Rope" (1948)
The master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock was the first to attempt a single-take feature film, taking on a radical experiment with a big budget and A-list stars that included James Stewart. His movie "Rope" was inspired by a play by Patrick Hamilton and concerned a pair of men who murdered someone, hid his body in a large wooden trunk and then hosted a dinner party with the trunk as the centerpiece, all to prove they could commit the perfect murder. Hitchcock believed that if time passed between cuts, the suspense of whether the body was still in the trunk would be lost. The director actually orchestrated an elaborate ballet with his camera and actors and filmed the movie as though it were a play. But due to the technological time constraints of the time, he wrote the screenplay in 10-minute chunks and loaded his camera with the largest film canisters available, then placing the invisible cuts as the camera moved behind a chair or a table.
Warner Bros.
"Macbeth" (1982)
No discussion of unbroken takes would be complete without mentioning the Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr, who established himself as a master of the punishing long shot with his TV movie adaptation of "Macbeth" in 1982. Though it actually has two shots, the first is just five minutes long, and the remaining 57 minutes told in a single shot would be the basis for his future films "Satantango," "Werckmeister Harmonies" and "The Turn Horse."
"Timecode" (2000)
For his experimental film "Timecode," director Mike Figgis incorporated four, lightweight digital cameras each shooting in real time, then played all four shots, each 93-minutes in length, simultaneously in the four quadrants of the screen. The audio would be mixed down so you could hear the dialogue in a given quadrant when you needed to, and sometimes multiple cameras would see the same actor at once but from different points of view. It in effect proved that digital cinematography could accomplish as much, if not more, than could be done with film.
Screen Gems
"Russian Ark" (2002)
While other filmmakers hid their cuts between invisible edits and other trickery, director Alexander Sokurov actually filmed "Russian Ark" in one continuous take. His 96-minute long film boasted 2000 actors on-screen alongside three live orchestras as they all traversed the massive Winter Palace of the Russian state Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, telling a story of Russian history spread across 300 years.
Wellspring Media
"La Casa Muda" (2010) and "Silent House" (2012)
Both the Uruguayan film "La Casa Muda" and its American remake "Silent House" starring Elizabeth Olsen claim to have been filmed in a single, unbroken take to capture the real-time effect of a woman venturing through a haunted house, with the story supposedly based on real events. However, it's suspected that both films actually have cuts, as the original was shot on a shoestring budget with a digital camera that could only film for a maximum of 15 minutes at a time.
Open Road Films
"Fish & Cat" (2013)
The Iranian film "Fish & Cat" from director Shahram Mohri starts off following one man carrying a mysterious bag that's slowly turned bloody, but the camera then starts following new people each with their own perspective on the reality we're seeing, as though the actors were passing a virtual baton between one another.
Iranian Independents
"Birdman" (2014)
Alejandro Iñárritu's Best Picture winner made a career resurgence for Michael Keaton, it won cinematographer Emmanuel Lubeski another Oscar, and it told an ambitious satire of an actor trying to escape his movie star past in the face of an encroaching industry and other outside pressures. The director said in an interview that we live our lives as though through Steadicam, without editing, and it was necessary for the audience to do the same with this character. "I wanted this character to be submerged in that inescapable reality, and the audience has to live these desperate three days alongside him," Iñárritu told Variety.
Fox Searchlight
"Victoria" (2015)
German director Sebastian Schipper filmed the 140-minute "Victoria" not just in one shot but only across a handful of takes, choosing the best run through that became the final film.
Adopt Films
"Son of Saul" (2015)
László Nemes' intense Holocaust drama clings to the back of its lead character's head, making him visible in almost every moment of the 107-minute long film as he witnesses the horrors of a German concentration camp. The film follows a member of the Sonderkommando, a Jewish prisoner held at the death camps who was forced to aid in the gassing of other prisoners for fear of his own life.
Sony Pictures Classics
"Utøya: July 22" (2018)
Director Erik Poppe told the story of a Norwegian terrorist attack by staging it in real time, though using fictional characters, and filming it as though it were done in a single take across 90 minutes. Poppe's film was released the same year as Paul Greengrass made his own movie, "22 July," about the same terrorist incident.
Nordisk Film
"Blind Spot" (2018)
Norwegian actress Tuva Novotny made the film "Blind Spot" her directorial debut, telling the story of a mother and father's life upended by tragedy in a single shot.
Courtesy of TIFF
"1917" (2019)
Cinematographer Roger Deakins told TheWrap that though "1917" is just conceived as a single take and has some invisible cuts, you'd never know where they are. Because Sam Mendes' war epic never stays put in the same location and traverses incredible ground, almost all of it outdoors, the team had to carefully choreograph every moment in terms of how actors, crew and the camera would move, and they had to do much of it without the aid of Steadicam as seen in most other one-shot movies.
Universal Pictures
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Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” was the first film to experiment with the single-take technique
Filming a long, extended take in a movie is one of the best ways to win some acclaim and show off a bit of your directorial prowess. But it's often so complex and so ambitious that only a handful of directors have ever dared make their movie to appear as though it was filmed in one continuous, unbroken shot. Sam Mendes is the latest to attempt the feat for his World War I epic "1917," and boy did he nail it. Here are some other films that helped pave the way for him.
Warner Bros.
