NFT: 1917

Not only did Mendes do justice to the war and its impact on soldiers and civilians alike, but he did it in a way that I've not seen done before in cinema. The use of the continuous shot was incredible and added great dramatic tension to the film.

DON"T READ IF YOU DON"T WANT SPOILERS

I saw an early screening and knew nothing about it ..
when they went into talk to general at beginning I thought they would have a cut there and when they didn't
I was like . there is no way this whole film is one take !
but it was !

QA afterwards with director .. the film is comprised of 6 scenes ..the only one he told was the obvious one is when he gets knocked out

In comment 14789771 rebel yell said:

Quote:

Not only did Mendes do justice to the war and its impact on soldiers and civilians alike, but he did it in a way that I've not seen done before in cinema. The use of the continuous shot was incredible and added great dramatic tension to the film.

A few scenes really stood out for me. The dogfight and the result of it seemed to come in waves of heightened drama. The nighttime lighting in the bombed-out city, knowing German soldiers were anywhere/everywhere. Then even the chase scene through back alleys.

From about 5 minutes in, with all the bunkers and underground pathways, I kept thinking, "Holy shit, this is incredible." I have no idea what that felt like, being there, but I have to those scenes helped nail it. You were there.

Yeah, when I checked my phone to see if it was one take, I still couldn't see where it WASN'T ... again, aside from the obvious one.

and loved it. Quite spectacular and left me wanting more like it.

I think its pretty obvious it wasn't one continuous shot. You can see where the breaks were.

The most impressive part with the continuous shot was the one death scene where they made the guy change colors in his face without cutting away, that impressed me.

As a movie though, i mean, i wouldnt sit through the whole thing again, it was good, but it wasnt great.

I do wonder how many miles they actually traveled

best movies in a long time. I love it. The scenes in the city at night with the fire were incredible. Just beautiful film making.

and I'm glad to see it getting some big-screen treatment (They Shall Not Grow Old was also amazing). I loved the movie, I thought the cinematography was spectacular. It was like Dunkirk in the sense that it had limited character development, but it still conveyed the horror and chaos of things remarkably well.

I felt there was no separation, no distance, between the action and the audience, immersed as if there. Couple scenes not mentioned above that stood out were Schofield (after Blake's death) climbs into back of the truck with soldiers from a different unit, shifting, light as bodies climbed in and crowded the back; that and Schofield carried down river in the rapids.

I liked the film and I appreciate what everyone is saying about the cinematography. But to me, the technical is only what make the film special and worth talking about.

The film (story) itself was IMO meh. I thought the plot was a bit thin and some parts were a little off. The river scene especially bothered me, The guy came out of a river, not watched by anyone and walked right up to the English encampment unseen and with every single person's back to him (and the river).

Also, and this is weird and totally my own, their were points in the film where the two guys crested something where I had flashbacks of Frodo and Sam entering Mordor. And other points, like the city at night scene where I had 90's flashbacks of Doom or Wolfenstein.

(But I did overall like the movie.)

Same reaction to the scene with the kid who was killed ... and his face lost color after essentially bleeding out. Seemed one shot ... was impressed by that, and obviously a lot more.

by the time Schofield had been through the wringer of the minefields, being buried alive in the rubble of the boobytrapped German bunker before rescue by Blake, the dog fight and killing, pushing against the truck to get it out of the muck, all night in the bombed out city and somehow escaping German guards, to where he jumped into the river, I had pretty much suspended skepticism as to whether this was all believable and simply accepted the film on its terms, believable or not.

As to a thin plot, yes and no. Yes, it revolved simply around Schofield and Blakes assignment to reach McKenzie and call off the attack. OK, not complex at all. But no in the sense that what I think the film sought to convey was the toll war takes on individuals, individual soldiers, and how war is hell.

to see things as a metaphor.

after he came out of the water and walked up the hill and through the woods, there must have been folks who saw him and were not alarmed, seeing his uniform ... even if we weren't shown them turning and looking at him.

yes, it forced you to suspend disbelief a bit, but the part I cannot get past is how Blake died. What kind of a soldier gets killed like that? Trying to help the enemy? Fine, if you have enough manpower, you don't have to kill. You can take them as a POW. But in a situation like that, it was so unrealistic. One of them could have subdued the German, cleared him of weapons, and held him at gunpoint, while the other treated his wounds. As someone who served, it just was so out of reality how it took place. It was kind of sad to see Blake (who had been a model soldier to that point) die in such a pathetic manner. Still a great movie, though.

i thought it was well produced and loved the approach but something left me a bit unsatisfied. needed a little more meat imo.

Did a very good job of capturing the mud, grime, death and muck of no man's land.

I thought the attention to detail was tremendous.

Run out and see it.

Ground too wet to move them?

1917 the war was starting to wear on the German economy, I don't think artillery was plentiful.

Yeah not one take...that was obvious.

Yeah a variation on a Heart of Darkness journey

Yeah another variation of Homer's Oddessy

Yeah inexplicable or unexplained stuff

Yeah poorly trained absent minded assumption of humanity regarding the pilot. Not the first front line soldier that relaxed a bit

Like Saving Private Ryan...clichés and hard to believe stuff and a Oddessy journey story 2500 years old, But the first 20 minutes blew away all prior war films and carry the weak spots to a good movie

So 1917...great attention to detail and the absurdities (no wonder a revival of Existentialism emerged from the horror show of a war. To me, the detail in the mud fields and the half buried bodies and the endless twisting trenches and the nutty dangerous bravado of the upper officer class (a feature of that war more so than would seem possible was the moral ineptitude and intellectual bankruptcy and contempt for the ordinary classes of the elites and upper classes) made the movie

Two simple straightforward people stuck in a vortex not of their making yet trying to do the right thing is a classic story line. Great horrors on the journey is as old as written language.

To me, it was in the details

And I liked that long standing stalwarts of the British acting world had the cameos and new actors had the main characters.

Memorable movie. Like Requiem for a Dream, its not something one seeks out twice but it had images that don't go away.

Thanks Bill2.

In comment 14789836 Beezer said:

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Same reaction to the scene with the kid who was killed ... and his face lost color after essentially bleeding out. Seemed one shot ... was impressed by that, and obviously a lot more.

I noticed that too as it was happening. Almost certainly done via editing. But still an important detail that is often ignored.

Really enjoyed the movie although some of what happened in the second half (re: soldier hits his head, is shot, should have drowned) wasn’t credible.

One detail I did like was all of the dead bodies - literally a bog of them he crawls over.

Sam Mendes films are beautifully shot, they look like paintings.

As a fan of the technical aspects of making monies, this camera work is astounding. There was a long youtube of how the movie was filmed, and all the prep work that went into this.

The setup reminded me of that long nighttime raid in True Detective Season 1.
Making of 1917 - ( New Window )

In comment 14790127 Named Later said:

Quote:

As a fan of the technical aspects of making monies, this camera work is astounding. There was a long youtube of how the movie was filmed, and all the prep work that went into this. The setup reminded me of that long nighttime raid in True Detective Season 1. Making of 1917 - ( New Window )

And Fukunaga is making the new Bond, one can only hope what kind of action shots will be in it.

it didn't glorify war and truly showed how horrible war can be.

a "war movie," but of a story of the perseverance of Shofield in completing his assignment. It has a war setting, but it really wasn't about the war itself.

As for a movie I liked it, but isn't something I would want to see again.

Beautifully shot, Haunting and Heroic. This is more of an anti War movie without being Preachy.

is totally overblown in my opinion.

The one take trope is nonsense to me. One take or one take trope is ok if time is not compressed, but since this is a compressed timeline I think it is nonsensical.

I am not even thrilled by the cinematography. Of course, Deakins is a genius but I think these were obvious and heavy handed choices. Nice production design though.

There are plenty of better movies this year, imo.

Once it started because of the time clock related to the given orders the dangers and so the tension really did not let up. The water scene was a bit overdone. The airplane scene I found believable with two young guys trying to save someone and letting their guard down. The different interactions with the soldiers was were well done. Young men caught up in something that was seen as a horror but something they felt obligated to do. Definitely an antiwar movie and well worth seeing. Gallipoli is still the best antiwar movie I have seen, from 1981 with a very young Mel Gibson. I have always hated following orders that don't make sense.

I'm closer to the skeptics on this thread. I thought it was a good movie and I'm glad I saw it in theaters. But I don't think it was fantastic/amazing; for recent war movies, I much prefer Dunkirk. My quick thoughts:

Positives
- As I get older plot twists do less to wow me, but I did not see one of the 2 main characters dying 1/3 into the movie (more on that later).
- Speaking of which, that airplane scene was very unique.
- The cinematography in the night scene was amazing. As others have pointed out, the "burning town at night" scene in a war movie is obvious, but it was really well done.
- The one-shot thing did make you feel like you were there. I consider it more of a gimmick, but it did serve a purpose.

Drawbacks
- The "civilian French lady helps English-speaking soldier" trope is just a little too tired for me. Did they need a scene where he interacts with a civilian and baby? It felt almost obligatory. That night scene would have been even more intense if it were more continuous.
- The water scene: Did anyone think there was any chance he would die? I did not.
- I'm also tired of the "war-monger leader might risk his troops for glory" thing. I know they needed it for the drama, but I feel like I've seen that enough. (As a counter-argument, though, someone correctly pointed out that WWI was a tutorial in the officer class just fucking over regular soldiers, so I guess the possibility was realistic.)
- The plot seemed a bit similar to Saving Private Ryan. Probably not something they could have avoided.

What I wish they had done
- I think it would have been much truer to the spirit of World War I if his mission had failed. Maybe 10 minutes before the end of the movie, he dies. Then the last 10 minutes they shift away from the first-person perspective and the final scene is the British getting massacred in a woebegone trench rush. I think that would have better conveyed what a devastating (and often tactically pointless) war it was. But this is why I don't work in Hollywood lol.

From a technical standpoint, it wasn't just the "one take" look that impressed me, it was the transitions between scenes that, in screen time, took only a few seconds, but somehow conveyed a longer stretch of time.

Example (and spoiler alert): After Blake bleeds out from getting stabbed by the downed pilot, Schofield tries to drag him away. He gets like ten feet, when two guys from another unit show up to help. Then you turn around, and there's this whole other regiment just *there.* In terms of strict continuity, they had to have been a stone's throw away the entire time, but the transition was handled in such a way that you just realized, intuitively, that no, time has passed.

It happened again when Schofield climbs off the back of the truck and tries to cross the river over the downed bridge. An enemy sniper starts shooting, and the regiment of soldiers that were there thirty second prior have vanished.

I admit the story was a little far fetched but similar to Saving Private Ryan. I too was surprised how Blake died. In fact I thought he would survive and Schofield would die along the way. Great cinematography. Being that it wasn't a true story I thought they could have developed the relationship between the 2 soldiers a bit more but in general a movie that I would see again in theaters which is saying a lot.

With varying degrees of truth. I'm not sure it's entirely true, though the American officer corps of Dos Passos wasn't any kinder or gentler. The issue was more that the technological advantages were with the defense in that era, particularly artillery and machine guns, and the tactics took (very bloody) years to adapt. More of a failure of imagination than a lack of give-a-shit. Haig certainly felt his failures. Offensive technology like the tank was rudimentary even in the later years of the war, and things like Hutier tactics were effective at improving mobility and offensive advantage but they still increased mortality rates.