Genre:
Action, War, Drama
Produced by:
Sam Mendes, Pippa Harris, Jayne-Ann Tenggren, Callum McDougall, Brian Oliver
Directed by:
Sam Mendes
Written by:
Sam
Mendes, Krysty Wilson-Cairns
Production Company: Universal Pictures
Starring: George
MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Mark Strong, Andrew Scott, Richard Madden, Claire
Duburcq, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch
Runtime: 120 minutes
SYNOPSIS:
Two British lance corporals William
Schofield (George MacKay) and Thomas
Blake (Dean- Charles Chapman) are
assigned to deliver a message to call off an impending attack on the German
troops. If they fail, then it could mean the deaths of over 1,600 men. And the
mission gets more personal when they are told that Lieutenant Joseph Blake (Richard Madden), Tom’s brother, is
amongst those men. In a race against time, they must navigate their way past no
man’s land, taking them even further away from comfort zone and closer into the
remnants of World War I.
REVIEW:
More than a century had passed since the
First World War ended in 1918 and changed the world, for better or worse, and
yet sadly, its significance in today’s world has gradually faded from the public
consciousness. It doesn’t help that there would be another World War thirty
years later, which immediately take the limelight away from the World War I
heroes who fought just as hard as those in World War II and render its
reputation as “the war to end all wars” irrelevant. And the fact that there are
over 1,000 World War II veterans who are still alive and well enough to refresh
people’s memory of what happened while the majority of the World War I veterans
had long since bitten the dust emphasized just how World War I has continued to
play second fiddle to World War II. Such sentiment also applies in films. There
are at least one or two World War II films every year, but only approximately
one or two World War I films every two or three years. Wings (1927), Paths of Glory
(1957) and pretty recently War Horse
(2011), just to name a few, are amongst the more popular Hollywood-made World
War I classics, but for the most part, they’re often found in foreign cinema
than stateside.
In that sense, Sam Mendes’ 1917, which
is produced by none other than the maker of War
Horse Mr. Spielberg himself
through his production company Amblin Entertainment, marks an end to
Hollywood’s long break from making big-budget World War I productions. The film
has long been considered to be a passion project for Mendes, a man who is no stranger to the war genre having adapted Anthony Swofford’s 2003 Gulf War memoir
to the screen with Jarhead (2005). But
1917 perhaps hits much closer to home
than Jarhead, since it is partially based
on his paternal grandfather Alfred
Mendes’ story serving for the British army during the Great War. Like all
World War films, Mendes puts
together some of the finest talents in front of and behind the camera.
1917 is a
near-flawless modern masterpiece of the World War epic genre storytelling, one
which sees Mendes at the top of his
game in turning a small piece of history into a beautifully-conceived and
executed celebration of the magic of cinema. An undertaking of massive
proportion, the film brings together the classic Hollywood style of filmmaking and
its filmmaker’s insanely audacious, innovative vision in a satisfying manner, making
for an ultimate nail-biting, seat-grabbing theme park thrill ride not even
other seasonal blockbuster or, to a certain extent, actual theme park rides can
offer that far transcends its technological gimmickry.
As a film in that regards, 1917 is almost exclusively a spectacle-driven
exercise that is all about pushing the limits of what the medium can accomplish
to its most extreme yet, reminiscent of Christopher
Nolan’s World War II epic Dunkirk
(2017) but on steroids. Mendes here reinvents
the particulars of World War films in a blast of relentless energy, taking the genre’s
high-concept DNA and injecting that with the adrenaline rush of a ticking-clock
action picture. The film is simply a tense, harrowing watch from start to
finish, one that plunges its viewers up close and personal with the lead
characters’ constant state of heightened alertness and knee deep into the dark,
perilous corners of the war-torn France.
1917 is truly a rare
breed, a cinematic endeavor that’s all at once bombastic and restrained, a mainstream
blockbuster product and a work of visual poetry. Mendes’ consummate flair for showmanship and unparalleled dedication
to gritty realism here echoes that of Spielberg’s
classic World War II epic Saving Private
Ryan (1998). Made on a production budget of $90 million, he spends a big
chunk of that precious Hollywood money really well, filling the screen with
moments of awe-inspiring spectacle and sometimes boldly unflinching grotesqueries
that perfectly captures the essence of his grandfather’s real-life story. And
it continues to gather momentum over the course of its two hours runtime, maintaining
its breakneck pacing that rarely ever lets up for a minute, not even in the
quieter scenes when it seems like danger has finally eluded the heroes.
In a film about characters racing
against the clock, 1917’s attention-grabbing
single-take conceit seems like the perfect fit.
The aforementioned creative choice
definitely enhances the level of intensity and urgency that perhaps a much more
traditional, conventional theatrical presentation couldn’t achieve, thanks
largely to Roger Deakins’ award-worthy
cinematography. Inspired by his colleague Emmanuel
Lubezki’s Oscar-winning effort in Birdman
(2014), Deakins has simply perfected
the revolutionary craft of the one-take technique in ways that seems like the
camera is a character in itself, just as alive and in the thick of action as
the soldiers and their superiors in the film.
What he pulls off here is nothing short
of an impressive magic trick. 1917 finds
the legendary master magician at his virtuoso best, performing his grand illusion
with such subtlety and smoothness it makes the audience forget that what they’ve
been watching all along was not real and just gets fully immersed into the quasi-virtual
reality, real-time sensation it evokes. His fluid, balletic camera movement
adds a sense of foreboding to each and every frame, whether it’s the money shot
of one of the characters running down the field Tom Cruise-style while, amidst the mayhem, the British soldiers are
charging forward behind him or the breathtaking 360-degree pans of the characters just
walking down a trench, alternating between the camera following their trek ahead
of them and then behind them.
Deakins’ lighting is also
a feast for the eyes. There is one wide
shot in the film where one of the characters is running down a deserted war-torn
landscape at night and his touch of painterly quality is prevalent throughout in
the way that something like a cloud of fiery smoke filling the sky in the
background can just bursts with ethereal, dream-like color or that the pitch-black
darkness can seem like it has an eerily ghostly life of its own.
At the same time, Lee Smith’s impeccable editing (yes, the Academy, even single-take
films need some editing) helps fulfill both Mendes and Deakins’ wild,
lofty ambitions. 1917 marks his first
foray into World War I films and yet, he is actually no stranger to editing
World War films, having done World War II before for Nolan with his Oscar-winning work Dunkirk. Smith outdoes
himself here with the equivalent of basically doing God’s work in having to
stitch together a series of reportedly eight and, possibly the longest, nine
minute-long single-take footage and make them somehow connect so seamlessly in
the final two hour long product. Alongside Deakins
and Mendes, both of whom are
nominated at the Oscars for Best Cinematography and Best Director this year
respectively, he is just as deserving of another Oscar nomination for his
editing accomplishment that the Academy this year has unfairly denied.
Credit must also be given to the people
who made Mendes, Deakins and Smith’s job slightly easier. Whether the scene involves just a
couple of people or hundreds to thousands of background extras, every small
skirmishes and big battle sequences have been carefully choreographed and
orchestrated, to the point where the action looks totally spontaneous and
realistic. Dennis Gassner’s painstakingly-detailed
production design in 1917 is
jaw-dropping in every sense of the word, recreating the bloody, grimy remnants
of the First World War in such an epic and visceral way it further underscores just
how incredible the scale, scope and carnage of it all. Jacqueline Durran’s meticulous costume design is not only period-accurate,
but also event-accurate, dirtying down all her actors and extras’ military
attires with tiny and heavy layers of mud, dust and a few holes here and there to
symbolize the destructive nature of war. Thomas
Newman’s operatic score is transporting, a suitable musical reflection of
the grandiose sweep and looming terror on the screen.
Story-wise, 1917 benefits greatly from its thriller leanings. What sets Mendes’ World War film apart from the
rest is its pure distillation of the man against nature genre that’s been inherent
in so many survival films. Working from a screenplay by Mendes himself and Krysty
Wilson-Cairns, this whole thing sort of plays out like a tightly
constructed contraption of life and death survival situations, which is evident
in its anxiety-inducing, nerve-shredding first act, a lengthy sequence of the
two lance corporals walking across no-man’s land, cutting one’s hand on a wire
fence, passing by dead horses, rotting corpses, rats and trip wires before it
culminates with a big tunnel explosion, crushing them under its rubble for
awhile. Its opening thirty minutes sets the tone for a film that wisely relies
on steady and deliberate ramping up of tension to keep its war film set-pieces engaging,
hence making every second count.
1917’s three acts
have been structured like a Call of Duty-esque
video game, reflected by the portrayal of the two lead lance corporals as
player characters and the various lieutenants, generals, colonels and even the enemy
as merely non-player characters the players have to confront if they are to get
to the next level, which is an ingenious move in the creator’s part to concoct
a more streamlined story. It’s faithful to the idea that this film is about the
lance corporals’ mission, not the war itself. Everyone except the heroes is
there just to tell them everything they need to know about what is on the next
level, maybe take them to the location of the next level, to be taken down if
they are indeed the Germans and, when they have finally served their purposes,
they’re discarded from the rest of the story altogether. There is even a typical
collect-the-item video game side quest when a seemingly throwaway scene
involving one of the characters filling up his flask with milk turns out to have
a major importance later in the film.
One weak area that unfortunately holds 1917 back from true greatness is the
lack of human interest.
The characters are rather flimsy and
lackluster across the board, which is slightly disappointing given Mendes’ familial attachment to the
story. Whatever personal angle the film might have in its initial conception
gets lost in the shuffle of making its World War heroes, in this case both William
Schofield and Thomas Blake, come across as just the usual, cookie-cutter,
assembly-line archetypes, seemingly slapped together from the spare parts of other
World War cinematic classics. Schofield and Blake’s all-too-familiar arcs and
personality render them indistinguishable and interchangeable from each other
and even World War heroes from other films.
Because of that, 1917 cannot help but feel like it’s going through the motions whenever
it tries to develop the two aforementioned lead heroes as characters. There’s
some idle conversation between them here and there but those tiny scenes don’t amount
to much for either Schofield or Blake in the bigger picture and instead, they are
more of the obligatory fillers that’s tacked onto the film just to fill some
dead air in between the action. As a result, the intended dramatic payoff later
with these characters lands with a thud, emphasized by, without spoiling
anything, their final moment together which never quite reaches the sort of emotional
resonance that it is going for.
And there are some scenes in 1917 that requires major suspension of
disbelief.
For a start, this is yet again one of
those war films that fall back on the silly cliché of the villains being
incompetent at taking down the action hero. Consider the scene where one of the
heroes is about to cross over to the other side of a broken bridge and, as he
is about to make the jump, a shot rings out, coming from a German sniper. The
problem with this scene is how the sniper always misses the target, as if he’s a
Stormtrooper in disguise. Even more ridiculous, the way he fires his weapon makes
it seem like he’s firing a warning shot rather than actually trying to kill the
hero, which saps this action sequence of the tension that war films of this
nature needs.
At a certain point in 1917, one of the characters stumbles
across a young French woman Lauri (Claire
Duburcq), leading to a small heart-to-heart moment between them that ends
up not only being disposable and out-of-left-field but also making even lesser
logical sense compared to the German sniper scene. The basic idea of this woman
who is capable of surviving in a place that looks to have been war-torn for
days with finite amounts of food, water and even oxygen strains credulity past
the breaking point.
Despite some of its faults, 1917 certainly has its strong cast to
thank for elevating their otherwise standard characters. Mendes’ film boasts some of the biggest names to ever grace the
British Isles such as Benedict
Cumberbatch, Colin Firth and Richard Madden, just to name a few, and
yet, it’s a pair of lesser-known, unsung heroes in George MacKay and Dean-Charles
Chapman who made the greater impact in the end. MacKay and Chapman’s natural,
effortless chemistry between one another is the glue that holds this film
together, giving their every clichéd, recycled World War film dialogue exchange
some semblance of emotional heft and nuance. This is not to say that they’re
not good on their own terms.
George
MacKay
delivers a grounded and efficient performance that not only imbues Lance
Corporal William Schofield with more personality than what is written on the
page, but also shows the extent of his vast range as a compelling dramatic
actor and perhaps most surprisingly, a convincing action star. Taking on the
leading man role here, MacKay basically
carries much of the film’s weight on his shoulder with undeniable commitment. He
is more than up to the races with the physical demands of the role, adding a
great deal of physicality and tenacity to the large-scale action. His status as
a relatively little-known actor somehow makes him even more ideally suited to
embody Schofield as the everyman hero.
Dean-Charles
Chapman’s
work is as commendable. Chapman clearly
relishes every opportunity at being a real scene stealer here as the co-lead
and Schofield’s trusted partner Lance Corporal Thomas Blake. He is totally believable
as that sort of ordinary, almost un-heroic guy who is just trying to survive
through something as extraordinary as the First World War, but then, the way he
channels Blake’s blunt, foul-mouthed sense of humor, extreme level of confidence
that belies his inexperience at combat and fierce determination to rescue his
missing brother no matter what demonstrates a magnetic screen presence strong enough
to hold its audience’s attention throughout the entirety of his screentime, which
more than makes up for the lack of characterization.
1917’s supporting
players’ contribution to the cause should not go unnoticed, bringing their
charisma and eclectic acting prowess to parts that may seem like nothing more
than a glorified cameo.
Playing the cinematic version of a video
game non-player character who briefs Schofield and Blake on their upcoming
mission, Colin Firth gives his
signature authority and gravitas to General Erinmore’s every line of expository
dialogue. Andrew Scott is a blast to
watch and probably the most memorable performer amongst the starry cameos as
Lieutenant Leslie, a bright comic relief spark with an inebriated sense of
war-weariness. Mark Strong exudes
power, poise and wisdom as Captain Smith, who, like Lieutenant Leslie, are one
of the characters these lance corporals meet along the way. Benedict Cumberbatch wears the
battle-scarred gruffness of Colonel Mackenzie on his sleeve, the man in charge
of the would-be doomed operation. Last but not least, Richard Madden provides a welcomingly tender and touching presence from
all the NPC task-givers surrounding the film as one of the lance corporals’ endgame,
in other words Thomas’ brother, Joseph Blake.
CONCLUSION:
1917 once again
shows Sam Mendes in total command of
his craft with this undeniably groundbreaking technical achievement that has
more than enough visceral action set-pieces and suspense to help push the
well-worn World War narrative to new, spectacular heights.
Score: 9/10
No comments:
Post a Comment