1917

I only saw this in January but there'd need to be some proper ball-tearers on the horizon to outstrip 1917 for film of the year. I really should go to the adjective farm to sufficiently describe this belter from Sam Mendes. Ostensibly, it's a 'journey' story, wherein two young soldiers are given orders to take a message to the new Allied front line in France. This message will likely save 1600 or so lives. High stakes - quite similar to the final third of Gallipoli. But the plot is kind of secondary in 1917. It's all about the spectacle and the delivery (of the film and the message, I guess). There's been a fair bit of chatter about the way it was filmed to look like one complete take, from opening scene to closing. The filmmakers themselves talk about making it in 'one shot' and 'real time'. This is handled supremely by cinematographer, Roger Deakins (below), but trying to watch it with the aim of working out how they did it is a fruitless task. I gave up after a few minutes and just focussed on the mission.

It can't really be stressed enough how sublime the visuals are in this film. There's one sequence, lasting roughly 20 minutes where a character leaves a building at night and is chased through the bombed out streets of a small town, finally ending up in a raging river. This is hands down, one of the best looking, most beautifully filmed sequences I've ever seen. Another scene of an overhead dogfight becomes very knuckle-chewing (think North by Northwest but with more fire). And I reckon it was a nice touch to give us a breather by introducing a civilian woman and baby for a few minutes. It slowed the pace just enough and also fleshed out one of the lead characters. The set design is phenomenal, painstakingly recreating the trenches, corpses, weapons, clothing, food, even rats. The blocking of the journey must have seemed eternal. Everyone involved needs about a year off.

Dean-Charles Chapman (Tommen in Game of Thrones) and George McKay play the two grunts chosen to deliver the message, and the camera never leaves them. They've a lot to carry and they do so extremely well. On their trek they come across some of the cognoscenti of British acting - Colin Firth, Andrew Scott, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch and Richard Madden. None of these geezers have more than a minute or two on screen but they nail it, especially Strong and Madden.

1917 is a brilliant film, lifted above the great by outstanding preparation, planning and design. Getting it right must have been nigh on impossible but they've done it.

See also:

Peter Weir's Gallipoli (1981) for a similar WW1 feel and Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk (2017) for a different war and a different style of film making.

VERY EARLY SPOILER IN POD!!!

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