1917 is a technical marvel of a film with a lot of heart and very little story. The film’s cinematic gambit of creating the illusion of a single, unedited shot is either a bold gambit or a gimmick that seriously limits the narrative, depending on how you want to look at it. It deserves accolades for cinematography and singular images and moments that will leave a long-lasting impression, but those memories likely won’t be accompanied by recollections of the story. It’s an artistic film and your enjoyment of it will largely depend on your tolerance for that kind of thing.
Taking place in World War I (and it’s nice to see WWI getting more attention these days), 1917 is the story of two British soldiers tasked with delivering a message to call-off an attack. If they fail to deliver the message in time, 1,600 soldiers (including the brother of one of our leads) will walk into a trap and die. The film follows the soldiers as they walk through war-torn France to deliver the message.
The cinematography of 1917 is what will likely be long-remembered and studied in film classes decades from now. Similar to Birdman or Hitchcock’s Rope, 1917 is made to appear as if it was filmed in one long, continuous shot. The film begins with our heroes waking up in the morning and follows them, without evident edits, straight through to the final moment of the film. This also means that, with the exception of a few moments when a character is unconscious and the screen fades to black, the film takes place in real time. I honestly have no idea how this is pulled off. I didn’t realize that the film was shot this way when I entered the theater, but after a few minutes, it dawned on me that I hadn’t seen a cut yet. Other than the aforementioned moments of darkness, I could not find a noticeable cut in the film (though it’s a downside of this approach that it leads to me spending the running time looking for one). The sheer level of difficulty and attention to detail needed to do this is mind-boggling. While films like Birdman and Rope have done this in the past, and impressively so, they were much more contained films. The fact that cinematographer Roger Deakins and director Sam Mendes pulled this off in open French Landscapes with hundreds of soldiers running around is absolutely astounding.
As impressive as it is on a technical level, it is also inherently limiting in terms of storytelling. The film is quite literally a single long shot of two men delivering a message. Yes, things happen along the way, but the single-shot mechanic doesn’t allow the film to stray from this one, continuous path. The result is a film with a narrative as basic as its cinematography is complex. The result is basically a more simplistic version of the similar Saving Private Ryan. To put it another way, 1917 is the antithesis of Dunkirk, a war film that I criticized for having an overly-complicated narrative that didn’t allow for the audience to identify with its characters. I consider 1917 to be superior to Dunkirk, though, so I suppose I prefer this side of the narrative coin.
The simplistic structure does allow the main performances to shine, though, as Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay carry the entire film as the audience is there for literally every moment of their journey. These guys go through a hellish spectrum of emotions that is draining by the end, emphasizing just how awful this experience would have been in real life. Several moments sent audible gasps throughout the theater, both due to the strength of the performances and the horrors being realistically portrayed, as the film throws the audience into no man’s land without a sign of Wonder Woman to help them.
1917 is a poignant and beautifully-shot film. However, I’m interested to see if broader audiences will embrace it given the minimal story. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up on my ten-best list for 2020 and it has moments that I will remember a year from now, but I will likely remember it more as a technical cinematic achievement than as an engaging piece of entertainment.
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