Pretty Ordinary with Stylistic Gimmick

Rating: 6/10 (26 January 2020)

Mendes has just won the Directors Guild of America top award but I can't see why. This is a pretty ordinary WW1 drama. telling a noble story, but with an unnecessary stylistic gimmick. A lot has been said about the long take shot but these add nothing to the drama and in fact make the film look like playing a video game, partly because of the tendency to have the narrative divided into staging posts (e.g. the farmhouse, ruined town, etc.). Some lines in the script are achingly bad and at times the acting is poor. Deakins photography however is excellent as ever and not certainly because of the long takes.