One Shot for Many

Rating: 8/10 (22 January 2020)

The one continuous long take (or seemingly so) comprising most of or an entire picture that I've seen in other movies largely seems to me a gimmick--a technically impressive one, but gimmicky nonetheless. "Rope" (1948), Russian Ark" (2002), "La Casa Muda" (2010) and "Birdman" (2014), for example. "1917" has a reason, or at least a rhyme, for it, though. Basically, the narrative is the inverse of "Saving Private Ryan" (1998): risking and sacrificing the life of one man to save that of many instead of the other way around merely to rescue Matt Damon. There's also the added pressure of preventing a scheduled massacre--the race against time. One shot for one man. One shot for him to save the day. To top it off, the shot ends where it began, as a seemingly unbroken loop, with one soul resting against a tree.
So clever is this that I hardly mind that the drama may not be the most arresting, let alone enlightening, I've seen over countless war films, nor that it may not be as moving or as thrilling as I might've expected given the set up. Granted, there is the tree as life motif contrasted with the bodies of dead soldiers and other animals in the polluted war zones and abandoned habitats. The younger brother is knowledgeable about orchards, and these trees also mark the way to accomplish the mission. A similar contrast is made with the scene involving a woman and a baby and the soldiers remembering the families they've left back home.
Speaking of "Saving Private Ryan," again, though, that Steven Spielberg masterpiece was a technical marvel in several regards, but largely for the horrific chaos of the opening D-Day sequence, as seen through the eyes of Tom Hanks's character. There, the camera's gaze, as linked with Hanks, was something, too, of a hapless, shell-shocked warrior struggling to make sense out of the war and the mission of risking multiple lives to save but one. "1917" shares the symmetry of the camera's gaze being linked with a single character, Schofield. This perspective, however, is unflinching--so much so that it's made to look like a single take (well, except for that brief blackout when the character and the shot itself is shot by a bullet). It's the camera as savior. Note what happens every time Schofield and, thus, the gaze of the cinematographic apparatus, lose track of their partner, Blake. First, he volunteers Schofield for a dangerous mission, and, then, he gets into a fight with other soldiers--twice and with varying degrees of severity--and there's also the trip wire. That two relative non-stars are cast in these lead parts is wise, too, as if to suggest that the lives of their characters are not valued as highly as those of the stars (Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, etc.) marking the path of their journey, let alone the stars who provided a similar purpose within a similar structure in "Dunkirk" (2017), or, you know, Hanks and Damon. Regardless, the point is that the point of view suggests early on who the protagonist is and who will be protected. The sixteen-hundred soldiers advancing into a trap can only be rescued when Schofield takes the one-shot to them.
And so I'll rank "1917" highly because it employs this single technique to effectively harness the power of the cinematic gaze. Someday, perhaps, a picture will come along that will more fully recognize how deep in history the single-shot film belongs, though. "1917," however, does recall the loop aesthetic of early (or even pre-) cinema, by beginning and ending with the same composition--indeed, back when motion pictures were first screened in rotating instruments based on the phenakistiscope, where a spinning series of still images were given the illusion of life. (In this respect, I also like how Schofield looks at still photographs at the end, as did Blake.) Look at one of the so-called "first" films, for instance, "Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory" (1895); it ends where it began, too, with the gates closed. "1917" doesn't actually consist of only one take, though, but is rather compiled to look as though it did by digital editing (and as aided in its effectiveness by a fine score, soundtrack and visual effects). Alfred Hitchcock and company had to move the camera and cut in strategic places for "Rope," on the other hand. Further back still, one of the first filmmakers to create the illusion of multiple takes being but one was Georges Méliès, who reflexively employed such tricks for magical performances. These stop-substitutions gave the illusion of appearances and disappearances, resizings, doublings and other fantastic visions. If the one take continues to grow in popularity as a gimmick, maybe someone along the way will reference Méliès's magic. Until then, "1917" succeeds in repurposing the mission of the one-shot film.