A visual stunner

Rating: 7/10 (13 January 2020)

Being the director of Skyfall is a dubious distinction, a movie which shows you Sam Mendes has enough talent to waste Javier Bardem's talent. Did the marketing team for 1917 forget that Mendes won a Best Director and Best Picture Oscar for American Beauty? Regardless, it is advisable to avoid watching 1917 and Uncut Gems in the same day, unless you bring along a change of shirts.
While watching the continuous shots of 1917, it is difficult to not wonder whether the more entertaining show is actually going on behind the cameras, as the cast and crew frantically get positioned and repositioned for the next scene, pushing ever forward into and out of the trenches. Regardless, 1917 as we see it, is an entertaining, stressful, and sometimes tender amalgamation of World War I anecdotes, a reminder that war is hell, and the push for another hundred yards of territory might be a complete disaster, a senseless loss of life and limbs.
Life is not the finish line, but rather how you avoid death along the way, whether it be gunshots, knife stabs, plane crashes, mortar fire, collapsing tunnels, loathsome diseases, or a nagging sense of dread and ennui. Wars, especially world wars, should serve as a morose reminder that we should never take peace for granted, and we need clear understandings of what we fight for.