An Experience and a Technical Achievement, But Little Else.

Rating: 8/10 (10 January 2020)

The story follows Corporals Blake and Schofield as they're given a mission to cross into enemy territory to deliver a message to a Colonel about to step into a German trap. The film follows along roughly in real time as the two men traverse trenches, no man's land, and abandoned towns, taking every opportunity to show us the horrors of war along the way. They meet a variety of side characters who help them move from one setpiece to the next, all while the camera follows keenly, never cutting away from what they see or how they react. As far as story goes, there honestly isn't all that much to it. It's a straight-forward story of a journey from point A to point B. No frills, no mind-bending twists, no flashbacks. The story is secondary to the experience the film wants to immerse you in.
The most obvious way the film immerses you in the theatre of war is with its relentlessly promoted use of long shots and hidden cuts. If I was a pernickety critic, I'd point out it's actually two composite long-shots rather than just a single one thanks to a cut to black roughly in the middle, which makes the gimmick feel almost superfluous. If you're going to make a film with the goal of it being a single long-shot, don't cut it to black in the middle. Of course the reason they do this is so they don't have to tackle with the problem of dusk. Dusk is already a difficult time of day to film in, but to somehow capture the transition from day to night in a composite long-shot would be almost impossible. It also helps narratively by placing the climax of the movie in the early morning without the film being twelve hours long.
So I can see why they made that decision, but ultimately I feel like if it was really that necessary, the film should have eschewed the gimmick and been filmed and edited more traditionally, using the concept of long-shots more sparingly to make certain scenes stand out above others. When you make the whole movie a long-shot, you're making the visceral trek across no man's land just as significant as an uneventful trek through the woods. The walk through the woods didn't particularly gain anything from being a long-shot, nor did any sequence of events at the farmhouse or in the truck, and bringing them up to the level of the no man's land scene, the numerous trench scenes, and the Écoust sequence kind of cheapened the experience for me.
All that said, on a purely technical basis, the use of long-shot was phenomenal. This was easily some of the best composite editing I've ever seen. In fact knowing it was going to be a long-shot kind of ruined the experience for me because I spent the whole time trying to spot the cuts. There are some obvious ones like complete blackout when they move from an exterior to an interior, and of course clever use of obstacles in the foreground like walls and trees, but there are many more that I couldn't spot. For instance there's one during the plane crash and I couldn't spot it even though I've seen a video pointing it out. God knows how many more of those kind of cuts I missed. There's a couple more as well that are a bit obvious when Schofield jumps down into something (once into a crater and second into a river). You can tell there's a cut because his jump is CGI'd in in order to match the two shots together. Regardless the camera moves so smoothly from one moment to another that most the time it's impossible to tell. Watch out for the river scene. There must have been cuts there, complicated by the turbulent waters, but I couldn't see any. The illusion of moving from one scene to another is maybe only spoiled by so many landmarks being seemingly so close together. Thanks to all the difficulties they encounter along the way to slow them down, the actual walk unimpeded would've taken less than two hours.
The use of lighting is also remarkable, especially in the Écoust sequence with the blazing fire creating Deakins' favoured single-source of light, but then complicating matters with a number of flares that go up and cast ever-shifting shadows on the walls of the ruins. They had to map this sequence out with a model of the entire town and a moving torch in order to track the shadows movements before filming, and that alone is worth kudos. Other than that though, 1917 is a fairly subtle film for Deakins. It's never particularly pretty, and the long-shot gimmick prevents the opportunity for fixed camera compositions, but that's not what this movie is about. Deakins manages to craft a visual identity fitting for this movie that services every need while showing off in more subtler ways.
Acting was pretty good across the board. George MacKay manages to hold the emotional weight of the film on his shoulders from beginning to end (or tree-slump to tree-slump) as Corporal Schofield, playing a young man already disillusioned with war. He's already earned a medal, and given it away, longing only to get back to his family. He comes across as cold and distant for much of the film, because he's a soldier with an important mission that must be done, no matter how unhappy he feels about it. Dean-Charles Chapman is also really good as Corporal Blake, offering the perfect counter to Schofield's pessimism. He's driven, enthusiastic, kind-hearted, and wouldn't mind a little bit of glory on the side. While he doesn't ignore the horrors of war, he certainly perceives them differently to Schofield, assuring him that while the cherry blossom trees may have been cut down, they'll only grow back in larger numbers.
The various cameos of side-characters are all great as well. Colin Firth is perfectly cast as the General, no nonsense and straight to the point. Mark Strong's Captain is a warmer fellow, encountering the boys at their lowest and giving them a leg up and a word of warning. Andrew Scott almost steals the show as a Lieutenant on the frontlines with a blasé and matter-of-fact attitude towards what's going on around him. Benedict Cumberbatch is a slice of antagonism in the Colonel, but manages to escape any cliché in his small screen time, delivering one of the most brutal lines in the whole film. And finally Richard Madden as the older Blake brother gives an emotional turn, although I did find it somewhat hilarious that this film described Robb Stark as an older lookalike of Tommen Baratheon.
1917 almost lives up to everything it promised (it's two long-shots, not one). War is not pretty. It's horrible and intense, and a simple trek through five miles of fields is fraught with danger around every corner, from the places you'd least expect. The barren wasteland is not as barren as it would appear, still hiding civilians and enemy stragglers (who hit like stormtroopers, I'll add). 1917 is an experience more than anything, and it's an experience I would gladly have again. I give it a solid 8/10.