An unnecessary display of technical virtuosity

Rating: 6/10 (18 January 2020)

Apart from the 'Will it, Won't it win Best Picture', the main talking point regarding "1917" is the fact that it was filmed in a single take, though of course it wasn't. Mendes shot the film in a number of seamless takes that give the impression the whole thing is happening in real time with only one obvious break midway through when the screen goes black to signify the passage of time from day to night; otherwise, all the events we see would seem to take place over the film's two hour running time and that's where my problem with the picture lies.
"1917" is an exciting, technically brilliant picture but it's also unbelievable. What happens to the characters in this film might happen to them over the course of a day or two, a week perhaps or possibly a year but what happens to George MacKay, (never really off the screen in this film), in two hours is very hard to take. Okay, perhaps I'm being picky; it's only a film after all and what we're seeing is several stories stitched together to form the events of a single day but it's still a cheat, a brilliant but unnecessary display of technical virtuosity. Watching "1917" I kept thinking, 'Do we really need to do something just because we can?' For me, "1917" would have been a much better film had it been done in the old-fashioned conventional way with the action spread over several days.
So what's it about, this 'one-take masterpiece' that's neither one-take nor a masterpiece? Well, to prevent a massace of around 1600 troops two young soldiers must make their way behind enemy lines and warn a particular colonel to call off a planned assault; it's as simple as that and to make this an 'exciting' picture all sorts of superbly filmed misfortunes befall them.
You might call it a director's picture since Mendes engineers everything brilliantly but it's like a massive stage production with everything designed down to the tiniest detail rather than seeming in any way 'real', (let's just call it 'the theatre of war'). It's certainly a cinematographer's film and Roger Deakins will justly deserve the Oscar he's going to win for shooting it and in the case of George MacKay you might even say it's an actor's picture. He's superb and on the strength of this alone I predict a real future for him, (otherwise too many well-known faces flit across the screen in the manner of "Oh, What a Lovely War" or "The Longest Day"). Of course, a lot of people have been blown away by it or maybe they've just been blown away by the hype. Personally, I didn't buy it.