What Spectacular Camera Work

Rating: 8/10 (13 January 2020)

I have to come to terms with the fact that I enjoy war movies. I've denied this for years--decades even--because I detest war and I don't care to see a movie glorifying war. But, what I've come to realize is that most war movies do not glorify war. A lot of them are human interest stories--stories about one or a few characters that are involved in a war. They're not war mongers, they're not policy makers, they're just people doing a dirty job.
"1917" is about people as well. More specifically it's about two British soldiers that have to get to a certain battlefront to deliver a message: "Do not attack, it's a trap." One of the soldiers, Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman), has a brother in the targeted battalion so he has added incentive to get there.
One of the more spectacular aspects of this movie was the camera work. Somehow, they made the entire movie look like one continuous camera shot with no cuts. Through trenches, barbed wire, around men, in and out of buildings, etc., and the camera was continuously rolling.
This is something I tend to pay attention to and something I really appreciated in the movie "Children of Men" when there were a few extended scenes with no cuts. In this movie it is an entirely different level. I know that there had to be cuts and my assumption is that they were expertly done when panning from one point to another, but that's just my guess. In any case it was a marvel.
Expert camera shots and editing alone aren't enough to make a movie worthwhile. The story and the characters are ultimately going to be the draw. Like many war stories, this was a story of self-sacrifice. The true strength of the movie comes in the form of its authenticity. The more authentic the more gripping, the more personal, the deeper the emotional connection to the overall story and its characters. "1917" offers that along with some awesome cinematography.