mission not impossible

Rating: 10/10 (21 January 2020)

1917 begins with a soldier under a tree, then he walks in a field where there are more and more soldiers, then he arrives in a trench full of soldiers, and the camera keeps on following him and his friend in their perillous mission. 1917 is shot in one real time shot (with some not too much visible cuts) like master Alfred Hitchcock did in "The Rope" in 1949 (there's another reference to Hitch with the plane sequence). As the two soldiers keep on running through different landscapes, the camera follow them closely in all positions, and some movements are really virtuoso (these movements also make me think of "Soy Cuba" and "The Cranes Are Flying"). So, the two soldiers have the dangerous mission to go deliver a letter to another position to stop an attack at dawn that is a trap to slaughter english troops. The two soldiers have to go fast and stay determined after a lot of nasty surprises. So there's no time for psychology (only one very touching sequence), just staying alive and keep on running to the objective. There are hundreds of details brilliantly directed by Sam Mendes and shot with genious by Roger Deakins. And in that bloody war, it's just a right vision of corpses with no gory sequences. Bravo !!!