Another Day In One Long Take

Rating: 8/10 (10 January 2020)

The command has realized that the Germans have pulled back for a trap on a British offensive. The telephone lines are cut, and the only way to get the orders through to the colonel commanding the offensive is to send two soldiers through the lines. One of them has special incentive. His elder brother is a soldier in the attack. If it goes through, 1600 men, will be wiped out for no purpose.... including the soldier's brother.
It's a classic story-telling format that dates back to the ANABASIS: get from point A to Point B, only here it's just two men traveling through the alternating inferno of the Great War's front lines, and the bucolic springtime of northern France. Effective as that is, director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins have shot it, as near as they could manage, as one long take - after I had realized what they were doing, about twenty minutes into the film, I began to look for ways of editing things together. While I spotted a few, there was really only one obvious spot, and that was after more than an hour had passed.
This deliberate effort to make this movie in this manner clearly has a point. It is a constant barrage, one long cinematic sentence that must be swallowed whole. It forces the viewer to take it all in in one piece, giving, perhaps, a hint of the overwhelming sensory overload of this struggle to get through.
It certainly worked on me.