1917

Rating: 6/10 (23 January 2020)

Sam Mendes has made a technically bravura film which looks like one long take. Something he experimented with at the beginning of his James Bond movie, Spectre.
Made by Dreamworks, the company's first shot for the Best Picture Oscar was Saving Private Ryan in 1998.
The story is about two soldiers in World War One. Their mission is to make their way across no man's land, the abandoned German lines and reach the advancing Allied troops. They have to deliver a message ordering them not to attack as they are walking into a trap set by the Germans who want to give the impression that they are retreating.
One of the soldiers has good reason to take this perilous mission. His brother is part of the Allied group and is in danger. Therefore the story owes a nod to Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan.
Impressively photographed by Roger Deakins, it sets out to show the dirty horrors of trench warfare. The story though is slight and gets lost with the style of filmmaking that Mendes has employed.
I thought it lacked the verve of Peter Weir's Gallipoli, a film which I kept thinking off when I watched 1917. This might be the reason that although it went into the Oscars as a frontrunner, it lost out on the main prizes.