I can't stay quiet on the western front. This war movie needs to be heard. 1917 is an intense powerful film.

Rating: 9/10 (19 March 2020)

This 2019 motion picture tells the harrowing story of two British World War 1 Tommies soldiers William Schofield (George MacKay) & Thomas Blake (Dean Charles Chapman) who are ordered to deliver a message about a German ambush before it's too late. Without spoiling the movie too much, composer Thomas Newman's music is jaw dropping haunting yet beautiful to listen to. 'The Night Window', 'Gehenna' and 'Sixteen Hundred Men' are some of the best tracks I ever heard in a war movie. Along with that, the visuals by cinematographer Roger Deakins with his crew are epic. They really did capture the perspective of what a soldier from the first world war will go through with the visuals. Everything about the camera work was near perfect. To add onto that the film was so meticulous edited that it really did look like the entire film was shot with one continuous real time seamless take. It's hard to spot where the cuts are. While some people might think that this way of shooting is highly distracting and gimmicky. The long take sequence wasn't too much of a turn off for me. I think that way of filming works within the story as it shows how vast the scale the dangerous journey is and how much time it takes to get place to place in order to save lives. However, the contrived coincidence moments involving the milk and the truck transfer just appearance out of nowhere was kinda jarring. Plus, I would had like to see the film done without the whole black out intermission flash forward sequence. That took me out of the story a bit as I was reminded that I was watching a film rather than real time occurrence but that's nitpicking. If anything, most of sophisticated camera movement was surprisingly smooth for a war movie. Glad to see that they went the spiritualism third person viewpoint rather than the first-person shaking cam look with their plan sequence. You really get to see all the details such as the vast number of extras with historical well-made accurate costume & make up work trapped in a claustrophobia sandbag trench surround by muddled empty field of craters full of corpses, barb wire, and shell cases. Then there is the wore down farm house including the burn out ruins of the urban settling that reminds the audience that the battles of WW1 weren't always fought in nowhere trenches, but also around people's homes. Surprisingly for a war movie, there was a very limited amount of action scenes here. Instead most of the film has the characters move from one upsetting site to other to build fear and suspense. For the most part, it kinda works. I would rather have that rather than a poorly done large CGI battle. The fake looking special feature failure of Schofield jumping off a cliff into a river to escape the Germans was enough to prove that direction would not work. Instead just seeing them scout around was very intense as invisible enemies are always hinted to be nearby. The acting from these two along with the supporting cameos of several seasonal performers like Colin Firth, Mark Strong & Benedict Cumberbatch was top notch. You really do see the anxiety and heart break spill out within their faces. The movie could has work with just the two main characters being silent and letting the body language speak for itself. However, I do get that it might cause the characters to seem more fictional shallow one-dimensional everymen that the audience can put themselves into rather than realistic living breathing human beings. Nevertheless, I felt that most of the dialogue between them could had been more detail. I really didn't get a grasp of who these characters really were. Regardless I did like the small semi conflict between the two over patriotism and just wanting to survive the war. After all, WW1 by contrast was a global conflagration in which nationalism was the spark. While other war movies might pick a patriotic or antiwar side. This movie was just more focus about the goal of enough saving individuals as possible rather than making a political statement for or against war. There is no better example of that than the beautiful reading of Edward Lear 'the Jumblies' poet sequence & the haunting singing of 'I am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger' later on the film. The character at first feels like he is just a wander in a deadly nonsensical world. Until he finds purpose by seeing unsung heroic done by his comrade for the immediate love of the family unit. That's deep character development. We also see this with the symbolism of the white cherry trees throughout the film. They are use to represent both death and life. For example, the cutting of the trees are the first signs of the salt the earth strategy employed in the war, yet the film points out that in the long run it will result in even more cherry trees growing in the area. The movie even opens and closes in a tree of life settling. It's very powerful metaphor. Fortunately, contrary to many other works about World War I, the film makes no attempt to show sympathy with enemy soldiers. Germans troops in the film are portrayal as uncivilized brute killers when in truth, most of them hold the same moral valor and honor as the allies. While the movie does take others artistic liberties such as the mixer of British units when most of them were regionally recruited and weapons like Mark II tank yet to made. For the most part, the film is historical accurate despite most of it was loosely based on various real-life accounts that director and cowriter Sam Mendes's grandfather told him in his youth. Although the screenplay by Krysty Wilson Cairns might be fictional set in a real historical backdrop; '1917' is one film worth fighting in the trenches for. Highly recommended.