Unsurprisingly, 1917 has been compared with all the great First World War movies of the past - All Quiet on the Western Front, La Grande Illusion, etc. But the movie it reminded me of most is the Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou? It has the same sense of a picaresque, episodic journey through the landscape, with encounters that can border on the surreal and transitions that can sometimes seem dreamlike.
There's a lot in 1917 that's very good indeed. There are two strong performances at its heart from Mackay and Chapman, even if individual episodes are sometimes over-burdened with celebrity cameos - look, it's Andrew Scott! And there's Mark Strong! Can Benedict Cumberbatch be far behind? (Spoiler: he doesn't turn up until quite near the end.)
The screenplay is clever, and doesn't play out the way you anticipate. People you expect to die live, and people you expect to live, at least until much later in the movie, die. Most unexpected, perhaps, is the treatment of the British officers. They are all incredibly reasonable - not a General Melchett or even a Captain Darling among them. Of course, it's good that there's a corrective to the typical Blackadder presentation (Richard Holmes' The Western Front is useful on this topic), but the lack of any venal glory-hunters at all makes 1917 feel a bit like Saving Private Ryan; this is a movie that pays lip-service to the idea that military commanders don't necessarily know what they're doing, but doesn't really tell that story.
It is, of course, a bravura technical achievement. The various long-shots are put together seamlessly to give the impression that this is one take, and it thoroughly deserves the Oscar for Cinematography (and it's a travesty that it wasn't even nominated for Best Editing). I am not in the least surprised that it won the Golden Globe and BAFTA for Best Picture, as it is the sort of technically impressive movie that seems to be saying something profound that appeals to those who vote in such awards.
But there's the nub of it. What actually is 1917 saying? What's it about? One might say that it's about comradeship, about taking on a task that you don't really believe in because it's important to someone else. Or it might be about the horrors of war. The trouble for the latter is that the dreamlike nature of parts of the movie distance the viewer from full engagement. Yes, there are dead bodies of men who have been buried by shellfire, or French civilians who have ended up in the river. But these scenes don't feel as affecting as they should. And the transitions from one episode to another, whilst clearly delineated, are sometimes done in such a way as to override logic (Mark Strong's company, for instance, appear out of nowhere, and disappear back into nowhere). A cynic might suggest that the prime motivating factor in making this movie was that Mendes enjoyed shooting the opening sequence of Spectre (the Mendes Bond movie that isn't mentioned in the publicity), and wanted to see if he could do that at full movie length.
In the end, beneath the extremely impressive surface gloss, 1917 feels a little bit hollow.
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