REVIEW: One day and one glorious film in '1917'

George MacKay as Lance Corporal Schofield in 1917, directed by Sam Mendes.

You know what you’re getting with an epic war film: intense battle sequences, themes about brotherhood and duty, and a helpful civilian (usually a woman) squatting in a war-torn town who always seems to have instant chemistry with the main character. 1917 has all of these things and very little beyond that in its narrative, but through its entire 119-minute runtime it keeps you glued to your seat, mostly thanks to Roger Deakins, one of the best cinematographers in the business.

Based on the stories of World War I as told to his family by novelist Alfred Mendes, 1917 is directed by his grandson, Sam Mendes, and follows two British soldiers, Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman), who are tasked to deliver an urgent message to Colonel Mackenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch), who is unknowingly leading his 1,600-strong battalion – among them Blake’s older brother – into a German trap at the Hindenburg Line.

What follows is a tense journey in which Schofield and Blake race against the clock and navigate through muddy trenches, booby-trapped bunkers, bombed-out towns and rollicking rivers in order to complete their mission. It is filmed and edited to look like one continuous shot, which has generated positive buzz for its high level of difficulty – we’ll get to that later – but what hasn’t been talked enough is how gorgeous the entire film looks.

Deakins is known for using motivated lighting, which means that the light source comes from within the scene, and all of it is technically brilliant and well-crafted. (Do we expect any less from Deakins?!) When Schofield and Blake enter abandoned bunkers, the only sources of light are their flashlights. When Schofield runs through Écoust-Saint-Mein, the only sources of light are the flares that fly through the night sky, not unlike Skyfall, another gorgeous Mendes-Deakins partnership, which used neon city lights and balls of fire. What results is an immersive experience in which you’re kept in the dark as much as the characters, constantly threatened by something lurking in the shadows, and in an auditorium with big sound, Thomas Newman’s soundtrack is fantastic, as is the sound mixing for each bullet ricochet and bomb blast that takes everything to a new level.

Mark Strong is one of handful of recognizable British stars appearing in the film.

I was in constant awe how Mendes and Deakins managed to pull this off, acknowledging much work and preparation is required for a project like this. It seems easy to just take the camera and follow the characters all the way through, but each sequence has its own tempo and rhythm that needs to be considered, and it requires an adherence to perfection that’s not really appreciated because it feels so seamless in the final product.

The obvious comparison is Dunkirk, which is narratively a stronger film but follows a different structure entirely, and also relies on multiple elements and storylines to bring everything together. 1917 is singular in its focus, and it’s appreciated because no time is needed trying to figure out what’s going on or what each shot means – when we are parachuted into the film, it’s just go go go. While I don’t debate the expertise and talent required to pull it off, I do wonder if it can add to a film’s narrative.

A suicide mission in a war film is about as unoriginal as it gets. While I marveled at just about everything in the film, the editing doesn’t necessarily elevate the story itself. The editing by Lee Smith pieces the film together so it looks seamless, but the film’s events are also strictly chronological (it was also filmed chronologically) so the editing does little to add any sort of complexity, nuance or story-telling to the film. This is why 1917 isn’t running away in the editing categories for all the big awards, and in some cases completely left off the list. The Revenant didn’t win for editing at the Oscars despite the challenge of using only natural light, and Birdman wasn’t even nominated despite its praise for its one-shot takes. Birdman, however, didn’t have to deal with the sort of complexities a war film may present, from timed explosives to various different landscapes.

1917 is bookended by similar shots of tired British soldiers resting under big trees; rather than moving these characters to a completely new setting, they return to where they started in the beginning. There are few plot twists and turns, if any, and the biggest antagonist aren’t the Germans, but rather the elements Schofield and Blake have to endure and the marks the actors have to hit.

1917 gets three and a half stars out of four.