1917
— It takes ten or fifteen minutes before you realize that this is about the best, seemingly continuously shot scene you can remember and then, as the movie continues, it sets in that the entire film is one scene. It’s hard not to be impressed if you’re at all susceptible to being wowed by the technical aspects of filmmaking or the wiles of a great cinematographer. It’s a compelling story. Two British soldiers must get a letter to another battalion to avoid 1,600 men, including one of the soldier’s brothers, being slaughtered in an ambush. The camera follows them through trenches, fields, forests, and towns of war-ravaged France for their harrowing and unblinking journey. Surprisingly, it’s fast-paced too. This is careful planning and judicious shot set-up, followed by precise editing to give you not something shot in one take, but something you believe was shot in one take. The two soldiers are well cast; both Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay manage to convey, mostly through expression, the mix of hope and dismay, that comes from a task where the odds of success are slim and failure is death. They are two of too many boys too young to see such horrors. The careful choice of images offers some shock, but not in as visceral a manner as that to which we’ve become accustomed, giving the story the feeling of a dream, something I liked, but something others could easily fault as a failure. I can easily see why the film is on so many lists of best films of 2019.
