1917 (Review)

There’s no denying the technical brilliance of 1917. It’s a precision crafted piece of filmmaking that shows incredible skill and talent from almost all involved. For a lot of people, this technical skill will fade into the background and will support a gripping – if unexceptional – WW1 drama, a tale in which two soldiers must cross a significant expanse of the Western Front (going into territory that may or may not be occupied by the enemy) so that they can pass on a message to the very front line and call off an attack that is doomed to fail. It’s a tale inspired by accounts but is heavily fictionalised, in ways that make it lean more into whistle-stop tour of the Western Front as opposed to personal meditation on the impact of war. It’s a film that will stir emotion in many, and will do a lot for the already knowledgeable (emphasised by existing emotion) but, more often than not, leans towards thrills rather than depth.

Ultimately, though I admire its craft, 1917 didn’t work for me. The film is built around a central gimmick (an exceptionally impressive and difficult to achieve gimmick, but a gimmick no less): being presented as a single, unbroken shot from beginning until end. The camera operates in real time (with one slight exception), tracking a journey as it happens and chronicling an exact tale. In some places, this is fascinating and truly involving. The opening sequence involves our protagonists traversing through a trench and this moment really hammers home the enormity of it. The pair cross so much ground and the film is often very good at conveying a sense of geography – to the extent that I wished it would do it more. So much of the film is built around using the single shot aesthetic for action sequences – an unbroken image has led to some of the best action scenes in cinema – but when these moments are not differentiated from the film at large, they are not as effective. What is effective is the sense of a journey, of time passing and distances being traversed.

It is to its detriment then that the film leans more into thriller, when its immaculate production lends itself so well to something more reflective. The impact characters forcing themselves through the terrain and dealing with the enormity of a task is diminished, because you know the destination will be reached in some way – as the aesthetic relies on the persistence of the mission. This reduces a lot of the tension from the combat set-pieces, of which there are several, in a way that is antithetical to presenting a solid thriller, never mind conveying the horror of war. There is such obvious narrative protection around the mission – and events are so telegraphed and deliberate (as necessitated by the filmmaking) – that the film never resonated with me. I was always at a distance, overwhelmed by its cold clockwork – impressed but detached.

Mileage will vary, but at almost every point I couldn’t not see the filmmaking. Presenting a film as a single shot brings a lot of limitations. You have to find ways of hiding the cuts – which my mind never stopped searching for – and you have to position the camera, frequently, so as to hide what is being prepared. Put simply, the camera plays a technical function throughout the film, rather than a narrative (or artistic) one. I never felt like the single shot really added that much to the central story – due to its construction being so set-piece reliance. The film wants a lot of thrilling things to happen and this makes it feel very video-gamey – or like a theme park ride (think It’s a Small World After All but about WW1, only played respectfully). The world feels functional, existing to underpin a journey and a number of sequences. Too often it feels like a video game doing tricks to hide a loading screen and multiple moments feel like the moment in a cover-based third person shooter in which you enter a room full of waist high walls and know the fight is coming. For those unfamiliar with video games the point is that too often you can see through the facade and can sense the functionality. A camera will go a certain place and linger just so a complex sequence can be organised, which is necessary but because this is the whole film, this issue never disappeared for me. Fundamentally, because the actual film didn’t break through the artifice, it wasn’t doing enough to help me forget. Even in the opening trench scene, though it conveyed scale, what happens around them feels somewhat like a diorama – each extra is doing something but never enough to bring the focus away from the major characters, unless plot demands, in a way that feels artificial only because it is so overtly serving a central device.

At almost every stage, 1917 felt more limited by its concept than enhanced. The story it picks is so overtly an excuse to just show a lot of the Western Front – and to knit together tense sequences – that, once again, it feels more like thrill ride than portrait of WW1. I also found the music to factor in to this, always far too obtrusive, too generic and pushing emotion in a way that was deeply artificial. The techniques at play make things seem filmic and fake, and therefore limit the impact that a WW1 film should have. I don’t think the film is disrespectful, it feels very earnest and every decision is clearly made with the best intentions at heart, I just didn’t think it worked. There’s an odd lack of consequence or risk, as the film feels very inevitable – after all, it is constantly driving forward. The method of storytelling doesn’t lend itself to ambiguity or mystery, there is a clear, linear clarity that doesn’t allow for divergence. Focusing on a larger cast of characters, or a different story in the war, may have helped – as the camera shot feels inexorably linked to the mission. Though there are roadblocks and consequences, I never felt that anything would truly get in the way. The shot had to keep going for the film to keep going – so the mission needs to keep going. Perhaps a story more built around this inevitability as tragic element would work, perhaps an ongoing war of attrition (a story WW1 could easily evoke), something in which continual movement is not necessarily clean progression towards a resolution. The wider possibilities are actually shown in a spectacular sequence towards the end involving a full charge. In this moment, the stakes are complicated. There is so much clear risk and external damage and it’s utterly overwhelming. This sequence differs from the rest of the film and in this sequence the film works – which is somewhat damming. In this moment, and a couple more, it all clicks: form and intent marry together; the film makes sense and works superbly. In this sequence, I was fully involved: I was seeing a film and not filmmaking, purely because everything seemed to be working in concert.

But, the vast majority of the film feels overtly functional – or distractingly clean. So much happens just so something else can happen later in a way that feels deeply artificial. One moment involving milk towards the start comes back again towards the end and the pervasive feeling was just that the former scene only existed so the latter could happen. Moments like this re-occur in which I consistently experienced the film as a machine, as opposed to something artistic, evocative or emotional. The moving pieces may be intricate and impressive, but they still come across as moving pieces. Other issues also exist with narrative choices. The film has an uncomfortable relationship with how the opposing force are presented, as they are (to my memory) always betrayers, instigators or in some way open to being maligned. In a war as complex as WW1, this feels unfair. These moments don’t feel independently false but they do craft a joint narrative that made me uncomfortable, why is it that our big-budget WW1 tales only ever humanise the victors (and I write as a British citizen)? History truly is written by the winners.

However, there are notable successes. The film goes out of its way to present an existing diversity to the viewer, showcasing people of colour on the front line in obvious roles. British military history, specifically of and around this period, is so often whitewashed as to necessitate this kind of overt representation and the film should be championed for it. 1917, in this instance, presents a reality that many either don’t know about – or ignore. The overall tale has some issues in terms of how its constructed narrative creates messages but certain things really work. Some things only work in theory though, the decision to give commanding officer roles to known actors (really recognisable faces – and voices (at one point we see a pair of boots belonging to an officer whose voice is so obviously Mark Strong’s to the extent that you wonder why they are anonymising his entrance)) while having relatively unknown actors as the central pair (Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay, who are exceptional) pushes a clever point. We so often hear of, in WW1 specifically, a privileged few in elevated positions while the unknowns suffer and this casting decision conveys this – in theory. In practice, it’s a bit distracting because you keep coming across super famous people in such limited roles that their celebrity status overrides – once again: artifice.

In spite of all of this, I truly commend 1917. It didn’t work for me but it really is an achievement. The camera work is overtly functional and feels constricting but Roger Deakins is also an exceptional cinematographer. The film is beautiful and certain sequences – especially those in which the camera is allowed to be more daring – are just jaw-dropping (the lighting is also sublime and the choreography – and editing – deserves overt praise). The central performances, as previously mentioned, are also terrific. The script is underwritten, with very surface level and functional dialogue – that too often feels like it’s filling time while something is being put together off camera – but the central pair are so good that they transcend this. They are the film’s human core and I wish the film was more truly built around them, around people, as opposed to their journeys. There’s brilliance here but it’s a technical brilliance that diminishes emotional impact.