I watched a screener for 1917 a couple months back. I was distracted by the editing gimmick, and disappointed Hollywood/mainstream movies’ continuing inability–refusal?–to make a big budget war movie that isn’t pro-war propaganda. (Is this because of powers-that-be supporting the military industrial complex? or Hollywood commercialism’s mandated happy endings?)
So I watched on the big screen yesterday.
The cinematography deserved its Oscar. The attention to detail was remarkable: even in the scene where the soldier is singing “Poor Wayfaring Stranger” acapella; he sang in a style appropriate to 1917. It always bothers me when modern singers in a period piece sing in today’s received American Idol style: all melisma and blue notes, too much vibrato.
But the editing gimmick, beyond being distracting, served to make the movie structured like an FPS computer game. This really emphasized for me the movie’s pro-war position: it’s a video game, obstacles to overcome one at a time, intensifying toward the end, but then you win! it was all worth it! Yay!
I honestly don’t think you can make an anti-war movie with a happy ending. A movie about war should leave you feeling defeated, not victorious. Hollywood’s insistance on happy endings makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to produce a true anti-war film.
Spielberg is the biggest offender; he maintains his commitment to the happy ending, punctuated with small victories, even in his war movies. 1917 clearly owes a lot to SPR, including the ending, which leaves the audience feeling relieved, even satisfied, instead of disgusted with the suicidal bellicosity of the human race.
OK this got more meta than I intended. TLDR: 191–great production, disappointing themes.
Although the fake one-take-movie effect hinders the storytelling by compressing time and distance, the movie is just ridiculously good. There are almost no mistakes in a historical movie (which is tough), like, as I heard, that cow parsley isn’t blooming at that time of the year. The acting is great, there is little combat, the scenery is fantastic.
There are enough rotting bodies and tragedy in the movie to not let on a high note. It’s not a happy ending, it’s a “less horribly shithole” ending.
It’s a happy ending by Hollywood standards: the hero succeeds on his quest. If rotting bodies are all you need for an anti-war films, where does that put horror movies? Where rotting bodies are used less disingenuously for straight entertainment? The device of rotting bodies is to make the threat of the dragon seem more horrifying: a hero is exalted according to the greatness of his enemeies. The fact that in 1917 the Nazis are essentially faceless, absent from almost every frame of the movie, adds to their fantastical terribility: they might as well be dragons.
I didn’t love the movie. IMO, it was middle of the pack (at best) as far as Oscar nominated movies are concerned. Yeah, it deserved the Oscar for Cinematography, but I don’t watch movies strictly for that. I enjoyed Parasite, Jo Jo Rabbit, Little Women, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Joker more than 1917.
Jojo Rabbit proves, to me at least, that satire and ridicule are more effective as anti-war statements than tales of heroism against long odds. The former points out the absurdity of human-on-human violence, while the latter ends up suggesting that the whole thing was worth it, because hero!
I’m not sure what kind of “unhappy ending” would satisfy you enough to turn into this great movie. He shows up, but too late, and everybody’s dead? Then maybe is captured and hung? Would that make it a great movie?
The movie appears to consist of two extremely long unbroken takes. Of course that would have been impossible. It was just edited/digitally manipulated to look that way.
I found the effect both astonishing and distracting. It gave the movie immense immediacy. But once you notice it and start marveling at what they are doing it pulls you away from what’s going on. (At least, that’s how it affected me.) In the end I felt that it was more of a stunt than something that was necessary for the storytelling.
FYI, due to past situations, I won’t be responding to any sarcastic or hostile replies. Feel free to post them, but as far my participation, I will only debate with mutual respect and good faith. Otherwise please visit amongst yourselves.
It’s distracting. But then, I saw it in one of those 4D theaters (by mistake; not my mistake) so I was also being shaken about, squirted with air jets and sprayed with water. Pick your distraction.
To return to the OP - I broadly agree. It was an OK movie with one really good trick, but it’s just a trick.
j
ETA: Well done sitting through it a second time - I don’t think I would have bothered.
“Long unbroken takes” are how we experience life. I’m a big fan of the limited (first- or third-person) point of view in fiction, because it allows me to vicariously experience events as the main character experiences them; and this seemed like the cinematic equivalent of that, and I really enjoyed and appreciated it as such. It didn’t strike me as a “stunt” any more than any way of telling a story (such as cutting from one scene to a completely different scene) is a “stunt.”
Oh, let’s not be sentimental. We can take this much further:
His best friend’s brother, already near the edge, snaps and begins to attack the protagonist, and must be killed. The best friend’s brother’s wallet contains a picture of a dog. An old yellow dog.
The poor sod’s brains splatter the protagonist, who wipes them off and then puts his hand on a nurse’s white uniform, creating a visual metaphor sure to be picked up by all the cashiers who do cinema and are up to date on their war propaganda. Specifically, this piece. This also sets the protagonist up for a massive blood-borne infection.
The nurse, a proper woman and high-born, faints at the sight of such blood, braining herself on a loose entrenching tool. The protagonist is, naturally, arrested for court-martial for pushing the nurse to her doom.
As the protagonist waits to be hung, he sees a bird. This bird is amazingly beautiful. He starts to sketch the bird, which moves; he stands up to get a better look, and gets shot. In the crotch.
The protagonist is sent to a hospital in the rear, where he gets care from a nurse, who expresses rather little on the surface. His blood-borne infection acts up, and that’s all that does. He rants about the leadership, leading to court-martial.
Once his crotch has been healed, he’s transported back to the front, so he can face a firing squad. His last thoughts are only of his family, right before a German artillery barrage saves him by killing everyone lined up to shoot him. We spend ten minutes lingering on all of their remains.
The last hour of the film is the protagonist dying of thirst.
See? Perfectly sums up the horrors of war, and with such economy!
I haven’t seen 1917 yet, but the whole “gets there too late, fails to stop hundreds of men from going to their deaths” sounds a lot like ***Gallipoli ***to me. That’s one of the most anti-war war movies ever made, and it was brilliant.
