1917
Directed by Sam Mendes
Written by Sam Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns
Cinematography by Roger Deakin
Score by Thomas Newman
CAST:
Dean Charles Chapman – Lance Corporal Blake
George MacKay – Lance Coprporal Schofield
Daniel Mays – Sergeant Sanders
Colin Firth – General Erinmore
Pip Carter- Lieutenant Gordon
Andy Apollo – Sergeant Miller
Billy Postlethwaite – NCO Harvey
Andrew Scott – Lieutenant Leslie
Mark Strong- Captain Smith
Richard McCabe- Colonel Collins
John Hollingworth – Sergeant Guthrie
Benedict Cumberbatch – Colonel MacKenzie
Adrian Scarborough – Major Hepburn
Claire Duburcq – Lauri (un-named, I think)
Not the full cast list … but look at how many stars of stage that have been reviewed on this blog are in it … Andrew Scott, Benedict Cumberbatch, Richard McCabe, Billy Postlethwaite, Andy Apollo, Adrian Scarborough, Mark Strong, Daniel Mays, George MacKay, Pip Carter, Josef Davies, Colin Firth … I’ve often mentioned the diminishing opportunities currently for white males in the UK theatre, but set a story in 1917 in World War One and they’re back in quantity. However the famous actors are all in cameos – Benedict Cumberbatch’s minute on screen is as long as he gets. Mark Strong as Captain Smith probably gets a little more. Mendes, as also a prominent stage director, knows his British thespians.
It will hoover up 2019 rewards, though we’re seeing it on British release day, 10th January 2020. By which day it already had the Golden Globes for Best Picture and Best Director (Sam Mendes). Totally full cinema in iSense.
It’s Sam Mendes’ original story. Mendes co-wrote it based on tales from his grandfather, Alfred, which included the story of a man entrusted with an important message. As Mendes says, it was decades before anyone involved talked about the Great War. Perhaps it was a tale waiting for grandchildren before it was told. Karen remembers her grandfather describing his experiences as a wheelwright, travelling on a horse and cart with supplies along the front line, and that only came out when she was a girl. He’d never told her father. My grandfather served in France and ended in the Balkans, where his brother was killed by a sniper the day after the war ended … no one knew about the Armistice. My Great Uncle Ben told me that many young public school officers who leapt over the top towards the machine gun fire, shouting “Come on, chaps!” mysteriously died from a bullet in the back.
It takes place on April 6th 1917 (Mendes had finished the film before a Sunday Times interviewer pointed out to Mendes’ amazement that this was the day the USA had entered the war.) The story centres on two Lance Corporals, Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) who are ordered to carry a message through enemy territory to warn off the Devonshire Regiment from an imminent attack on a German position … the Germans are expecting it and it will be a trap involving 1600 men.
Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay)
Mendes chose the point in time where the Germans had retreated to the Hindenburg line, leaving No Man’s Land relatively possible to travel through … giving the story movement rather than being stuck in static trench warfare. It also gave fresh green grass for the big attack scene as it was a new front line. He had the cast study Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old which used upgraded, sometimes colourized real First World War footage as a documentary.
Sam Mendes: The cliché is they’re waiting to go over the top, knowing this will be their last moment on Earth. But that’s bollocks. They thought they were going to win. Every wave of soldiers thought they had a chance, and that permeated. We impose the tragedy on people because we know it unfolded, but in the present tense – and this movie is absolutely present tense – people did not know that, not did they expect it. Most of them think they’re winning.
Sunday Times Culture Interview by Jonathan Dean, 15 December 2019
There have been comments about the lack of a big battle scene … two teenagers walking out next to us mentioned there “wasn’t as much action as I’d expected.” I thought there was plenty- just wait for the French town sequence. But of course, while men had to go over the top, I doubt they were doing it on a daily basis, which makes sense of Mendes comment above. A lot went over the top just the once. And that was it.
Blake and Schofield in the abandoned German trenches
The USP of 1917 is that it’s filmed as if one continuous take, with only the two principle actors’ viewpoint, i.e. we never see a scene in which they are not present. It is as if one continuous tracking shot, in apparent real time apart from a single blackout. The technical achievement staggered me. There is much running along trenches pushing through people straight towards camera. How is the camera tracking back on an uneven surface? No rails. Even the big rubber tires are going to leave a mark. Is steady camera technology good enough for handheld? I suspected a great big crane actually running parallel to the trench, but I’m wrong. So maybe my mindset is back in 1918 and Intolerance where lacking zoom lenses, they built a track with a multi-storey tower on top of a carriage which they then rolled forward. They had a lift descending in the tower as the carriage moved forwards so the camera moved forward and down at an angle of 45 degrees, so as to get a “zoom” shot of the Gates of Babylon. Whatever, the filming in 1917 is a marvel and much really has to be handheld as when they go through doorways.
Sam Mendes: These days cameras are getting so small. The camera we shot this on was a prototype Roger (Deakins) worked on with Arri. It’s the Alexa LF, but it was a Mini. So it’s not much bigger than a transistor radio really. I mean, it’s a little bigger. As that reduces you’ve got IMAX scale images that you’re shooting on smaller and smaller pieces of equipment. So give it ten years and it won’t be much bigger than an iPhone.
Interview on CNet 10 January 2020
It wasn’t quite THAT simple:
To help sync up the actors and the camera, a variety of special rigs were created to help move the camera from one place or another. In the featurette, we see everything from the camera carried by two operators running across a field with explosions behind them, to specially made wires that can make the camera float over a battlefield, even cameras placed on cars, trucks, jeeps, and motorcycles, all designed to make sure that the audience never misses a moment of the characters’ journey across the battlefield.
Austen Gosin, Polygon site, 30 September 2019
So as I suspected …
The dawn attack with camera …
It does appear to be one continuous shot right from the beginning of the film to the point where Lance Corporal Schofield is hit by a ricochet from a German sniper, falls down some stairs and blacks out. It isn’t and can’t be, but try spotting the joins, as I started to … I noted a few, not because I saw a join but realised the potential with a locked on camera as they (e.g.) passed behind a wooden post. A major issue, mentioned by cinematographer Roger Deakins was matching light. They couldn’t light the trenches so needed daylight that was consistent, and bright sun meant they couldn’t shoot.
The screen shots don’t show how grubby and filthy the early sequences are. There are prosthetic swollen corpses, horses half eaten by rats, bits of leg, skull, tons of mud and filthy water. Karen’s grandad, as a wheelwright working with blacksmiths, had particularly remembered all the dead horses. The online pictures also skip the ruined French town, both day and night. The stills look a lot “cleaner” than the film.
Mark Strong as Captain Smith, after the plane crash
In the first sequence, meeting Captain Smith (Mark Strong) and getting a ride on a truck gets over some of the problem of the distance (was it six or nine kilometres?) in real time. Schofield’s blackout allows the time shift which means that the film appears to be two bits of real time. He goes under in daylight in the evening in the ruins of the French town. He wakes in the dark, and after some terrifying gunshots arrives in a cellar where a woman and a baby are hiding. (I might argue about the authenticity of their Franglais conversation leaps, from my language teaching perspective!) As he leaves she (the only female in the entire film) warns him it will very soon be daylight. He emerges in the burning city, still dark, races through being shot at and leaps into a river in dawn light. That enables the morning sequence to be back in daylight. So we assume he was unconscious for about 10 to 12 hours. In these post-blackout part of the film, the edits would have been easier to hide, but it does work as a running whole.
The only French town image I could find
I’m not going for plot spoilers and it’s pretty hard to review without the biggest ones coming out. Wait and get the shocks. There is a plane crash which is incredible filming, as is the exploration of the abandoned German trenches, complete with bedsteads. “Even their rats are bigger than ours!” complain our intrepid Tommies. Crossing a river bridge … the burning town … the river … the final attack. All are first rate. As mentioned earlier, no one apart from the central Lance Corporals has more than a tiny cameo apart from the French woman, and she’s only 2 or 3 minutes at most.
The focus on just two men is the central core. It’s a personal memory of a journey, which remains as a dream or rather a nightmare. That’s why Mendes dedicates to his grandfather’s memory.
George MacKay
I find it incredible that George MacKay has no nomination for best actor in either the Golden Globes or the Oscars. To me, he walks away with “Best Actor” with such consummate ease, strolling past the old Hollywood hacks doing their thing elsewhere. He has no competition, let alone the physical demands of running, jumping and swimming with such intensity.
As the vast number of troops go over the top for the final attack, Schofield has to sprint 300 yards flat out between them in a continuous take, banging into people and avoiding explosions. I doubt they filmed that in just one take. I applaud his stamina and commitment.
Best film of 2019? We saw it in an iSense cinema, so it’s hardly a level playing field with The Irishman on Netflix, or Once Upon A Time in Hollywood which was relegated to blu-ray. Even so, Mendes wins on originality, filming technique, innovation. Tarantino and Scorsese turned in classic Tarantino and Scorsese this year, but that’s expected. Tarantino’s plot surprise was his best shot. This year, Mendes thoroughly deserves best film and best director. George MacKay deserves best actor. Best film of 2019? This is one of the best war films EVER.
Sam Mendes also directed The Ferryman on stage, one of the best plays of the last decade. Then he directed Kevin Spacey in Richard III, the best version of that play I’ve seen, and the National Theatre’s King Lear.
George MacKay in the river sequence … swollen bodies to the right
OK, so it’s a review. I’d better add something else with a negative touch. Location. Mostly it was filmed in Wiltshire, hence the chalk linings of the trenches. This would be Salisbury Plain, which I cross several times a year. I’ve driven through the killing fields of Northern France with the cemeteries stretching away too. A lot is rolling low hills like Wiltshire and if you’d said France I would believe it. I had to say that even in the intensity of the film, I knew as soon as Schofield fell into the raging river rapids that it was NOT in this countryside (actually filmed in the North-East, I believe). There are no high waterfalls on Salisbury Plain and nor are rivers in these chalk landscapes lined with granite rocks. The geology is obviously dodgy. Will you notice? I think you’ll be too caught up. Karen said afterwards that she had wondered how the general’s order, written in 1917 ink would have survived his long immersion in water, and feared that he would arrive at his destination with a soggy bit of pale blue illegible streaky paper.
There was an inherent sentimentality in that Lance Corporal Blake’s brother is a lieutenant in the regiment destined for the dawn attack, adding personal motivation to their quest to get the message through. Let’s not enquire why one brother is a lieutenant and the other a lance corporal. However, it worked. The level was fine, not the ludicrous personalisation subplot which to me me marred Saving Private Ryan.
The Germans are barely seen, and when they are seen, they’re dastardly. When you save someone’s life when they’re about to burn to death, you don’t expect them to fall upon you with a long sharp knife. But that’s what Germans do, as I knew from my boyhood diet of war comics.
Only a cameo: Benedict Cumberbatch as Colonel MacKenzie.
I found the warnings on US websites that it contained “smoking (real for the era)” and “the words f**k and s**t.“) and “alcohol: a soldier trades his medal for a bottle of wine” amusing. They missed the offered swig of Scotch or brandy in the lorry too. Benedict Cumberbatch has the cameo as Colonel McKenzie leading the dawn attack, and Schofield is warned that “some men like to fight” and that he will need witnesses when he hands him the order to cancel the attack. Cumberbatch’s final line to Schofield may well have inspired Ricky Gervais’s final line when introducing the Golden Globes ceremony.
MUSIC
Thomas Newman’s score deserves an award too. There’s just the one song, Poor Wayfaring Stranger, sung by a soldier unaccompanied in the dawn light. Like Dunkirk the music throbs and pulses throughout. The trailer for this showing included the latest James Bond No Time to Die. In the Sunday Times interview, Mendes says he’s glad not to be doing any more James Bond, even if 1917 posters announce “By the director of Skyfall.” The trailer was the normal inane parade of car crashes and chases … I loathe recent James Bond films. Hans Zimmer’s No Time to Die Bond soundtrack in iSense was absolutely deafening. So much so that we feared for the music in 1917. No worries, it soared at times but in general was far more subtle. Brilliant work from Thomas Newman.
*****
THE CRITICS
It’s a bit love or or hate it with praise for technology.
Mark Kermode, The Observer ****
With meticulous attention to detail (plaudits to production designer Dennis Gassner) and astonishingly fluid cinematography by Roger Deakins that shifts from ground level to God’s-eye view, Mendes puts his audience right there in the middle of the unfolding chaos. There’s a real sense of epic scale as the action moves breathlessly from one hellish environment to the next, effectively capturing our reluctant heroes’ sense of anxiety and discovery as they stumble into each new unchartered terrain. This is nail-biting stuff, interspersed with genuine shocks and surprises. Whether it’s a tripwire moment that provokes an audible gasp, a distant dogfight segueing into up-close-and-personal horror, or a single gunshot that made me jump out of my seat during an otherwise near-silent sequence, there’s no doubting the film’s theatrical impact.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, 25 November 2019 *****
The single-take technique fascinatingly creates a kind of theatrical effect: the spectacle of two people moving through an unbroken space. It is immersive, yes, but that overused word does not quite convey the paradoxical alienation that is being created: the distance, the pure strangeness. The two men’s experiences are bizarre and shocking, but a poignant and then tragic sympathy is finally dredged up from the mud of their ordeal.
Tom Shone, The Sunday Times, 12th January 2020 ***
Mendes, in his efforts to avoid the more obvious traps theatre directors fall into when they make movies – confinement, talkiness – has fallen into the opposite trap of overcompensation: thinking in terms of nothing but images.
That’s a sideswipe if ever I saw one. Yes, unlike most film directors, Mendes is a highly successful theatre director, but hang on, his last two movies were James Bond … Spectre and Skyfall, then there was Jarhead. I’m not a Bond movies fan as I say above, but I’ve never thought a Bond movie suffered from confinement and talkiness. Mendes is highly experienced with high budget action movies. Tom Shone’s comment, sorry to be rude, is bollocks.
The Telegraph, Saturday 11th January 2020
There’s arguably little to chew on – beyond the swaggering craft that has seen the film become an awards frontrunner – but its technical bravado can’t be denied.
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
I’m not linking all those cameos.
GEORGE MACKAY ON STAGE:
The Caretaker, by Harold Pinter, Old Vic, London 2016
Ah, Wilderness!,by Eugene O’Neil Young Vic 2015
SAM MENDES AS STAGE DIRECTOR
The Ferryman, by Jez Butterworth, Royal Court, London 2017
King Lear, National Theatre, 2014, with Simon Russell-Beale
Richard III,Old Vic 2011, with Kevin Spacey
Peter Viney's Blog 
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