France, 1917, a meadow.
First breath and first camera movement. From now on and for almost 2 hours, this camera will not stop filming, going up and down, it will overturn, sink, fly away, hide and only stop once the journey is over.
Sam Mendes' bet is, in my opinion, similar to the one C. Nolan had with Dunkirk: not only to show the war but to make us experience it, to make us hear the noise of the enemy, the loss of meaning, the fear, the comfort of one hand, the dismay and the courageous madness.And it is true that this is the first time that we have been able to experience war in this way, with this single point of view proposed by Mendes, we are literally taken into this quasi-suicide mission that our two heroes must succeed in. We run out of breath with them, we search with them, we are afraid with them, we too, ordinary spectators, find it hard to know who the enemy is and where he is hiding. An enemy that we can hardly see, he is invisible but we know that he surrounds us, he lurks around like the great reaper.
This total immersion in this race against death is bluffing and yet! 1917 is far from being a demonstration of action, I would even say that it shines by his calmness. I was simply left speechless in front of Mendes's master stroke which makes us live a war movie by being so stingy with action and shooting.
This 1917 shines by the omnipresence of silence and calm (all relative). The scenes of violence and confrontation are short, nervous, hyper-concentrated, messy and noisy, and are followed by a long moment of solitude where our hero recovers so as not to die and meets allies of circumstance. These few moments of comfort and solitude often punctuate scenes of crazy intensity, allowing us to give rhythm to the film while avoiding getting out of it.Mendes wanted to emphasize the long moments when the soldiers just...waited for the fight and death. Those moments when the unknown comes first, when you don't even know why you're there anymore.
It's hard to remember a moment in 1917 because it's a moment. It's a two-hour block that starts in a meadow and ends there. But in spite of this crazy intensity in this false permanent calm, some moments are of absolute beauty. Mendes shoots scenes and images of improbable beauty in the hell that is war.A hell that Mendes' imagery reminds one of wonderfully. How many times our hero has to pass through this opening that brings him a little closer to hell: an entrance to darkness, a bridge to the other side, broken barbed wire facilitating access to the heights of a hill. Everything brings him closer to danger.
From this step to jump out of the trench comes a certain vision of hell. And when Schofield arrives in Ecoust at night, the hell of war in its most devious and violent form begins. For danger is everywhere, there is chaos, and we no longer know who or where the danger is. A chaos in which the gun is no more and in which pure brutality takes over. It is in these moments that we discover the amateurism of these soldiers brought into a war whose meaning escapes them.
And Mendes sublimates this chaos with a play of light that borders on perfection, a scene punctuated by a play of light and rockets fired by who knows who and where.This scene is a true work of art.Hero and spectator are simply disoriented. Disorientation is constantly present through the camera play but also through the eyes of the protagonists, through our lack of reference point in these desolate settings. The historical reconstitution is also bluffing, as much the trenches as the quagmires or the ruins of the French villages.
Carried by a nervous soundtrack and following the soldiers' steps to the millimetre, 1917 is a total immersion in the war. The technical wager is obviously daring, but it serves a real will to make life.
The headliners are obviously these two soldiers interpreted by McKay and Chapman. The announced superstars serve the film because they represent forms of checkpoint in the mission. C. Firth, M. Strong, B. Cumberbatch have to spend barely 5 minutes on screen but they are the ones who change, a little, the course of this story. They are the triggering, comforting and final elements of this quest.But we must emphasize McKay's crazy presence, the intensity of his gaze in both fear and relief.
In the end 1917 goes far beyond the framework of a "technical wonder". In my opinion, it is in line with Dunkirk's ambition to make the war, the fear, the distress and the anguish of the soldier come alive and be felt.1917 taped the spectator in his seat in a breath of two breathtaking hours where we just watch what will happen without ever stopping on what we have just experienced. The rare moments of relief are not really so much that they follow or precede the flight forward, the denial of death and the will to save brothers we do not know. In the end, the mission is only a pretext to make us live this adventure.
The technical choice may weary some people so much it affects the rhythm of the film, but once captured by the first breath, it is impossible to get out of it.Built like a vice, starting in a green meadow, 1917 quickly throws us into fright, gradually taking us into the inferno of the war from which neither anger nor hatred emanates but only a radical refusing to die from these men.
1917 is a film that makes us live the war, that makes us feel the instinct of survival through its construction in the form of survival.
And in a last breath of relief at the edge of a restful meadow, a last camera movement closes a survivalist journey as heroic as it is tragic.