Graphic by Yasmin Andrews ’22
The film “1917” is a unique cinematic experience, grabbing its audience by the collar and holding on until the very end. It’s a film about two young soldiers, Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman), sent to deliver a life-and-death message across a WWI battlefield. The film is nearly two hours long and is composed of multiple shots edited to appear as one single, continuous shot. But none of that comes close to describing what it’s like to experience “1917.” To do that, the only thing that can be put in words is its colors: the brown of the earth, the green of the grass, the orange of the fire, the blue of the water and the white of the rocks and the sky.
The colors of the landscape swallow you up whole. Like the single shot of the camera, they grab you tight and don’t let you breathe until the credits roll. You’re buried in the mud and ash and the bodies of dead soldiers right along with Schofield and Blake. It goes easy at first, letting the viewer get used to the continuous shot before the characters plunge into the plot. “The camera will cut here,” you might think, “Or no, it’ll cut here — no, it’ll cut here!” The characters literally walk you into the depths of the trenches as you start to adjust to the single shot and then guide you into underground meeting rooms, simultaneously locking you into the plot and the realization that the camera is never going to leave them.
The way the tracking is done is also overwhelming. As Schofield and Blake walk forward into the trenches, you face them while moving backward, unable to turn around and see what they can see, much less what they’re in for.
Even when the camera manages to move behind their backs and follow them, you can’t see what’s ahead of them. The way the camera follows them feels like the viewer is playing a video game where Schofield and Blake are the avatars who must be maneuvered carefully through the map. It reminds me of the puzzle adventure game “Valiant Hearts: The Great War” which also takes place during WWI. In fact, “Valiant Hearts” was at the forefront of my mind as I watched “1917.” It’s the only other media I know that comes remotely close to the specific feeling of the film. However, in “Valiant Hearts” and other video games, there’s a particular way to do things and the option to reset in case something goes wrong. “1917” is nowhere near as forgiving, making the viewer feel hopeless while witnessing Schofield and Blake experience the horrific ravages of the battlefield. The big screen feels close enough to touch them, but it’s not close enough to help them.
There’s really only one seed of comfort for the audience to carry through the film, and at first, it’ll sound like a funny one. Benedict Cumberbatch is listed almost everywhere the film is advertised; his A-list name is used as a major marketing tactic. Watching the film it’s clear that no matter what happens, it can’t be over until he graces the screen. Waiting for his familiar face means that the horrors will, hopefully, be over once he appears. It’s a truly unique use of star power, making use of fame as an emotional plot tactic rather than to just inspire the awe and fanaticism resulting from a typical cameo. After he appears and the emotional anchor is gone, it inspires the emotional free-falling for the rest of the film’s run time.
So why release “1917” in 2019, over 100 years after the film’s events take place? According to director Sam Mendes, the film is based on his grandfather’s stories.
“He was given the job of carrying messages on the Western front,” Mendes said in a Deadline interview, “The spirit of what he told me and the central idea of a man carrying a message wouldn’t leave me.” When talking about why he chose the one-shot format for the film, Mendes continued, “I did feel, if we could just understand what these two hours of real time meant for these men, we might somehow begin to re-imagine that war in a contemporary way.”