1917

A visually stunning dance, but difficulty cannot inspire awe

by Michael Augsberger

Steven Spielberg told Sam Mendes that he wept when he saw Mendes' first directorial effort, American Beauty. He may weep again at the thought of how grueling filming 1917 must have been. It took weeks to plan and film five minutes for Atonement's famed Dunkirk tracking shot; Mendes has created twenty times that to produce 1917, giving the feel of one continuous shot.

Impossible as it is to evaluate the film without invoking its style, I know that Mendes gives us much more than just another war movie. And simple as its story is, 1917 produces a complex response—not just because of its style. It is thrillingly intense, but it is not comprehensive. It's a visually stunning dance whose choreography and execution inspire me, but whose narrative does not run deeper. It is an achievement, a masterpiece of technical genius and of creative storytelling, but not of story.

The story is straightforward. Young soldiers Blake and Schofield, played by Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay, are fighting for the British on the Western Front. All has become quiet there. The Germans have oddly withdrawn, according to the intel General Erinmore has received. Believing the retreat presents a golden opportunity, Colonel Mackenzie is set to attack, some eight miles of trenches and Godforsaken terrain away.

He's about to lead 1,600 men to their deaths. The Germans are not retreating but setting a trap. With no other lines of communication available, Erinmore entrusts his order to halt the attack to Schofield and Blake, who must deliver it before dawn tomorrow.

Blake's brother is among the Devons who will suffer the potential massacre. Is Erinmore a genius motivator or unfeeling despot? No soldier will race faster to save them, he knows. Or two brothers will die in one day. Or the general condemns Blake to a lifetime of torment if he fails to arrive in time.

Remember Gallipoli, Peter Weir's scathingly anti-war classic. Thanks to his captains' mistake, Mel Gibson also races the clock to stop a suicidal attack. Mendes rears back and produces exactly what the Australian command could not in Gallipoli—a synchronized, astonishingly disciplined, technological marvel.

And as Noah Baumbach told Marriage Story as a deeply personal essay, so does Sam Mandes. Instead of a first-hand account, Mendes is honoring the stories his grandfather passed down to him. We can tell even from the opening scene just how elegant the dance between our eyes (as the camera), the characters, and the landscape will be. Eventually we partner with the gushing river outside Ecoust. We waltz carefully through German-created mazes of earth, sometimes knowing our boys are safe before they do, sometimes following after them. It becomes a firedance of silhouettes against the night sky. What a poetic way to honor your grandfather's valor and his picture-painting brilliance.

We ought not ignore the power of not cutting away. There is no respite for the soldiers and none for us. Another film would handle death by cutting from it. Here we don't escape it. The reaction, the moving on—all are here as the camera lingers. Dialogue would be buttoned up, as Jim Carrey famously demonstrated. Cut for emphasis; characters don't have to leave the room. No, conversations here have to end as ours do. In that sense they are lifelike.

However, difficulty can elicit admiration, but it cannot inspire awe. So what is missing? I attempt to point the finger at character. Mendes has said he wanted this to feel more like a thriller than a war movie. And as a singularly focused thriller it succeeds. It might be the most visually beautiful. Yet truly sublime thrillers give us more character, more moral decisions to be made, more changes. We love The Fugitive and The Silence of the Lambs not for the chases, however brilliant, because those can only amount to so much. We love them for their confrontations between characters with motives at odds with each other, and for the ways they force the main combatants to evolve.

What we have here is rather an obstacle course—one never more beautifully conceived and filmed, but still an obstacle course. We do have one fine confrontation. But it is brief, and Mendes's one-shot approach precludes us from getting to know one side of it beforehand. It's not a dooming sacrifice, just a sacrifice. And we do see one of our boys evolve gradually in how important the mission becomes to him. I just question its depth.

War is still young men dying and old men talking. Along the way we meet leaders played with command by Colin Firth and with savage egotism by Benedict Cumberbatch, who slyly fulfills a prophecy made earlier. "Make sure you have witnesses," another officer (Mark Strong) warns Schofield about confronting Cumberbatch. "Some men just want the fight."

Perhaps Cumberbatch itches for just that, or perhaps he misses his wife and breaking the Germans' back here and now will get them all home that much sooner. Perhaps he is bombarded with scared boys begging for attacks to be canceled. It is another product of the film's style that we only share so much time with our characters, without the waterfalls of dialogue in the play-like, one-shot Birdman. So we are left with these, the deepest questions the film can produce.

Those three veterans act formidably, and we can applaud the strategy of casting familiar faces in positions of authority. But the best performance belongs to Andrew Scott.

It is his humorous skepticism as the leader of a decimated regiment on the front line who frames Mendes' glorification of courage and loyalty around this feeling, as Gallipoli did. The Brits were already drinking tea on the beach in Turkey, and here the Germans were not retreating but fortified along the Hindenburg Line. War might bring out courage and character we see in 1917, but what forces have led these boys here, to sacrifice themselves on a hellish field in an unnecessary attack?

I watched 1917, on opening night in Philadelphia, sitting next to my own brother. So the stakes, the constant thought of what hell I might endure to deliver that same message, bum shoulder and all, never strayed far from me. And yet it never hit me, not the way American Beauty did or even Road to Perdition. Nor did it hit him. We were immersed but not made to feel.

Four of vier