1917 - A BEST PICTURE?

by armen pandola

Do you like war movies? What are your favorites?

If you like war movies and Saving Private Ryan or The Paths of Glory or even The Longest Day are among your favorites, then you will like !917, directed and co-written by Sam Mendes. If you don't, chances are, 1917 will not make a believer of you in spite of the fact that it is an odds-on favorite to win the Oscar for Best Picture.

Mendes won an Oscar for his first feature film, American Beauty, which no one watches any longer because it starred Kevin Spacey and because his character, a middle-aged man on the brink of a breakdown, has sexual fantasies about his teenage daughter's friend.

Since then, Mendes has directed a couple of good movies (Road to Perdition and Revolutionary Road), a couple of so-so movies (Jarhead and Away We Go) and a couple of Bond movies (Spectre and Skyfall). He comes from the theatre and continues to direct for the stage. 1917 is his first co-writing credit.

So, what does 1917 bring to the 'war movie' table that wasn't there already?

Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old has all of the horror of World War I, Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory has all of its despicable commanders, All Quiet on the Western Front (1931) has the folly of its 'patriots' and Gallipoli (1981) has the tragedy of senseless slaughter. What else is there to say or show?

Mendes brings us a war movie that follows two soldiers for one day, keeping his camera on only these two and what they see and experience. Shot in segments several minutes long, the movie is stitched together seamlessly - or seemingly so. From its opening to its closing, the camera stays focused on the two protagonists. What does this add to the movie?

'Tracking shots' are shots that go on for a minute or more without the action stopping in order to set-up a new shot. Alfred Hitchcock shot one of his least successful movies, Rope, the story of two rich kids who kill someone for the fun of it, in a few very long takes. Orson Welles starts off Touch of Evil with a three and a half minute tracking shot that ends in an explosion. Paths of Glory has a shorter (91 seconds) tracking shot of a general walking through the trenches. Scorsese's Goodfellas has a three minute tracking shot of Henry Hill and Karen walking through the kitchen of the Copacabana to front row seats. If you have noticed such scenes, then you are probably a film buff.

What do tracking shots add to a movie? In the movies I have mentioned, long tracking shots have furthered the story. For example, in Goodfellas, the long tracking shot shows us how Henry, a small-time mobster, has special privileges because of his insider status, privileges that impress his date, Karen.

What has filming 1917 like one long sequence added to its message? It has focused our attention on two soldiers and two soldiers alone. This is a view of war from the bottom up. The stench and mud and rats are brought to the fore as two young corporals, Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay), undertake a mission to save sixteen hundred fellow soldiers from a senseless slaughter. Sadly, Mendes decides to add to the mix a few 'special appearances' from famous actors a la The Longest Day (1962). The movie stops dead for brief appearances by Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch and Mark Strong, taking us out of the gory frontlines and into the world of make-believe.

There is not much depth in 1917. Two soldiers are given what seems to be a suicide mission which one of them is eager to undertake because he has a personal motive - his brother is one of the soldiers who may be saved. Along the way, we are told small bits and pieces of their lives. They are not especially memorable, and the self-imposed technical limitations make it impossible for us to have a fully rounded portrait of them. In the end, they are just two soldiers, much like millions of others who were fighting on both sides - and dying. And that is 1917's virtue and its limitation. Given its narrow scope, 1917 can only appeal to our most sentimental feelings.

The best war movie that I have ever seen has not been in circulation in years - there are some pirated versions available on Amazon. The Victors is a 1963 British-American WWII movie written, produced and directed by Carl Foreman, starring George Peppard, George Hamilton, Melina Mercouri, Jeanne Moreau, Elke Sommer and Eli Wallach - yes, an odd cast, but an excellent one. The movie dares to be an anti-war movie in an era when such feelings were suppressed. WWII was the 'good war,' yet there was no sentimentality in The Victors - in fact, it showed the execution by firing squad of a GI deserter (a scene inspired by the real-life 1945 execution of Pvt. Eddie Slovik).

In The Victors, war didn't make the men 'better' or more 'giving' or 'caring.' War did to the young men it trapped exactly what violence does to young men - it makes them worse, not better. There is a scene in which a new member of the squad finds a dog and starts to take care of it. When the squad pulls out of its camp, the sergeant tells the young soldier that no dogs are allowed on the trucks. As the young recruit sadly sits in the truck with his fellow soldiers, one hardened veteran tells the recruit to call the dog, so the recruit whistles to the dog, thinking they will hide it on the truck. Instead, the veteran shots it. That's what war does to young men, at least those who survive. The Victors won no awards for presenting war as it is - and The Victors has been forgotten. A great loss.