1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die: #4

Okay, okay, full disclosure: this isn't actually the next film on that list. That would be Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900, but as ever, I'm broke and don't speak Italian, and I couldn't find a version of that on the high seas that was both the full length of the film and with English subtitles. They were all either some terrible dub, or had subtitles but were a 2 and a half hour version. Normally I wouldn't care too much about different cuts and would just watch whatever version I could find, but in this case, we'd be talking about nearly half of the entire film being gone, which just...no.

So instead, I thought to myself: "what's a film I consider to be something you 'must see before you die' that is alphabetically between 13th and the next film on this list? And this is pretty much the only thing I could think of, because I'm a picky so and so and couldn't justify doing 1984, because technically its title is "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and therefore should be in the "N" section...didn't stop me watching and then reviewing it before my stupid brain came to that conclusion though, did it...

And yes, I do see the irony in the only review I've ever deleted being for 1984, but I do intend on getting back to it...someday. Not sure when, but it'll happen.

Anyway, 1917...it's definitely something that I think you should watch before you die, if only for its cinematography. And I'm not sure I can say that about any other film. However...that does come with a caveat.

The caveat being that I find a lot of things in this film other than its cinematography to be...well, a bit bad. The acting's great from pretty much everyone, even if every authority figure being a famous actor who is in the film for a grand total of five minutes each starts to feel like a punchline after the first time, but other than that, the story is pretty generic, you're not gonna get much in terms of character, and the music is boring and really obnoxiously used in places where it doesn't need to be. I think the production design and sound (apart from the music) is pretty awesome, but let's be honest, you're not watching this for anything other than an experience.

And I think an experience is what this provides. What was achieved in making this film look like it was done in one take is pretty impressive, even if there are a few moments where it's pretty obvious that they snuck in a new take (and come on, straight up cutting to black about halfway through is just cheap as hell, you could have done a cool time lapse or something), and Roger Deakins yet again deserved the Oscar he got for this and then some.

So while I might sound like I'm dunking on this a lot, trust me when I say I wouldn't be choosing this to fill a gap of "must see movies" without a reason, and you should definitely check it out.