1917

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  • 1917

    Brilliant filmmaking across the board, led by Sam Mendes. The "One Shot" approach is not gimmicky at all in fact it draws the viewer into the mission, becoming a third soldier. The music is phenomenal, complementing the action and story. Roger Deakins' cinematography should secure him another Oscar.
    Last edited by Done Deal Pro; 10-08-2020, 03:08 PM. Reason: Added tags

  • #2
    Re: 1917

    Nice. I was wondering how this might turn out. I'll catch it this week.

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    • #3
      Re: 1917

      Sooooooooo looking forward to seeing this one. Great to read the positive reviews.

      Very excited!!

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      • #4
        Re: 1917

        Yep. I thought it came out yesterday but I guess the wide release is Jan 10. Damn.

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        • #5
          Re: 1917

          I was completely underwhelmed, but I'll hold my review until after wide release.
          Just my 2 cents, your mileage may vary.

          -Steve Trautmann
          3rd & Fairfax: The WGAW Podcast

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          • #6
            Re: 1917

            Technically, this was a tour de force. Stunning production, Deakins (should be) a lock for Best Cinematography.

            Characterwise, it suffered from Dunkirk syndrome for me. No-name soliders thrown right into the middle of the battle with almost zero characterization. I was engaged with their struggles to complete the impossible mission that they are given as human beings -- you want them to survive and get the message to the division at the front lines. But other than that base instinct, it's nearly irrelevant who they actually are because we know virtually nothing about them as real people.

            Caveat: the one thing we do know is one of them is the brother of another solider who is in the company at the front lines. Which would be like if Saving Private Ryan was about sending Ryan's three other brothers off across Europe to maybe save their other brother but definitely risk all four of them dying in the process. I can't imagine why this brother would ever have been tasked with delivering the order in the hopes of saving his other.

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            • #7
              Re: 1917

              I heard that this was made to look like one continuous take. One of my favorite war movies was actually a smaller movie where it was just a sniper vs. another sniper.

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              • #8
                Re: 1917

                It basically is a one-take, though there are a couple obvious act breaks where Mendes "cuts." Even within that rule, Deakins does a lot of different things to keep it interesting and surprising. But Eisenstein's montage theory of cinema has persisted for over a century for a reason -- it really does work better than the reality of viewing images continuously the way we do in real life (though the brain makes its own cuts and edits to that too). As hacky as Spielberg's platoon of war movie cliches and stereotypes was in SPR, it did manage to keep you always engaged on a character level as they made their way across France. Here, the technical accomplishments feel more like a way to avoid having to develop the characters much at all.

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                • #9
                  Re: 1917

                  Originally posted by JoeBanks View Post
                  Technically, this was a tour de force. Stunning production, Deakins (should be) a lock for Best Cinematography.
                  Agreed, also production design was incredible.

                  Originally posted by JoeBanks View Post
                  Characterwise, it suffered from Dunkirk syndrome for me. No-name soliders thrown right into the middle of the battle with almost zero characterization. I was engaged with their struggles to complete the impossible mission that they are given as human beings -- you want them to survive and get the message to the division at the front lines. But other than that base instinct, it's nearly irrelevant who they actually are because we know virtually nothing about them as real people.
                  This was my big problem. Also knowing what a bloodbath WWI was, and the 1600 British soldiers involved in an inconsequential half-battle was a drop in the bucket of the roughly 20 million killed in the war. Granted, I know more about WWI than most audience members and that definitely colored my reactions, but the audience never got to know the two main characters enough for me to care about them, and the fact that one of them had a brother, and the other had any kind of life outside the battlefield until the very end never engaged me.

                  The gimmick was annoying to me because I was constantly looking for the cuts, which completely took me out of the story, but that's probably my own issue. I've seen more evocative and affecting depictions of wars and battles, and this film made me feel nothing but bored.
                  Just my 2 cents, your mileage may vary.

                  -Steve Trautmann
                  3rd & Fairfax: The WGAW Podcast

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                  • #10
                    Re: 1917

                    Originally posted by KitchonaSteve View Post
                    Also knowing what a bloodbath WWI was, and the 1600 British soldiers involved in an inconsequential half-battle was a drop in the bucket of the roughly 20 million killed in the war. Granted, I know more about WWI than most audience members and that definitely colored my reactions
                    I don't have extensive WWI knowledge, other than it was a meat grinder for every side. It didn't bump me as much here because setting it in April 1917 made me think that we were coming in more at the tail end of the war. So it felt logical enough to me that things might have been in the mopping up stage? Though maybe it was a bloodbath right up until the armistice.

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                    • #11
                      Re: 1917

                      Originally posted by JoeBanks View Post
                      It basically is a one-take, though there are a couple obvious act breaks where Mendes "cuts." Even within that rule, Deakins does a lot of different things to keep it interesting and surprising. But Eisenstein's montage theory of cinema has persisted for over a century for a reason -- it really does work better than the reality of viewing images continuously the way we do in real life (though the brain makes its own cuts and edits to that too). As hacky as Spielberg's platoon of war movie cliches and stereotypes was in SPR, it did manage to keep you always engaged on a character level as they made their way across France. Here, the technical accomplishments feel more like a way to avoid having to develop the characters much at all.

                      It must be way harder to make it look like one continuous take. The actors having to memorize more lines. The crew having to be more exact so that it all flows. I am not sure how they match the scenes day to day.

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                      • #12
                        Re: 1917

                        This instantly became one of my favorite war movies. I thought it was brilliant.

                        In the context of a war, it was a very small story and probably representative of many similar incidents, but the movie is both epic in scope and wonderfully intimate.

                        Easily Best Picture for me.
                        TimeStorm & Blurred Vision Book info & blog: https://stormingtime.com//

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                        • #13
                          Re: 1917

                          How did Sam Mendes make this look like one continually take? A few times maybe, I thought he might have been able to do it, but there are literally 40 minutes where the camera follows along with no visible places to cut. What's more impressive is that it includes huge battle scenes to set up. There's the daylight to deal with. It looked like it would take several months to film this. Not to mention a bunch of different set ups. Even if you have different camera men taking turns, there's no way the actors can go that many hours without breaking or remembering their lines.

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                          • #14
                            Re: 1917

                            This is the most realistic war film I've ever seen. It feels like you're following along with the soldier protagonist the whole way. It feels like I'm right there in 1917. The camera work is amazing. It always seems to move to capture the action and tell the story, while making it feel like you're right there present in the moment.



                            (minor spoilers)
                            I can see why some feel that the soldiers felt kind of faceless, with the audience not really that involved with them (a la Dunkirk). But, I will say that half way into the movie, I did feel hooked by the French girl and baby scene. Something about a soldier being nice to a villager and a little baby makes me like him. I know it's a gimmick, but it's the same thing that happened to me when I saw Jack Nicholson be nice to that cute puppy in As Good as it Gets. Also, the action here was more personal and intense than most war movies. That shooting at close range was one of the best war action sequences I've ever seen. Rather than the usual rely on explosions, it's much more intense when you're literally running for your life when someone is five feet from you trying to gun you down. The realistic continuous take really took advantage of that. The trailers do not do this movie justice. It's much better than what's implied in the trailer. I wasn't that taken with the trailer, since I've seen a billion movies. I would say 1917, Joker and JoJo Rabbit have been the movies that have most impressed me so far.

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                            • #15
                              Re: 1917

                              Originally posted by Friday View Post
                              How did Sam Mendes make this look like one continually take? A few times maybe, I thought he might have been able to do it, but there are literally 40 minutes where the camera follows along with no visible places to cut. What's more impressive is that it includes huge battle scenes to set up. There's the daylight to deal with. It looked like it would take several months to film this. Not to mention a bunch of different set ups. Even if you have different camera men taking turns, there's no way the actors can go that many hours without breaking or remembering their lines.
                              No one was doing 40 minute takes, of course. As you can see/learn from the video below, they rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed. They built sets specifically to allow for filming. They put an amazing amount of time in before the cameras ever rolled. They basically filmed a play, so to speak.

                              In this day & age of VFX, one can trick the eye, especially during a moment of action. The longest takes were roughly 8 1/2 to 9 minutes, which is a still a lot especially when you are there in person; but infinitely more realistic and manageable than 15 minutes or more, obviously. They "shot around 65 days."

                              Incredible planning and preparation was the key. Models of sets. Walk-throughs. Tests. More rehearsals the day of. And patience.

                              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMBnvz-dEXw
                              Will
                              Done Deal Pro
                              www.donedealpro.com

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