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1917 (2019 1917 war film)

Started by magval, January 11, 2020, 07:28:20 PM

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magval

Just seen this but I'm more interested in if you've seen it and what youse thought of it.

Blumf

Not seen it, and the TV ads don't inspire me, just looks like a generic action film. Is that unfair?

Inspector Norse

I haven't seen it and would like to see it, but am a bit apprehensive because the trailer was shit with some right old dodgy acting in it. I thought Dunkirk was pretty spectacular and this gives me Dunkirk-but-for-the-First-World-War vibes, which suggest that it could similarly thrilling, or just be a bit of a rip-off. But the First World War has been neglected of late when it comes to heavyweight screen entertainment; most of the well-known films or series are 30 years old or more now, whereas there's been a continuous supply of material about the sequel.

Bad Ambassador

It's halfway between a great edge-of-the-seat thriller and a rote story of how WWI was the Bad War. Too much of it felt like it was trying to ape Dunkirk without understanding why it worked. There's a lot of filler dialogue that should be characterisation. There are bits that are bluntly foreshadowed or feel like they should have been but aren't. And because the entire story is fiction, there's little in the way of greater stakes, especially as one character says that just because one attack's been cancelled, that doesn't mean they won't order another in a few days.

The upside is that most of it works as a tense thriller, refusing to downplay the horror - one character accidentally puts his hand through a rotting corpse's chest - and you constantly feel like the characters could die any second. It looks amazing, with Deakins deserving an Oscar for this far more than for the neon porridge of Blade Runner 2049, and the one-shot gimmick actually works very well in context, although there is a cut to black to allow passage of time halfway through. The sound editing is a bit dodgy though, as characters and vehicles keep appearing and disappearing with nary a noise.

It's a first-class thriller, superbly made, but when it tries to say anything it thinks is of value, it stumbles badly.

Pseudopath

I thought it was more impressive on a technical level than a narrative or emotional one. Still better than Dunkirk though.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

It seems odd that the trailers don't play up the single take thing. I'm not sure how they would go about doing that, short of spelling it out, but I'd have thought that they'd want to make a big deal of it. I had no idea about it until I read some list of upcoming films.

"From the director of Skyfall". Because Spectre was pants and no one wants to be reminded of American Beauty (also, that was twenty years ago, somehow).

Paaaaul

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on January 12, 2020, 01:27:12 AM
It seems odd that the trailers don't play up the single take thing. I'm not sure how they would go about doing that, short of spelling it out, but I'd have thought that they'd want to make a big deal of it. I had no idea about it until I read some list of upcoming films.
They shouldn't make a big deal of it. The first 25 minutes don't have any obvious edits, but beyond that there are at least ten obvious edit points.
I didn't like this. The acting is very am-dram. I saw Jojo Rabbit too, and that was a MUCH better war drama.

joaquin closet

I watched this on a TV screen instead of at the cinema (someone I know got an awards screener), so some of the visceral thrill aspect of it was probably lost on me... and without that I don't really think there's much there at all...

Thought the acting was pretty crap, Dean-Charles Chapman especially so. The famous people cameos felt weird. Much of the dialogue crap also. All very surface level... any any attempts to go deeper than that (see: singing scene) were pretty lame and cliche.

Might go see it again in the cinema though, just for the spectacle of it all.

p.s. did anyone notice in the scene near the end when our man is running over the front, he bumps into an advancing soldier who falls over and never gets up! boshed one of his mates to death he did!

finnquark

'Must be a big deal if the General's here' ranks as the shittest line of dialogue I've heard in a long time. This was a composite of every story you've already heard about WWI, in the form of a mission from Medal of Honor: Frontline. If the aim of the film was to (yet again) reiterate the essentially valueless nature of life during WWI, then the job was well done as there was little to no characterisation and the script was fuck awful. Quite a lot of it reminded me of something, perhaps The War The Infantry Knew by Dunn, which is an exceptional book and worth your time more than this.

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: joaquin closet on January 12, 2020, 10:27:20 PM
I watched this on a TV screen instead of at the cinema (someone I know got an awards screener), so some of the visceral thrill aspect of it was probably lost on me... and without that I don't really think there's much there at all..

Yeah, I did the same and it bored the arse off me. I'm sure the VISCERAL stuff is all very impressive when big and loud, but it's pretty empty otherwise. The one-take thing obviously makes for some "oo wonder how they did that" moments, but it's been done now and there was nothing especially impressive about its use here. Even movies which aren't all one-take (like The Revenant) feature more impressive uses of that technique. Even if we're focusing on World War scenes, the single-take shot on the beaches in Atonement is better than this entire film.

Couldn't give a single fuck about any character. Peter Jackson's WWI documentary is barely cold and is a far more emotional and evocative piece of work, snubbed from any kind of mainstream accolades for Stupid Reasons.

kidsick5000

It makes me think of Gravity. Fantastic in the cinema but not sure if it will stand up to rewatches. Partly loss of spectacle, partly due to its very linear plot. There's not much diversion. Even the threat Mark Strong brings up doesn't come to much.

Very video game like in that each stage has a particular look, you meet a character who only inhabits that stage.

That said, I liked it a lot. And more power to anything that highlights just how shit a deal those young men were given by their own side

gilbertharding

I haven't seen this, and I'm not going to, frankly.

Is there a map of where this bloke goes during the film? Because as far as I can work out, the entire premise - that he has to run from one point on the front to another with a message by running ALONG the front - is stupid and would never have needed to happen.

Tell me a real story about something that really happened, or fuck off, Sam Mendes. Fuck off.

Bad Ambassador

Quote from: gilbertharding on January 14, 2020, 08:24:13 AM
the entire premise - that he has to run from one point on the front to another with a message by running ALONG the front - is stupid and would never have needed to happen.

That isn't what happens.

Norton Canes

Last 'single take' film I watched was Birdman and I got a bit nauseous after a while. I find the single take thing makes me feel a bit claustrophobic. Like I'm sort of trapped in one place. Don't see any reason for making 'single take' films except showing off.

Josef K

Quote from: Norton Canes on January 14, 2020, 09:15:38 AM
I find the single take thing makes me feel a bit claustrophobic. Like I'm sort of trapped in one place.

That's the point here, no?

DrGreggles

Saw it yesterday. It looks fantastic on the big screen.
Unfortunately that's all it does.

gilbertharding

Quote from: Bad Ambassador on January 14, 2020, 09:02:31 AM
That isn't what happens.

But is 'what happens' something that really happened?

More importantly, is it something that would (or even could) have really happened? I don't know why that's important, but it is to me.

Bad Ambassador

Quote from: gilbertharding on January 14, 2020, 10:32:23 AM
But is 'what happens' something that really happened?

More importantly, is it something that would (or even could) have really happened? I don't know why that's important, but it is to me.

I don't know, since you're asking whether something you've just thought of has ever occurred. Why not try your local library?

Thomas

Heard this has only got one shot in it. Can't be a very good war film.

gilbertharding

Quote from: Bad Ambassador on January 14, 2020, 10:53:54 AM
I don't know, since you're asking whether something you've just thought of has ever occurred. Why not try your local library?

No - that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking if what happens in the film (whatever that is) is ANYTHING LIKE anything which could or did happen in WW1. Or if someone with a massive budget has imagined what it must have been like from a story he half remembers his Grandad telling him.

My reading so far suggests it's more the latter.

I'd rather watch Blackadder Goes Forth. Or the Peter Jackson one.

13 schoolyards

The basic set up is that the Germans have retreated, and a British unit has gone after them, thinking that they're in full flight. Back at HQ, they've figured out that the Germans have in fact pulled back to prepared positions behind their lines (to straighten out a bulge in their trenches), and if the unit that's followed them goes through with their planned attack, they'll be slaughtered.

The idea that a unit commander might push his advantage beyond what the rest of the army is willing to do seems somewhat plausible.

gilbertharding

So far I'm with you. And I've read articles outlining the same precis. And I know that tactical withdrawals are a thing.

But who is it that knows about the potential ambush?

A unit adjacent to the victims? Or some centralized command?

The problem I have is that if it's the former (which I first guessed it must be), what's the problem? Just pass the message along the line. Except it's unlikely they'd have any better information than the other lot though, but more importantly would they have the authority to countermand the order to attack.

If it's the latter, then what? The point of a centralized command is that they are in constant communication with their units. For instance, this company of soldiers needs supplies. Send the message with the rations.

Bad Ambassador

Perhaps you should just watch the movie, rather than demanding to have the entire plot told to you.

mrpupkin

I saw this at the pictures and liked it, although I agree that a lot of the cinematic impact would be lost on a small screen. Not being a WW1 expert I can't comment on the plausibility of the main conceit but given the apparent attention to detail in every other respect I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Also it serves as a device for taking you on a kind of tour of environments and situations which would otherwise be hard to string together emotionally, so I'll allow it on that level. I admired the relentless depiction of the sheer horror of basically everything going on. If there's a moral case to be made for violence in cinema here it is in the service of conveying something important with a viscerality that is arguably exclusive to the medium. It's also very much a film about boys which seems a valuable response to popular and official modes of remembrance that require we see only men in those uniforms. The priest out of Fleabag was shit though. Four bags of putrescence with all flies around them.

Butchers Blind

Quote from: gilbertharding on January 14, 2020, 12:08:05 PM
So far I'm with you. And I've read articles outlining the same precis. And I know that tactical withdrawals are a thing.

But who is it that knows about the potential ambush?

A unit adjacent to the victims? Or some centralized command?

The problem I have is that if it's the former (which I first guessed it must be), what's the problem? Just pass the message along the line. Except it's unlikely they'd have any better information than the other lot though, but more importantly would they have the authority to countermand the order to attack.

If it's the latter, then what? The point of a centralized command is that they are in constant communication with their units. For instance, this company of soldiers needs supplies. Send the message with the rations.

Go see the film, or don't, your choice but surely you don't want the whole story spoonfed to you beforehand.

Saw this at the weekend and it works as a cinematic spectacle but as others have said it may lose the impact on the smaller screen.  The story is slight but that's not really the thrust of the film, its the soldiers journey through different terrains of WW1 and the long takes add to the characters discovery and fear.

buzby

Quote from: gilbertharding on January 14, 2020, 12:08:05 PM
So far I'm with you. And I've read articles outlining the same precis. And I know that tactical withdrawals are a thing.

But who is it that knows about the potential ambush?

A unit adjacent to the victims? Or some centralized command?

The problem I have is that if it's the former (which I first guessed it must be), what's the problem? Just pass the message along the line. Except it's unlikely they'd have any better information than the other lot though, but more importantly would they have the authority to countermand the order to attack.

If it's the latter, then what? The point of a centralized command is that they are in constant communication with their units. For instance, this company of soldiers needs supplies. Send the message with the rations.

In the brief clip they played on Kermode & Mayo last week Colin Firth's General character tells the two main characters that aerial reconnaissance has revealed the German forces are retreating to prepared positions, and with the field telephone lines cut to the advancing British battalion, they have to hand-deliver the order to call off the attack to the battalion commander so they don't advance into the German trap.

Mendes' script was loosely based on the story of his grandfather, Alfred Mendes, a rifleman in the 1st Battalion of the Rifle Brigade serving in Flanders who in October 1917 volunteered for a mission across no-mans-land to report on the status of 4 companies of the Brigade ahead of a possible counter attack at Ypres. He received the Military Medal and a citation for bravery for successfully carrying out his orders. The follwing April he was gassed during the breakthrough at Lys and was evacuated back to the UK to recover.

One of the main differences between his grandfather's story and the film is the location was moved from Ypres to Arras and the Hindenburg Line. This may have been down to budgetary and technical constraints of recreating and filming in the muddy, cratered morass of the Ypres battlefields
https://www.westernfrontassociation.com/world-war-i-articles/1917-right-story-wrong-location/

gilbertharding

Quote from: Bad Ambassador on January 14, 2020, 12:36:30 PM
Perhaps you should just watch the movie, rather than demanding to have the entire plot told to you.

But THERE ISN'T A FUCKING PLOT - that's what I'm fucking saying.

gilbertharding

Quote from: buzby on January 14, 2020, 01:03:46 PM
In the brief clip they played on Kermode & Mayo last week Colin Firth's General character tells the two main characters that aerial reconnaissance has revealed the German forces are retreating to prepared positions, and with the field telephone lines cut to the advancing British battalion, they have to hand-deliver the order to call off the attack to the battalion commander so they don't advance into the German trap.

Mendes' script was loosely based on the story of his grandfather, Alfred Mendes, a rifleman in the 1st Battalion of the Rifle Brigade serving in Flanders who in October 1917 volunteered for a mission across no-mans-land to report on the status of 4 companies of the Brigade ahead of a possible counter attack at Ypres. He received the Military Medal and a citation for bravery for successfully carrying out his orders. The follwing April he was gassed during the breakthrough at Lys and was evacuated back to the UK to recover.

One of the main differences between his grandfather's story and the film is the location was moved from Ypres to Arras and the Hindenburg Line. This may have been down to budgetary and technical constraints of recreating and filming in the muddy, cratered morass of the Ypres battlefields
https://www.westernfrontassociation.com/world-war-i-articles/1917-right-story-wrong-location/

Yes. I KNOW.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-WPlvZguZ4

Andrew Scott is in it? Sod this for a game of soldiers.

Bad Ambassador

Quote from: gilbertharding on January 14, 2020, 01:31:25 PM
But THERE ISN'T A FUCKING PLOT - that's what I'm fucking saying.

Given that you refuse to watch it, how the fuck would you know? You seem to have made a load of assumptions about the film, decided they were stupid and thus declared that the film was stupid. Do you fall down a lot?