![]() But it's a whole 'nother to watch Mendes and crew dance around the leads. ![]() The film reimagines the old phrase "theater of war," as the actors must complete strenuous and agonizing sequences without breaking to remember dialogue or change positions between diving, crawling, marching, and climbing. It's one thing to compliment Chapman and MacKay's efforts in these unbroken shots. No disturbance of the horrors of war that have been scattered around the film's battlefield (which range from dead horses, to much, much worse). No fresh filmmakers' boots in the nearby mud. No shadows from cameras, boom mics, or other gear. But the stuff that had my jaw dropping was how the camera crew hovered and floated around the adventuring duo without betraying their filmmaking presence. A first-time viewer will likely shudder and clench their armrests thanks to the dramatic tension of wondering whether our guys will indeed be attacked by hidden Germans. ![]() Even before reaching open ground, we see events through a cleverly situated camera hovering far enough from the duo to place bumping, colliding soldiers at the camera's "lens" without breaking the dolly's slowly moving momentum.īut it's when the duo scales the walls that the scale of this no-cuts camerawork becomes apparent. Mendes and his crew have already established the "unbroken camera shot" gimmick at this point, as the young men march through the trench against the flow of other soldiers to reach a point where they can scale the trench and move ahead. ![]() Germans shot at us two days ago, the duo is told. The tension begins with Lance Corporals Blake and Schofield (Dean-Charles Chapman, George MacKay) following orders to crawl and march through open fields, despite pretty much everyone telling them not to. Instead of major historical beats and accurate colonel-by-colonel retellings, its story is an interpretation of WWI stories that director/co-writer Sam Mendes ( Skyfall, American Beauty) heard from his veteran grandfather as a child.Įven so, 1917 makes our list because its "one unbroken shot" gimmick is a technological achievement, and it unlocks Mendes' ability to tell a different kind of WWI story than we've ever seen in theaters. ![]() Sobering and brutal though it may be, it's more of an abstraction than a historical reproduction. Anyone who reads our coverage of military tech and the history of war might be surprised to read that, given how 1917 revolves around the German occupation of northern France during World War I.īut 1917 (out now nationwide, after a Christmas launch in select US cities) doesn't make our list for its accurate wartime depiction. Our film coverage sometimes veers outside the typical "nerd" spectrum, and 1917 stands perilously on the edge of relevance to Ars Technica. ![]()
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