This sort of camera trickery is, of course, not new. From Alfred Hitchcock's Rope to Alejandro González Iñárritu's Oscar-winning Birdman, many directors have used the one-take conceit for a lot of stated reasons. It's said to make you connect closer with the characters. It's said to put you more into the story, particularly when the camera moves around in full circles to capture the whole environment. Perhaps it's because I'm so interested in filmmaking itself, but I've found the technique to always have the opposite effect: I become engrossed in the meticulous planning, intense acting focus, and clever technical wizardry used to pull off such a thing.
From that standpoint, 1917 is masterful. Jaw-droppingly, gobsmackingly excellent. It's one thing to pull off a suspenseful character drama, confined to an apartment, in a single take. It's harder to present the tale of a pigeonholed actor trying to reboot his career mostly in the confines of a theater, but it's still not too difficult to wrap your head around how it was done. 1917 is like a career-best illusion from a master magician. You will not know how it's all done, and even the parts you do know (or can figure out) still leave you impressed.
Director Sam Mendes has choreographed an intricate dance of impossible scale for this movie. It may look like a single take, but it is not a static movie. We move indoors and out, down into trenches, across bombed-out battlefields, through raging firefights, onto a vehicle, and so much more. Mendes' partner in crime, Director of Photography Roger Deakins, leads a team that makes the camera move fluidly through all of it, maintaining perfect focus and crisp lighting.
The strain the actors must have gone through to make this movie is hard to imagine. For the two leads, Dean-Charles Chapman and (especially) George MacKay, I can't imagine they'll ever be part of another movie that's harder to make -- even if they go on to the top of the A list from here. (They're both lesser-known for now, Chapman's most recognizable role being Tommen Baratheon on Game of Thrones, while MacKay is best known for 11.22.63.) Both actors are committed to going along with any slight hiccups along the way to make the single take work; you will see things in the movie that were clearly not planned, but their reactions manage to incorporate these surprises wonderfully.
But here's the thing: the craft of the movie, the technical achievement, is so off-the-charts high that it surpasses the quality of the story itself. Assembled from real war remembrances told to Mendes by his grandfather (and with, I suspect, a lot of helpful punch-up from screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns), 1917 does have some strong vignettes scattered throughout -- moments of hardship and loss, a meaningful encounter with a civilian, and harrowing scenes of action and danger. But I found that any emotion they stirred was far outweighed by my sense of wonder at the technique of it all.
I feel like I may need to see the movie again and try to let go of following "the magic trick." But I also suspect that were the movie presented in a more conventional manner, it wouldn't have left a strong enough impression on me to truly want to see it again. It's good, but it's the grand vision of it all that makes it great. And yet... so damn great!
I'm not usually one to go for style over substance when it comes to movies. Even though I'm typically more enthralled by character and story than visuals, 1917 is something different -- something very special. And so I find myself thinking of it as an A-. Unless you simply don't like war movies as a genre, it's definitely worth seeing, and probably while it's on a big screen at your local theater. It's sliding into the #3 slot of my 2019 Top 10 list, and for the moment at least -- with many more nominees still to see -- is the movie I'll be rooting for in this year's awards hunt (especially for the people behind the scenes who pulled it off).
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