Tag: 1917

Dunkirk is dirtier than 1917

Posted on by victorfraga

[dropca]A[/dropcap]s soon as the trailer for Sam Mendes’ 1917 (2020) was released, the obvious comparisons with Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk (2017) began. Both films were about nameless, young British men struggling to survive amongst a cacophony of bombs and bullets. Both had top-drawer British directors attached and both focused on time as a crucial factor. Only one however, cast Harry Styles. But that’s not why Dunkirk is a far better, far more enduring film than 1917.

I will be the first to admit that 1917 is a tremendous cinematic achievement. An stomach-churning, anxiety-inducing thrill ride that does not let up. The cinematography is awe-inspiring and the journey is epic. But it’s missing something that Dunkirk has in spades, which is an urgent and compelling message. Dunkirk isn’t just a war movie, but also a film about the boundaries of morality in an extreme situation. The story is not one that just depicts the visceral experience of war but the philosophical, moral confusion too.

Take, for example, the scene with the young infantry hiding inside a beached trawler, waiting for the tide to help them evacuate. With the ship sinking into the water, they realise that somebody must be forced out or they will all drown. Who should they pick? It is a petrifying conundrum due to its simple lack of moral guidance. They then realise there is a Frenchman hiding in their midst. He is marked out by his accent. Should they choose him? Harry Styles certainly believes so until another soldier comes to the Frenchman’s defence. Whilst 1917 is busy chucking loud bangs and dizzying camera moves at its audience, Dunkirk sprinkles itself with moments that cut to the core of what it means to be good in times of war.

An unnamed soldier (Cillian Murphy) has seen the horrors on the beach. He is saved by a local boat, captained by Mr Dawson (Mark Rylance) and his son, George (Barry Keoghan), the shell-shocked soldier orders them to turn back home to England. Unfortunately, Mr Dawson and George want to continue, driven by what they believe is the right thing to do. This back and forth is something that is as tense as any battle scene. The soldier has to reconcile his fear of death with solidarity. What should he do? Is it ok to risk one’s life in such a way? Or is it foolish? The situation is exacerbated by the soldier’s accidental killing of George. When Mr. Dawson realises what happened, he doesn’t tell the soldier the truth. He only says that George is unconscious. It is a heartbreaking moment of empathy for the man who just killed his son.

Nolan’s treatment of time is also more effective than Mendes’s. 1917’s real time storytelling is an impressive feat, always keeping you immersed in the story, but it does not possess the same scale as Dunkirk. It is confined to a duration of two hours, which isn’t enough to conjure the full-scale horror of war. Cutting between three time zones, you get a feeling of a mass-scale, all-encompassing war that permeates its environment completely. 1917 uses time in order to make you feel war. Dunkirk uses time in order to make you understand war.

1917 has some breathtaking moments. The ghostly shootout in a burning city and the final run across No Man’s Land are heart-thumping and unforgettable for their mastery of the form. But the film never made me reflect. The good guys are good and the bad guys are bad. Nolan had loftier ambitions for his film. In the last moments of Dunkirk, it is revealed that the newspapers called George a hero. George was a young boy who was killed before his boat even got to Dunkirk. His death was the result of a completely avoidable mistake. His death didn’t help save anybody or serve to help people suffer less. Yet he is heralded as a hero. It is a poignant reminder of how we, as a society, justify arbitrary suffering.

1917 is a powerful reminder of how terrifying war might be, but it won’t be remembered in the same way Dunkirk will. Nolan’s film raises far more profound philosophical and moral questions.

The stills at the top and in the middle are from ‘Dunkirk’, while the picture on the bottom of this artcile if from ‘1917’

1917

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

When the trailer for 1917 debuted, it bore a similar aesthetic to Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017) – not an entirely bad thing, but not the preferred style, either. I had shared the minority view that Nolan’s film was, in the words of The Guardian’s David Cox, ‘bloodless, boring and empty’. The menace and spectacle of its opening quarter petered out into litany of tepid peril overcast by Hoyte van Hoytema’s gloomy cinematography.

Thankfully, 1917 makes a quick break from these facile similarities with its tight pace, raw emotion and staggering camerawork. It is one of those rare films where, as a reviewer, you risk getting stuck in a rabbit hole of superlatives – so here goes it.

Firstly, the performances, though good, are not what drive this film. It is instead an intensely sensory experience that demands to be seen on the biggest and best system. Roger Deakins’s masterful camerawork bobs and weaves through the trenches of the Western Front in seemingly one unbroken take, capturing the men of the British Expeditionary Force with a visceral fluidity. After ten years of excellent cinema, 1917 will be counted amongst the decade’s most impressive and absorbing.

Everyone in this film is under overwhelming pressure – few more acutely than Lance Corporals Blake (Dean Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay). The young men are ordered to carry a message across enemy territory that will prevent a British battalion of 1,600 men, which includes Blake’s brother, from charging into a death trap.

Chapman and MacKay both give strong performances. Blake is a chipper lad given to jocular anecdotes and crude jokes, while Schofield, apparently the more experienced of the two, has developed a war-weary reserve. There’s a mutual respect and affection for each other, though, and their extraordinary experiences only makes their bond stronger.

This tight, simple premise and character dynamic sets the stage for one of the most remarkable portrayals of combat in recent memory. It may not have the thematic depth of Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957), but Mendes conveys the all-consuming stress, misery and exhaustion of total war. Many of the men Blake and Schofield meet are in varying depths of hate and prostration, but most are driven by a stoic resolve to keep moving forward, whatever their dismal fate may be.

Key to the film’s immersion is Dennis Gassner’s epic set design. We follow the troops as they traverse yard after yard of dank trenches, and the scope becomes even more grimly arresting when they scale the parapet, entering a vast, ghoulish wasteland of sodden craters, splintered trees and mangled bodies. Indeed, there are moments across No Man’s Land that resemble the body horror of David Cronenberg; the attention paid to the grisly details of death and decay is disturbing as it is appropriate.

Inspired by the stories of his grandfather, director Sam Mendes and DOP Roger Deakins have made the biggest and best First World War film of the 21st century. This is important, because for better or worse, cinema has the power to reinvigorate history, to spread knowledge and awareness. After all, the First World War has been overshadowed by the conflict that followed, with its clearer moral compass and even greater level of destruction. Mendes’s film, while not a depiction of the war’s terrible stalemate, will nonetheless assault one’s senses and give them some idea of what their forebears endured in Britain’s deadliest war.

1917 is in theatres Friday, December 10. On VoD on Monday, June 1st. On Netflix on Friday, September 10th (2021)