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'1917' Is A Mind-Boggling Technological Achievement-But Not A Great Film


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Just saw this last night.  A good and very well photographed film.  But, a thin story, for me.

The "single shot" idea was well done, but I don't think I would have even noticed if there had been obvious cuts and they certainly wouldn't have really effected the story telling if done correctly.  But, very good publicity for the film, so not without it's marketing merits.

Perhaps because I've read a bit of the WWI literature, I didn't feel the film captured the nature of the war and the way it was fought.

And that scene with the French woman and baby felt particularly old fashioned and poorly written.

The booby trapped bunker and the whitewater made it kind of "Indiana Jones" meets "All quiet on the Western Front".

But as a technical achievement, it was pretty awesome. ?

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  • 3 weeks later...

I saw it last night in 4K laser projection looked great. The level of craft on the film was amazing, some fantastic art direction.

I thought the lighting in the flare's sequence was extraordinary, just stunning.

The single shot idea I think worked for somethings and not others. At times it felt more immersive, but it also made me spot story beats and structural elements (particularly in the script) that existed only to continue the shot. The long take (as is often the case) draws attention to itself and actually reduces immersion - when your thinking "blimey how did they do that?", your not involved in the story and characters.

Also I think they undermined the idea by going from Day to night to day in a 2 hour period, it didn't feel like a continuous shot or a real time chunk of time. The story felt "edited" because of those arbitrary structural elements. Because the light changed so much it  wasn't a continuous flow, other single take films like Timecode, Hardcore Henry,  Lost in London, Russian Ark - felt more like a continuous moment.

e.g the french woman celler scene existed to hide the transition from night to day, rather than serving the story - it added nothing to the protagonists story and no new information was revealed. Same with the truck sequence - it existed for geographic reasons to move the character to a different location quickly - but in a conventional film, you'd probably cut it out.

I would have probably enjoyed the film more as a conventionally shot and edited film - the pacing could have then been improved. But if you do that it becomes a much more conventional film and it wouldn't be getting the notice its getting now. We are all talking about the continuous shot and paying more attention to the film because of it. So the choice to make the film this was paid off in terms of box office and impact. 

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8 hours ago, Phil Connolly said:

it added nothing to the protagonists story and no new information was revealed. Same with the truck sequence

Oh it was huge actually, it was the moment we actually started to learn something about his personal life. 

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the thing about 1917 to British audiences and I count myself as part of that cos of the military history of the Rock of Gibraltar is that from the off we walk into anything about the trenches and the tragic loss of life already sold on the sentiments the director would like to evolve....in other words the history of it already works for the film no matter what......as I said earlier I think Peter Weir's GALLIPOLI with Mel Gibson in it is a better film with similar storyline

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11 hours ago, Stephen Perera said:

The film TOO LATE did the extended steadicam one shot thing with film cameras back on 2015....they would rest the camera in mid scene and with operator

 

Yep and they did it on film! Where I was dismayed with the way they choose to intercut the takes (basically cutting to black), I do think what they did deserves an applause. With very little money, they made a pretty decent looking film with some good actors. I wish the story was a bit more compelling, but hey I'm happy for them. 

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