1917 | the m0vie blog

169. 1917 – This Just In (#49)

Posted on February 8, 2020 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, The 250 is a fortnightly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.

This time, Sam Mendes’ 1917.

It’s April 1917. Lance Corporal Blake and Lance Corporal Schofeld are tasked with a dangerous assignment. They must cross no man’s land and deliver orders to stop a doomed advance against the retreating German forces. As time runs out, Blake and Schofeld venture further and further into the insanity of war.

At time of recording, it was ranked 49th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: This Just In | Tagged: 1917, Dunkirk, long takes, Oscars, podcast, sam mendes, The 250, This Just In, war | Leave a comment »

Hindsight is 2020: In Defense of the Best Picture Nominations…

Posted on February 5, 2020 by Darren

It’s a strange position to be in, to mount a radical argument that the Best Picture race is actually fairly solid this year.

To be fair, there are legitimate grievances to be had. The Academy went with old favourites in several of the acting categories, overlooking amazing work. The Best Actress category would be stronger if the voters opted for Lupita Nyong’o for Us over than Charlize Theron for Bombshell. The Best Supporting Actress race would have been more interesting had Kathy Bates for Richard Jewell been replaced by Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers. The all-male Best Director category is also frustrating, considering the fine work done by directors like Olivia Wilde, Lulu Wang, Céline Sciamma, Lorene Scafaria, and more over the past year.

However, there is also something inevitable about the tone of the debate over the Best Picture race. The Academy Awards is never going to actually please everybody. There are several hundred films released every year that meet the criteria for eligibility. Taste is inherently subjective. Everybody likes different things. More than that, the Academy is a large body comprised of a variety of different voices, especially after recent diversity pushes to modernise the membership. Even if there was a list of (up to) ten films that would satisfy everybody, the Academy would never be the body to produce it. And that is okay.

Instead, the Best Picture nominees this year offer a snapshot of cinema as it was in 2019. They offer a glimpse of the breadth and the depth of mainstream movie-watching, a list of nine very distinct films that offer nine very distinct perspectives on where the medium is and where it might be going. The beauty of the Best Picture nominees this year is that there’s something for everyone, but nobody gets everything. This seems fair, even if the impulse is to want an entire slate that reflects personal taste.

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Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: 1917, academy awards, awards, ford v. ferrari, jojo rabbit, joker, little women, marriage story, once upon a time in hollywood, Oscars, parasite, populism, the irishman | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the Use of Long Takes in “1917”…

Posted on January 8, 2020 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at Escapist Magazine a little while ago, looking at the use of long takes within 1917.

The long take is an interesting cinematic technique. Most obviously, it’s a dazzling display of craft and technical proficiency. It’s a power move that exists largely so a director can flex their muscles. However, it also serves a compelling paradoxical purpose. The longer that a director holds a take, the more that the audience drifts away from reality. Cuts allow the audience to ground themselves, to process what they have seen. Removing cuts forces the audience to hold a single long gaze. In 1917, Sam Mendes uses that gaze to collapse time and space. In doing so, he captures some of the insanity of war.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: 1917, craft, film, long takes, Movie, Roger Deakins, sam mendes | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: 1917

Posted on December 3, 2019 by Darren

1917 is a stunning technical accomplishment.

Effectively hybridising Dunkirk and Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), 1917 is a war movie that is shot in such a way as to suggest a single extended take. Of course, the audience understand that it isn’t really a single take any more than Rope was a single take, and 1917 underscores this sense of unreality by compressing time and space on this epic adventure across the front lines of the First World War. The illusory nature of that long-take style is the entire point of the exercise.

Out in the (Scho)field.

1917 does suffer slightly in narrative terms. From a storytelling perspective, 1917 is a big collection of familiar war movie tropes. Indeed, 1917 ultimately serves to illustrate just how bold and compelling Dunkirk was in its approach to this familiar narrative template. All of the clichés and archetypes that were stripped out of Dunkirk have been inserted back into 1917, which repeatedly leans on genre shorthand to make its points about the folly of war and the senselessness of such carnage.

However, the beauty of 1917 lies not in the story that it is telling, but in the way that it tells that story. In its best moments, 1917 is haunting, nightmarish and ethereal. 1917 works best when it steers clear of the genre’s stock dialogue and characterisation, and instead aims for something much more primal and evocative.