Review1917 film review: Sam Mendes’ visceral World War I drama is his best movie to date
- Starring George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman, director Sam Mendes’ 1917 is both technically stunning and emotionally devastating
- It’s every bit as powerful as Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, two World War II classics
5/5 stars
After two James Bond films in a row, Sam Mendes changes direction with startling results. Dedicated to his own grandfather, Alfred Mendes, who served in Belgium’s Flanders region, 1917 is a visceral World War I movie that is both technically masterful and emotionally devastating. It’s easily the best film of Mendes’ career – and that includes his Oscar-winning debut American Beauty.
1917 is a mission movie designed to look like one continuous tracking shot. Two British privates, Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman), are instructed by their commanding officer (Colin Firth) to deliver a message to stop troops further afield falling into an ambush. Among the soldiers is Blake’s brother, giving the story a personal imperative. The clock is truly ticking.
Mendes sets his story when the Germans strategically retreated to the Hindenburg Line, at a time when the British briefly had no idea where they were. This allows our heroes to leave the trenches and cross into no-man’s land, evocatively recreated by production designer Dennis Gassner, and head to the deserted German outpost, where they encounter rats and a lot worse.
As the camera follows these two, Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins somehow remarkably keep the action flowing without a single cut. Or at least it seems that way. Like the Oscar-winning Birdman before it, there is a certain amount of sleight-of-hand at play, but it’s absolutely seamless. If anything, the film is so perfectly executed, you spend your time trying to resist the urge to figure out how it was made.