“1917” is now considered a major Oscar contender: it has already won the award for best film at the Golden Globes, as well as awards from the producers’ and directors’ guilds. All these are very important indicators of future success at the main award of the American Motion Picture Academy.
But a couple of months ago, nobody would consider this picture a potential triumphant of the awards season, it was considered just another “war movie”, which even if they get to the Oscar, they rarely win it. Neither did the wonderful “Letters from Iwo Jima,” nor “For Reasons of Conscience,” nor even the great “Saving Private Ryan.”
So what has changed? First, the social context clearly played in favor of “1917. Against the backdrop of the exacerbated situation in Iran and the jokes about World War III, a film that reminds us that war is actually a nasty and pointless affair has taken on special color.
And besides, “1917” is an incredibly difficult film from a technical point of view. An epic two-hour action film, shot as if in one shot: all the glues, except for one in the middle, are cleverly hidden here by the excellent cameraman Richard Deakins. Who is sure to win his second Oscar after Blade Runner 2049.
Curiously, director Sam Mendes is not at all the man one would expect to do such technically demanding work. Yes, he’s directed two parts of the Bond movies, Skyfall and SPECTRE, but he’s mostly known for writing chamber psychological dramas like American Beauty and The Road to Change.
Even his last war-themed film, “Marines,” was about soldiers who never got a shot in the entire operation in Iraq.
“1917” is in many ways the exact opposite of what Mendes has done before. He based the screenplay on the story of his grandfather, who really served in the British army during World War I. He told his grandson the story – or maybe an army story – of two corporals who were sent behind the front lines so that they could deliver the order to call off the offensive. After all, otherwise friendly troops would be ambushed and thousands of soldiers would die.
In theory, because of the proximity of history – after all, its source was the director’s own grandfather – you could expect the film to come out very personal. But everything is just the opposite: “1917” is in every sense a “impersonal” film.
The two leading characters here are only part of the environment, two figures whose characters we only learn about through their direct reactions to the horrors going on around them. The protagonist is the war itself: a nasty, filthy space with thick rats, rotting corpses, and the incessant whistling of bullets.
In some ways, this approach is reminiscent of Dunkirk, another war film in which the people gave way to the elements of war. But if Christopher Nolan focused on the whole event at once – the actual retreat of the British army from Dunkirk – Sam Mendes is more specific. He is only interested in the private story of two soldiers who go on a suicide mission through pain and fear.
