1917 It's a movie that progresses like a video game. Despite the false sequence shot, the almost two hours invested by Schofield and Blake (to deliver a key message to a British detachment about to fall into a trap) go through different episodic fragments very Battlefield o Medal of Honour. If we were to compare it to a tape, we don't really know why, but we would like to mention the reborn Si 1917 takes the Oscar for Best Picture will be more than deserved. One does not leave the cinema the same after being exposed to the mud, the dust and the stumps of 1917.
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1917: war and barbarism without nuances
It is appreciated that its director, Sam Mendes, frees us from any rhetoric. Accepted the gloss of the barbarism of Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, The Thin Red Line y Dunkirk, the 2020 golden globe winner for best picture is a raw panic parade in tune with Hamburger Hill Regarding the lack of hope for the soldier deployed in a conflict: Here he has come to die, and all salvation will be received as a miracle from the divine. The director himself 1917 It is more like a horror movie than a war movie. Special mention deserves the very successful sensation of suffocating oppression and narrowness throughout. 1917 and, above all, in the trench scenes. It is that you can smell even the sweat and urine.
Because of how it's shot,1917 captures the immersive intensity of the first 15 minutes of Save Private Ryan and expands them until they become feature films (with their corresponding breaks for the heart). 1917 It is a continuous "now what?" that leaves you screwed to the chair with the horrified gesture. When the houses burst into a thousand pieces you can feel the chickpeas of dust crossing your throat. You can feel the flies and smell the pus as you come across the umpteenth pile of rotting corpses in the mud, and you can almost see the sinews ripping through when one of the characters sticks his hand into a barbed wire fence (and then slides it into the hole). from the open chest of a corpse).
1917 doesn't need dialogue
Impact 1917 it's devastating. Unlike many other war movies, the slaps of rawness and horror focus more on the after than the during; there are not so many action scenes as prolegomena and consequences: the soldiers preparing for death, and the piles of corpses that confirm the nonsense. Hopefully, this impact will stick with us, like shrapnel, for days. Sometimes weeks. At best, the rest of our lives. Can a movie without nominated actors and actresses win the Oscar for best picture? The Hollywood Reporter about Parasites y 1917. Indeed, if something does not stand out 1917 It's because of his dialogue.
The dialogues are conspicuous by their absence throughout almost the entire film, and it is so. 1917 it is a portentous display of resources that does not need too many wordsWell, the picture is pretty obvious. Zero ideological messages here and zero concerns about falling into clichés. The show we attend is terrible. The only woman who appears in the entire film is a French girl with a wayward baby who heals the wounds of one of the protagonists.
The music, criticized by some due to its excessive paternalistic role, in our opinion is perfectly introduced. It marks the times very well and has flashes of genius with BPM increases at moments that, out of respect for the spoiler, we reserve. More than music, they are currents of crouching death acting as the ceiling in scenes of nine or ten minutes without cuts; life itself understood as an exercise in futility when human beings get it again for not understanding each other, with the music helping on certain occasions to turn something insignificant into something full of transcendence.
The 1917 sequence shot
They circulate around, loose and without a muzzle, articles of the style «Is the sequence shot authentic? 1917?«. Quite a headline, right? Is it possible to condense in fewer words the entire operation of cultural information on the Internet?
Having said that, flat refusal to write another comma about the hackneyed technical issue. It is sad, unfair and stupid to reduce the impact of a cultural product to a simple label. A line repeated a thousand times by newscasts, critics and posts from Facebook. There has been so much talk about the sequence shot of1917 that his golden globe for the best film of 2019 seems anecdotal. TO The Irish Something similar happened with the special effects: the film became secondary.
Better let's talk about matters of substance; let's talk about prizes and why it is possible that 1917 make history at the 2020 Oscars.
1917 is right up there with Saving Private Ryan.
By approach, deployment of resources and invoice, 1917 can talk from you to you to Save Private Ryan. This is something unheard of. Not Christopher Nolan. This is something wonderful and pure history of cinema.
However.
Competitions for Best Movie in History are pointless. Also the lists of the best films, all the awards and, of course, the Oscars (ideological agenda aside). How can someone claim that Joker is better or worse than Once upon a time in Hollywood? How can anyone compare the intricate visual subtleties of the South Korean Parasites with the deployment of means, technology and mutilated Britons that is 1917? Why do I have to believe that Shakespeare in love is higher than Save Private Ryan?
We like to make pools and prepare popcorn on Oscar nights because in the end, as Jep Gambardella says in the great beauty, "It's all a trick."
It is not the track record that determines the place in the history of each film. That is what the heart, the memory, the bar talks and the likes and dislikes of the new generations of filmmakers take care of.
In Postposmo we publish this review weeks after the release of 1917 in theaters. We don't have any problems, nor are we in a hurry. It will take many more weeks, months even, to know with certainty the place of 1917 in the history.
1917 is the confirmation of Sam Mendes as a great film
One year after Shakespeare in love le stole the oscar for best film a Save Private Ryan the award went to AmericanBeauty, work of a certain Sam Mendes that at that time was released in this cinema. Two decades have passed and Kevin Spacey is no longer dedicated to the cinema, but to the courts. Sam Mendes (always absent from the lists of the best current film directors), has made Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road, Jarhead and two of the most refreshing and original updates of the James Bond saga: Skyfall y Specter.
This year, the Briton is aiming for ten Oscars with his colossal and marvelous 1917 (after getting the golden globe a few weeks ago). Unfortunately for him, this year they also aspire to ten statuettes Once upon a time in Hollywood y The Irish, while Joker is the favorite with eleven nominations. This year, we have the real Oscars night.
At the end of the day, every movie, regardless of its genre, shares common ingredients. A structure of acts, a similar duration and a final impact on the viewer's memory for when he returns to the world. If these are the criteria that determine the success of a director in the face of the number of times he will have to say thank you next February 10 at the Dolby Theater in LA, Sam Mendes is in a position to destroy.