Director: Sam Mendes
Writer: Sam Mendes, Krysty Wilson-Cairns

My problem with Sam Mendes has always been that I think he too often sacrifices story and content for style and form. He never passes up a chance to get that beautiful shot, even if he has to sacrifice the film to do it. He did it in the last two Bond films, and he does it here. Make no mistake, he does get beautiful shots, but we’re often so wowed by his technique that the story suffers. In 1917, he again attempts to wow us with his technical prowess, using a series of long takes, digitally woven together to appear as one long shot.

Like Saving Private Ryan, an entire war is reduced to one small journey—ruddy-cheeked WWI Lance Corporal Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Lance Corporal Schofield (George MacKay) are assigned to carry an urgent order through recently abandoned German territory to a regiment of 1600 men—one of whom is Blake’s brother—warning them that the attack they’re about to launch on the retreating enemy is a trap. It’s a great way to tell the story, and it’s just unfortunate that the focus is on the one-take “gimmick.” I think it took what might have been a brilliant film and reduced it to one that is still very good, but once the novelty wears off, will likely not hold up as well. Not only does it put the focus on the director rather than the film, it also forces the content of the film to adhere to the form. You can’t help but wonder why you’re seeing these long pans of nothing, or, like in Hitchcok’s Rope, why there’s a close up of an evenly lit dark area. Self-indulgent distractions.

To be fair, the unbroken take works really well sometimes. For example, early on, while the men are walking through the trenches, it shows the grand scope of the trenches in a way that you couldn’t do without an aerial shot. The same is true near the end, when we pan down the length of the field infirmary, showing soldier after injured soldier. But to hold an unbroken take for an entire film? It’s too much. If everything is worthy of an unbroken take, then nothing is (although I’m not entirely sure that makes sense).

I also thought that—and maybe this is because of the one-take issue—at least some of the film seemed unlikely, as though Mendes tried to take every trope from war films and fit them into one day’s worth of film. There’s charging and dogfights and snipers. Oh my! (There are more than those three, but I don’t want to spoil anything!)

All of that said, it’s definitely worth watching. It just won a Golden Globe, but again, I wonder how much of that is novelty. There are better films out there. But this one has action and tension, and even though there isn’t much in the way of character development, it’s acted capably, with appearances by Colin Firth, Mark Strong, and Benedict Cumberbatch. IMDb has it at 8.6, which is a little high for me. I’d go as high as a 7.5, with one full point of that for the technical skill displayed. It really is an amazing feat; it’s just a shame that the director had to make himself the star of the show. (running time 1:59)