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I went and saw this drama about the first World War. In an impressive feat of organisation, this production was made to look as if shot in two long takes. It follows two young soldiers, sent out to deliver a life-saving message to their army comrades, across the deadly no-man’s-land between the front lines neighboured by unreal green fields of flowers, through devastated farmsteads and burning villages.
The film
features a star-studded cast with Mark Strong, Colin Firth and Benedict
Cumberbatch, but leaves the heavy lifting to its two young leads, Dean-Charles
Chapman and especially George MacKay, giving them both a chance to shine as they deliver captivating and heart-felt performances. Particularly MacKay is
heading for awards here by sheer virtue of staying in character and portraying
a traumatised, grieving young man with all the emotional nuance required as the
camera unrelentingly stays on him. Great stuff!
I was very
worried about the rating – in UK, it is 15+ - as I find on-screen violence very
traumatising, but this film is so well-made that I was fine. While they do not gloss over the human lives lost – there are bodies popping up everywhere
as part of the scenery. It is surreal because most of them don’t immediately
register as people at all until the protagonists are literally on top of
them, which is certainly intentional. – they do not dwell on the gruesome
imagery of war in the way other recent movies do. I suppose they simply have
no time for that as there are barely any edits.
Visually,
this piece is very powerful. They did a flawless job at bringing the old
black-and-white photographs to life with detailed costumes and great sets. The
only issues I found are the animated animals (mainly rats and cows). They just
do not look good. More like an early 2000s PC game. A shame, as these details
matter! I would have expected them to be able to scrape together the budget for
the CGI, given that half the people working on this project seem to be digital
artists of some kind according to the credits.
The
gorgeous score by Thomas Newman is used sparingly but to great effect.
Unfortunately I was unable to enjoy the silences in the absence of score as
there was a noisy movie going on in the next screen over, so the effect of the
quiet was lost. I’m sure it would have been spine-chilling otherwise to
experience that atmosphere. I have to say one thing, though: because this was
supposed to look like one shot, it left no opportunity to tighten up the
project – and I think it could have used a bit of tightening to really make me feel the
tension. I didn’t experience that nail-biting unrest that other films with a
ticking clock have.
All in all,
a great production with huge emotional impact. 4/5 and A+ for effort.
PS:
[spoilers] there were a few things that I found annoying and that kind of gave
the game away a bit: first of all, how did they dry so quickly after falling
into water? And what about the mud? You could see the invisible editing fairy at work here. Plotwise, why
did they fire that flare? Even though they did not know where they were, the
enemy surely does now. Stupid writing! Finally, the continuous shot agenda kind
of gave the game away a bit: in the beginning, they claim it takes up to 8
hours to do the trip, when the film has a runtime of just under 2. Something
went wrong here with the passage of time. Maybe it’s like that continuous shot
of Bella in Twilight, where she suffers through the seasons: a huge amount of
time passes but the camera stays with her.
PPS: I just
realised why I like this movie so much – at least one of the many reasons: the opposing
army is not portrayed as „evil“ or „the Enemy“ outside of plot explanation. There
is no hatred. In one scene, the soldiers even express something like admiration
for their adversaries, being genuinely impressed with their handiwork. It would
have changed the tone of the movie to something base and meh if they had chosen
to harp on about this conflict, instead of the human story of this single,
small mission.
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