In the 1985 Soviet war film Come and See, we follow the journey of Florya, a young boy excited to help his country in the war effort against the Nazis. As he moves from one traumatic event to another, we see the effects of the war impact him not only mentally, but physically – his hair whitens, his eyes stretch wide open in permanent terror, and he carries himself with the exhaustion of a man who lives on the brink of both death and insanity. Few films have captured the traumatic physical toll that war leaves on its victims as viscerally as Come and See, but 1917 comes closer than many others. It starts out relatively unhurried, as English soldiers Will and Tom are sent to deliver a message to the 2nd Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment that will save the lives of 1600 British men walking into a trap. As the two encounter obstacles along the way, their mission grows more urgent, and the accumulated pain of their experiences is revealed in their visage.
George McKay has acted in mainstream films and television shows before, but he has never been a household name. In 1917 he demonstrates an immense level of dedication to his part on par with A-list celebrities of his own generation, and in doing so he is hopefully opening a gateway to much more substantial acting opportunities in the future.
Given the stupidly difficult nature of creating a movie that appears to be all shot in one take (or two, if we are nitpicking), blocking actors and crew members becomes a task that can take months of preparation. The director, Sam Mendes, and McKay worked closely for this long stretch of time during pre-production, running through every bit of action and dialogue so they could measure out how large each part of the set would need to be, whether it was an underground tunnel or hundreds of metres of war trenches.
In the climactic scene of the piece, McKay’s soldier Will runs perpendicular to a line of men charging across no man’s land, in a last minute attempt to fulfil his mission before it is too late. It is this moment that we finally grasp the full spectacle of every production element coming together: McKay’s physicality bearing the weariness of wartime and a striking likeness to Florya, Thomas Newman’s epic score pressing the action forward, Mendes’ meticulous blocking of every extra and explosion on set, and Roger Deakins’ gliding cinematography framing Will as a singularly motivated agent moving through a wave of chaos.
As technically brilliant as 1917 is across its departments, its awards buzz has largely been centring on its one-shot device, which allows its plot to unfold in real time. We have seen similar techniques used in films like Russian Ark and Birdman, but its use here to build tension is most akin to Hitchcock’s 1948 thriller Rope, in which two friends cover up what they consider the “perfect murder”. The effect of refusing to cut away lets us feel the value of each lost second, the deep melancholy of solitude, and at one point, the unflinching pain of a sad, slow death. Though there are few stretches of time where the device is not completely warranted, Deakins’ persistence remains, and his cinematography effectively details every waking moment of Will’s journey.
World War I is curiously lacking the same amount of coverage in Hollywood as World War II and the Vietnam War, though this may be in part because it was more Britain’s war than the United States’. Mendes has stated in interviews that he was motivated to create 1917 based off his grandfather’s experiences, making it a wholly more personal war movie than many others, but it is also his spotting of this gap in mainstream movie coverage that allows the film to feel like a piece of cinema that stands apart from its influences.
1917 has earned 10 nominations in total this Oscar season, mostly in the well-deserved technical categories, and it wouldn’t be surprising at all to see it take home a handful of them. Its wins for Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Director at the Golden Globes, while not guarantors of its success, may influence Academy voters when they come to consider 1917 as a contender for Best Picture. We will only be able to tell whether it will continue to hold up as a definitive, visceral World War I classic years into the future, but it has made a good start towards that this awards season.
