The Lost Generation is Found and Remembered: '1917' Review

"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things they have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie." (O'brien)

As I sit in the aftermath of watching probably the truest war story ever told on a big picture, this quote comes to mind, this passage from Tim O'brien's The Things They Carried. But what do I mean by true? The story told isn't necessarily one that happened, may not have happened at all in fact. Maybe it did, but maybe it happened nothing like what we saw, so what makes it true? How are we to define truth to something that by a creative license of Hollywood is so clear a fabrication. What makes it true is the fact that in under 2 hours, I felt like I wasn't in an audience, but instead I was in the wartorn French countryside of World War I. I felt the stillness of trenches, the anxiety of No Mans land, the incompetence of entitled leadership, and I felt the loss of a friend. 1917 taps into the very essence and tragedy of war that defined the First Global conflict of the modern age.

1917 focuses on 2 soldiers on a mission to cross enemy lines and give a stand-down order to a British colonel (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) who is hoping to launch an assault on the German line. The colonel believes the Germans are on the run, when in fact they have set up a new line of defense and are waiting for just such an attack. If the loss of 1,600 lives weren't enough of a stake though, they personalize this mission by making one of the protagonists have a brother that is serving in this very unit. Right away the stakes are laid bare, and the audience is invested. As far as narratives go it's fairly straightforward, but films are, at the end of the day, a visual medium, and how the film was shot is very much the heart of its success.

Ultimately the success of this movie came from the entire film being filmed essentially in one consecutive cut. The sheer ambition of it alone was enough for me to be sold, as this was the big thing that drew me to see the movie. However, I don't think anyone, myself included, was ready for just how effective this method would be. In a movie that clocks in at an hour and fifty-nine minutes after credits, there is only one cut and as such we experience every raw and excruciating moment of this suicide mission. However, the greatest advantage this approach had was in the flawlessness it required from the actors in it. There are some SUPER heavy names in British acting that ensemble this film: Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, Collin Firth, and Richard Madden, but all of these actors are in the movie for at tops 5 minutes, and with each respective member of the cast getting 1 take, there is NO room for mistakes. They have not only had to nail their lines and delivery but convey everything about these characters in one small performance that is gone in the blink of an eye. Any mistakes made during film making had to be turned into advantages, and as a result, our protagonist characters feel so much more human than what we see in other films as they stumble and fall across no man's land, and destroyed French fields. So it is because of this decision that we get this perfect, true war story. This story that doesn't feel rehearsed a million times to get the perfect action sequence, or deliver the most important line. We get a level and degree of honesty that I don't think we have ever seen in a war movie.

There are very few things that can so eloquently depict such a horrifying thing as war. 1917 is cinematic gold, it's score is haunting and suspenseful, the performances are brilliant and downright heartbreaking, and you will never experience so close a thing to war as this.

"War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and discovery and holiness and pity and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; War is drudgery. War makes you a man; War makes you dead.

Another quote from Tim O'brien. 1917 is war, 1917 is World War I. It is the lost generation here to remind us that they were there in a time where they have since been forgotten. They are worth being remembered and this movie is worth your time. So what the hell are you doing still reading my article, go get a ticket and see it.