1917 VUE theatre Portsmouth
Dec 10th 2020
For me, disappointment with a performance or creation of any sort is one of the worst feelings. It may well come from a false expectation in which case the fault is with me/the reviewer/commentator but at other times it is the fault of the work itself.
This was the case with this film. Admittedly my expectations were high – not unreasonably, given the pedigree of the film-maker and hopes were high when the first reviews and comments came out. But not so. I was hoping for/expecting something revelatory and breathtakingly powerful, the cinematic equivalent of that stunning passage in Sebastian Faulks Birdsong which describes (an inadequate word - evokes is a little better) the experience of walking across No Man’s Land under a torrential hail of bullets from the German side and then finally reaching the trenches on the other side. (I often used this passage as a classic example of vividly creative writing when teaching). Reviews suggested that this may well be the case and with the much vaunted ‘all done in one shot’ revelation, I felt fairly confident that these factors would indeed have this result. I was also expecting it to be relatively unusual in that with the focus on a two-man mission that they would be the sole characters we saw for almost the entire duration of the film with perhaps exceptions at the beginning (being given the task) and the end (completion of the task) or, very probably, the death of one if not both of them. Had this been the case then there could have been a remarkably powerful film with this premise.
But it was not to be. Perhaps I should have been warned by the almost universal hailing of it as a modern classic.
So what went wrong?
Well, firstly I found the music derivative (Hans Zimmer on auto-pilot) and much too emphatic and intrusive. It constantly and heavy-handedly underlined, with several lines, each and any emotional point being made and, paradoxically added nothing. I also felt that there was an uncertain balance between the personal (the 2 central characters and their task) and the epic, this latter reflected in the cinematography and framing of the shots which strove for the whole epic war immersive experience. Either of these could have been superb on their own but together they simply made the film irritating with its constantly changing focus which meant that we could not fully appreciate one of these approaches but instead were constantly pulled away to the other. As suggested earlier the focus just on individuals would have been the one I would have centered upon as the basic idea was a good and involving one. In that case the one-shot technique would have been of central importance and a very emotionally involving technique that was completely at the service of the story (as should always be the case. Instead I found myself consciously looking for indications of hidden cuts (essentially when it went from light to black and then back to light).
Also, and this is thanks to the highly knowledgeable friend I saw it with, there were apparently many inaccuracies and unconvincing details throughout which, certainly for him, detracted considerably from the impact of the film. I can completely understand this; if there are factual inaccuracies, they tend to leap out to the knowledgeable and have an overall impact that is often quite at odds with the size or significance of the inaccuracy itself.
Because of these distractions, my involvement with the two central characters was somewhat less than it could or should have been.
I am glad to have seen this but the overall feeling of dissatisfaction remains the final memory. And finally, one annoying detail right at the concluding image of the film – a close-up of one of the two central characters at the end of the mission which moved slowly from his filthy torn hands to his face – where the skin was flawless with a healthy glow and zero indication as to the traumas that he had been through. Come on!