Author's rating: 2/5
Two corporals of the British army during the First World War, on the borders between France and Germany, must deliver an important message to a general before an assault that could put more than 1700 soldiers at risk. This is the plot of 1917, the film by director Sam Mendes, nominated for 10 Oscars.
The story is drawn from the memoirs of soldiers who actually fought during the great conflict in Europe and, in particular, in that part of the war which took place in the trenches, where every inch of land was fought over. To fulfill their important task, the two soldiers must cross no man's land, between puddles full of corpses, mines and snipers. No surprise ending is to be expected. The particularity of the film is above all for the "technological" part.
Very long sequence plans of considerable complexity, resolved only thanks to a digital montage. In a certain sense, the film resolves itself almost in this dimension entirely connected to a subjective vision of the drama of war. The people, feelings, the story, the pathos are enclosed in the space understood by the shooting angle and by the tools that allow you to keep the camera fixed on the subject. Let's not talk about the actors: two unknown young men who carry out their work with dignity. The screenplay is minimal: just enough to keep a day-long story tied together or a little less.
Another significant element to note is the size of the game. War, as is known, is the continuation of politics by other means and it is no coincidence that the metaphor of the game is used among these. 1917 looks like a big video game without interaction with the audience: how can we forget the images of call of Duty and his endless series when one of the two corporals finds himself in the rubble of a bombed city and tries to escape the enemy who wants to kill him or when they wander around the trenches with their guns leveled?
We are talking about a hugely commercially successful video game that has marked the culture of war images of entire generations all over the world and which has sold millions of copies. Clearly even the cinema can be affected by the "charm" if we can talk about it. The fact remains that 1917 seems very far from the kind of war films that had (and still have) great success. The title that most easily comes to mind, if only for the inspiration of true events, is Save Private Ryan by Steven Spielberg from 1998 but, precisely, we are talking about Spielberg who, not by chance, won the Oscar for best director with this title.
Then, more recently, The Battle of Hacksaw Ridge directed by Mel Gibson in 2016 and, the following year Dunkirk by Christopher Nolan who wasn't joking with special effects either. What is the difference with 1917? In the other films there is much more humanity, much closer to an epochal, existential and universal drama that is not enough to deal only with the logic of video game images. Some may even like this movie. Whether he can win some recognition will remain to be seen.
