Sam Mendes’ Dunkirk Rip-Off Has Outlived Its One-Take Gimmick
1917 is a one-take film that actually justified the marketing hype.
A “single-take” gimmick can make or break a film. In ideal circumstances, it should supplement a story without stealing attention from the narrative. In other cases, like with 1917, it almost is the story; or at least that’s what its critics would have you believe.
While most can agree on 1917’s visual prowess, Sam Mendes’ 2019 war epic got plenty of flack for its technical ambitions. Its one-take conceit was the flashiest part of its awards season campaign, effectively overshadowing conversations about story and performance. It didn’t help that 1917 has so much in common with Dunkirk, the Christopher Nolan-directed war story that employed its own creative gimmick in 2017. With such a transcendent experience already stuck in audiences’ minds, was another really necessary? Not everyone was on the same page about the film’s merits then — but five years after its contentious debut, 1917 more than justifies its existence.
Inspired by Mendes’ grandfather, who served as a messenger during World War I, 1917 has the look and feel of a ghost story. Its surprisingly simple narrative is laid out in an almost trance-like style, starting with two young corporals, Blake (Game of Thrones’ Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay). Blake is hand-selected for a mission of great importance: a British battalion is headed straight into a battle it cannot win, and our heroes must travel through no man’s land to warn them before it’s too late. If they’re captured or killed, thousands of soldiers will be massacred, including Blake’s older brother. And with German eyes everywhere, they have no choice but to travel through the night on foot.
Their quest will take them across minefields, through rat-infested tunnels, over waterfalls, and past legions of dead soldiers. It’s a gripping survey of war and all its horrors, and it scarcely gives its heroes (or the audience) time to breathe. That nonstop momentum turns a by-the-numbers period piece into something more akin to a horror movie, inspiring fearless physical performances from Chapman and MacKay, and creative, surreal visuals from cinematographer Roger Deakins.
1917 got a lot of flack for its one-take gimmick, but it serves this war story in the perfect way.
1917 is a supreme flex for its one-take concept alone: Deakins crafts every sequence with precision, stitching uncut scenes together with careful choreography and seamless visual effects. Depending on who you ask, though, the film’s achievements stop there. Too often does the script, co-written by Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns, reference older, better war films or rely on flashy cameos from Britain’s finest actors — Colin Firth, Mark Strong, and Andrew Scott, among others — which play more like video game cutscenes than meaningful interludes. Blake and Schofield, meanwhile, rarely feel like real characters. We don’t learn much about their lives beyond their duties, leaving them more like avatars for the audience to project onto.
Comparisons to video games dominated the critiques of 1917, and it’s not an unfair observation. The film does share some connective tissue with games that tell their stories in one long, unbroken take, and Deakins’ camera follows its subjects from an eerie, third-person perspective. It draws us into the story and keeps us invested in the action, but it also keeps us at arms’ length... which may just be where Mendes wants us to be.
The film feels empty because that’s what war does to its victims. There is nothing to hold onto here — our story blitzes by at such an unrelenting pace — because that’s what this mission is supposed to feel like. Blake and Schofield feel like pawns on a board because they are: they’ve thrown away their old lives and hollowed themselves out in service to their country. It’s a bleak reading supplemented by Mendes’ one-take technique, a waking nightmare that doesn’t let you go until the mission is complete.
