1917

The purpose of films like 1917 is to reveal its characters through action, rather than through expository machinations. 1917 accomplishes that with MacKay’s character: he is perfectly cast. Having watched They Shall Not Grow Old immediately after getting home from the theater, I couldn’t help but see MacKay’s thousand-yard stare in the eyes of all the young men that passed by in colorized documentary footage.

MacKay’s character is terse, and the viewer doe not learn much about him from the dialogue – his response to what happens around proves the tenacity of his convictions. These moments achieve beauty in how they reveal without explaining too much: the way he interacts with his partner in moments of ultimate duress; the song that he sings to an orphaned French baby; his dedication at all costs to a mission that seems lost at the very last moment. He falls and falls and falls again, then gets back up and keeps moving through muddy fields strewn with the detritus of exploded timber, empty casings, and and long-rotted bodies.

Roger Deakins has yet again pulled off a cinematographic triumph – the one-shot idea is not gimmicky in the least and helps to increase the tension of life on, below, and behind the front lines. Just as Hans Zimmer’s score enhanced Nolan’s Dunkirk – featuring a never-ending ascension of notes simulating a siren and the constancy of a ticking clock – so too does Deakins’ cinematography raise the bar that the rest of the production accordingly follows. He creates tonal poems with light and its absence, compositions that whisper quiet suggestions to the viewer, interacting with their sense of film grammar while also encouraging them to sit back in wonder. His awards nominations and recognitions are well deserved.

1917 may very likely win Best Picture this year, but I don’t believe it is the best film of the year. 1917 is, however, a solid action yarn about what War demands from a person and who they must become to survive it.