I gave 1917 my best shot

WE’VE just been to the cinema to see the new film 1917, and I came away afterwards with a sense of déjà vu which I realised related to another recent war epic, Dunkirk. Like the latter, I can see 1917 is a technical triumph and visually often sumptuous.

But I agreed particularly with one comment I read afterwards about how shooting 1917 in what appeared to be a single, continuous take made it feel like a video game.

Perhaps that explained why, as with Dunkirk, my sense of what made the main characters tick was no greater than it would be for one of the screen combatants if I was playing Assassin’s Creed.

Colin Firth, meanwhile, looked as if he’d modelled not just his moustache but his entire commanding officer cameo on Stephen Fry’s General Melchett in

Blackadder Goes Forth.

I THOUGHT Laurence Fox was putting it mildly when on BBC1’s Question Time he dismissed as “boring” the claim by an audience member that the Duchess of Sussex’s treatment by the press was racist.

Lily Allen’s subsequent criticism of “luvvies like Fox” who are guilty of “forcing their opinions upon everybody else” was beyond parody, but far more instructive was the response to his comments

by members of the actors’ union Equity who branded him “a disgrace to the industry” and claimed that he’d been given a platform to “berate and bully women of colour”.

In the overwhelmingly left-wing arts world it’s only advisable to express an opinion if it’s the approved one, and Fox’s comments will not be forgotten. It will be interesting to see how much work he’s offered from now on.