OSCAR FRONT RUNNER
SAM MENDES’ WHITE-KNUCKLE SPRINT THROUGH THE TRENCHES OF WORLD WAR ONE COULD BE A MAJOR AWARDS CONTENDER
1917 (15)
PRACTICE makes breathlessly choreographed and nail-bitingly tense perfection in Sam Mendes’s thriller, inspired by stories of The Great War told by the director’s grandfather, who served as a lance corporal.
The film has already won Mendes a Best Director and Best Drama Film Awards at the Golden Globes and is hotly tipped for the Oscars.
Lance Corporal Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Lance Corporal William Schofield (George MacKay) begin April 6, 1917 in peaceful slumber against a tree as thunder rumbles in the distance.
The men are roused to receive orders from General Erinmore (Colin Firth), who must prevent Colonel Mackenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch) from leading The 2nd Devons into a German trap.
“We would lose two battalions – 1,600 men – your brother among them,” Mackenzie informs Blake.
The Germans have severed all telephone lines so the only way to warn The 2nd Devons is to dispatch Blake and Schofield on foot into enemy territory to reach Mackenzie before dawn, when the fateful order will be given to attack the line.
The action unfolds in realtime, pushing actors to the physical limit as we plunge through the emotional wringer as tragedy stalks their odyssey.
Thomas Newman’s orchestral score possesses the urgency of a ticking pocket watch, underscoring Mendes’s directorial flair and devastating performances from Chapman and MacKay.
Shot in several exquisitely staged single takes, which have been seamlessly stitched together by editor Lee Smith into a continuous fluid shot, 1917 is the product of six months of intense rehearsals and preparation, which included a physically gruelling training camp for hundreds of actors.
This pre-production period allowed Mendes to work closely with Oscar-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins to meticulously map out the intricate camerawork of each sequence, which places us in the trenches with the characters or pirouettes around impossibly tight spaces as bullets scythe through the air and blood seeps into shifting seas of thick mud.
It’s a tour-de-force of technical daring, which repeatedly dazzles and dumbfounds, juxtaposing heart-breaking brutality with moments of dreamy, poetic introspection.
Mendes’s script, co-written by Krysty Wilson-Cairns, oscillates between agonising suspense (a gallop across No Man’s Land littered with the corpses of fallen horses towards the German trenches) and ominous calm (a short journey in the back of a truck crammed with troops).
Fleeting cameos from the likes of Andrew Scott, Mark Strong and Richard Madden don’t distract from an intimate tale of valour and brotherhood under fire that sears into the memory.