A virtuoso dive into the heart of the chaos of the First World War, 1917 is a real technical tour de force, winner of three Oscars. And also a very personal story for its director Sam Mendes.
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For better or for worse, war has often inspired cinema. There is no shortage of conflicts. The Vietnam War has given rise to numerous feature films that denounce the cruelty and madness of battles, including Apocalypse Now, a monument to the nightmarish filming. It is undoubtedly the Second World War which generated the most films, the subjects being numerous. Starting with the Landing, captured in a striking manner We have to save the soldier Ryan by Steven Spielberg. Or more recently the impressive Dynamo operation reported in Dunkerque, released in 2017. Rarer are the feature films to immerse themselves in the First World War, the “der des der”, which unfortunately was not.
1917, a dive into the chaos of the trenches
In 1917, director Sam Mendes literally plunges into the heart of the battle. With a crazy process: a single sequence shot, and a camera that follows without ever interrupting two English soldiers on a mission in the North of France. “I shot like this to connect the audience with the main characters, so that it is impossible to escape “, the director explained to us when the film was released. A real technical tour de force, crowned with three Oscars, all technical: best photography, visual effects and sound mixing. But beyond its (immense) plastic qualities, this masterpiece also displays a powerful and unsuspected human dimension.
Sam Mendes’ grandfather fought in World War I
For Sam Mendes, 1917 indeed has a very personal aspect. With his film, the English director wanted to pay tribute to … his grandfather, who fought during the First World War. Enlisted in the English army at 17, Alfred joined the fighting in 1916 with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, a prestigious light infantry unit, which lost more than 12,000 men during the war. Small (1m62), the young man was responsible for transmitting messages through the no man’s land of the trenches, like the heroes of 1917, but for a long time refused to tell what he had lived. “The film does not tell the story of my grandfather, but rather focuses on evoking his spirit – what these men went through, their sacrifices, and their faith in something that was beyond them.“, explained the director when the film was released in January 2020. The least we can say is that the experience was successful!
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