You should probably go and watch 1917

Hello, it’s been a fair old time since I last wrote on this blog. I’ve been busy graduating from university and trying to function as an adult for the past year and a half.

As such, Paul’s Cutting Room Floor has laid dormant since December 2017 but tonight, I’ve been compelled to return to these dusty webpages and blow away some of the digital cobwebs.

That’s because I’ve just seen Sam Mendes’s 1917, a First World War thriller that brings the horror and humanity of the Great War to the screen in such expertly crafted fashion.

The story is a fairly simple one, two soldiers, Lance Corporals Blake and Schofield are tasked with infiltrating and passing through enemy lines to deliver a message that could save the lives of 1,600 men.

But while the premise of the film could be taken from any war film, the execution from Sam Mendes, his epic cast and not least cinematographer Roger Deakins, results in a truly staggering experience.

Very few films have affected me in the same way as 1917.

It’s quite possibly the only film to leave me with a similar sense shell shock to the poor souls who endured the First World War for themselves, leaving me sat firmly in my seat well after the credits had rolled with a hole sucker-punched straight through my chest.

From the word go, the film seemingly never takes its foot off the gas.

Starting from a sleepy standstill, 1917 slowly but relentlessly accelerates until it reaches an eye-widening crescendo of explosions and gunfire with the sheer will and desperation of one man, willing to go through hell and back, in the hope of saving hundreds, if not thousands of lives, still pushing himself on.

Filmed as if it was all one shot, 1917 is a piece of cinematic perfection but the emotions it evokes by using this method are truly spell-bounding.

The rarely seen filming technique draws you in, allowing the tension in the film to slowly reel you closer to the edge of your seat before sinking its claws in deep.

Not only are the on-screen characters willing themselves to get closer to their goal but the fact we join them on every single step of their journey makes every twist and turn that bit more enthralling and terrifying in equal measure.

However, while I can go on all night about the camera work or the score or the acting, the thing that arguably hit home most in 1917 for me, was the fact that if I was born 100 years earlier, the events on-screen might well be happening to me.

1917 doesn’t have many moments of levity but when these brief periods of calm do arrive, even if only for a fleeting few seconds, we finally get to glimpse inside the on-screen characters and these nagging feelings of ‘this could be you’ truly start to make themselves present.

While the film is huge in scope and offers up a remarkably breathtaking feast for the eyes and ears, it’s the harrowing history lesson behind The First World War that makes itself vehemently known in 1917 and it’s one that must never be forgotten.