War, as we know, is hell.
Still, a war movie is a helluva good way to get awards attention. A war film,
by its very nature, deals with a serious subject on a huge canvas. It
encourages technical virtuosity along with action, suspense, and an epic sweep.
And it’s an overwhelmingly male genre, as compared to, say, Little Women. It
may certainly not be coincidence that Kathryn Bigelow, the one female director
ever honored by the Academy with an Oscar (for 2008’s The Hurt Locker)
was recognized for an Iraq-era war film featuring a virtually all-male cast.
Some war films are rollicking
(The Dirty Dozen), some are existentially grim (Platoon and The
Deer Hunter), and some are jingoistic, designed to arouse our patriotic
enthusiasm (John Wayne’s The Green Beret, but also Dunkirk, which
reminds us of the savvy heroics of World War II). Some of the very strongest,
like Paths of Glory and All Quiet on the Western Front, use the
battlefields of World War I to show us that war should never be glorified, that
it brings out not the best but the worst in men.
I’m not what you’d call a fan
of the war film genre, but I have to admit that Sam Mendes’1917 blew me
away. This film is technically bravura
in its use of the camera to involve us in the action: famously, cinematographer
Roger Deakins and crew give the illusion of a single take that closely follows
two British doughboys through the French countryside on their way to deliver a
message on which lives depend. These young leading men are heroic, but not in
the way of Gary Cooper’s Sergeant York, who is ace rifleman as
well as a saintly savior of his fellow GI’s. Instead Lance Corporals Blake and
Schofield are skillfully depicted as average chaps who must rise to the
challenge of what is required to them, despite the long odds that they’ll
succeed.
It’s a pleasure, of sorts,
not to be bogged down in a convoluted plot, involving tricky deviations from
the ongoing story. Instead 1917 is a single slog across a no man’s land
riddled with pitfalls and pockmarked with corpses of animals and human beings. Which
is not to say the film lacks excitement. There are dangers at every turn, and
their outcome can not always be predicted. The one-take illusion keeps us
breathtakingly close to what’s going on: I have never felt so clearly that I
knew what trench warfare was about. But for all the movie’s basic allegiance to
reality, it makes room for a surrealistic note. Late in the film, as bodies and
minds become battered, there’s an eerie night sequence in the ruins of a
devastated town, followed by an ominous incorporating of the plaintive old folk
ballad “Poor Wayfaring Stranger.” (This is a purely American song in its
origins, so its appearance among a troop of British soldiers seems unlikely—but
it beautifully fits the mood Mendes has set.)
Does 1917 have what it
takes to nab the Oscar for best picture? Its surprise win at the Golden Globes
sent shock waves through the industry, but upon reflection I think this may be
the film to beat. I’m no fan of Scorsese’s The Irishman; the powerful
but intimate Marriage Story seems to be fading from consideration; and Once
Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood is perhaps too whimsical a treatment
of a real-life tragedy to take the top prize. And 1917 has the key
virtue of being made by an actual movie
studio, not a streaming service. Enough said.
This post was written
before the nominations were announced. I haven’t seen Joker, but I suspect it would not make me change my
mind.
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