In The Moment: A 1917 Video Essay

content warning for graphic imagery and some discussions of racism and spoiler alert for the 2019 film 1917 and as always these videos are just my opinions and artists objective there's something to be said for the media you find at the right time the tv show the book the movie that you stumble upon at the exact right moment in your life right when you need it like shortly after the election in 2016 when i was working a horrific job that made me very unhappy and i saw rogue one and fell down a fanfic rabbit hole to the tune of 300 000 words or in 2014ish when i was unable to hold down a good job i actually liked and had a terrible living situation that made me very unhappy and i discovered pacific rim and went so hard in the paint that even though i don't like reading au or alternate universe fan fiction i read multiple coffee shop aus about hermann gottlieb and newton geisler being boyfriends so when i saw 1917 in theaters in january of 2020 about a month after a car accident that i was very lucky to walk away from i knew i loved this movie but i didn't know how much then i bought it on blu-ray during a global pandemic and inexplicably found myself watching it or at least parts of it once a day or once a week for several months and my normal solution of going to a03 didn't do much for me because [Music] yeah so here i am now let's do this a lot of people had takes about this movie good and bad it was either a gimmick or the greatest cinematic achievement it was either a video game or it was art i mean personally i think the one take thing is absolutely a gimmick and a cinematic achievement these ideas don't have to be mutually exclusive but before we can unpack that let's do the rundown this movie was directed by sam mendes and written by sam mendez and christy wilson cairns christy wilson cairns was one of the writers in the showtime series penny dreadful after 1917 she has gone on to co-write with edgar wright on his latest project last night in soho and she might get to write a star war and sam mendes you might have heard of him we'll get back to him in a bit the film is led by george mackay as lance corporal william schofield and dean charles chapman as lance corporal thomas blake you might know george makai he's had a few bit parts throughout the years he was the littlest bielski brother in defiance he was one of the kids in captain fantastic he was that kid in the movie pride he's been around and dean charles chapman was tommen in game of thrones also he played billy elliot in the stage musical for quite a while they're both exceptional in this and i hope they have long and storied careers and the rest of the cast is just a who's who of that guy you know from some other british export we've got benedict cumberbatch mark strong andrew scott colin firth and richard madden who all come in to do little bit parts it is really funny when the camera just turns around and you're like oh look mark strong is here and because this is the sort of movie where it has to be said roger deakins is the cinematographer fresh off his first oscar win for blade runner 2049 which was his 14th oscar nomination by the way he would get his 15th nomination and second win for 1917 and deservedly so since it was largely down to deacons to engineer a way to execute mendez's vision for the film also the score was composed by thomas newman and this is how i learned thomas newman has been nominated for 15 oscars and never won i know it's cool a lady composer won that year but i legit loved the score for this film and i'm so sad he lost also he's done the score for movies like wally rota perdition lemony snickets a series of unfortunate events skyfall finding nemo american beauty the 1995 little women the horse whisperer and shawshank redemption the man has done so many kick-ass scores and really deserves to actually win an oscar one of these years and now don't mind me while i get off my soapbox to go listen to night window for the 30 billionth time and with all that said what's the plot it's pretty simple actually tom blake has woken up from a nap and told pick a man bring your kit and so he picks his friend will schofield not knowing what the mission is turns out the mission is to carry a message to the second devons telling them to call off the attack they have planned in 24 hours they think they've got the germans on the retreat when actually it's a strategic withdrawal to lure troops into a trap one that could lose them 1600 men including tom's brother joseph blake who is a lieutenant in that regiment so they have to deliver the message they have to cross no man's land and find the second devin station near town called acoust should be simple enough how hard can it be well pretty hard as it turns out now let's talk a bit about sam mendes [Music] so director sam mendes actually got his start in theater at the donmar warehouse he staged some acclaimed revivals of shows like company and most notably the 1993 production of cabaret which aside from the 1972 film is probably the best production of cabaret you could watch then in 1999 he directed american beauty which okay look if this is your cheese that's fine but i think it's safe to say this movie aged so badly from every conceivable direction the screenplay was by alan ball who you might know from six feet under but like kevin spacey as a dude lusting after a high school girl or the violent closeted gay character or the creepy boy videotaping the girl next door and then they fall in love or just the angsty 90s teens watching a recording of a plastic bag this movie aged like milk his next effort the 2002 road to perdition fared much better with a screenplay by dave itself and a cast that included paul newman tom hanks daniel craig and jude law i watched it a few years after its release not knowing who made it and i loved it it's moody and theatrical and at times surprisingly warm and funny his next two films jar head and revolutionary road didn't blow me away but they're pretty good mendes was quickly establishing his ability to move between genres which he only proved further with his 2009 comedy away we go written by dave eggers and vendela vida i really really love this weird little movie oh really you [ __ ] [ __ ] your [ __ ] uterus is a [ __ ] secret well [ __ ] you it made me cry the first time i saw it and at some point i listened to the commentary and pieced together oh this is the road to petition guy good for him then in 2012 he made skyfall and everybody got on the sam mendez hype train with me i've been a fan of the daniel craig bond films all of them yes even quantum of solace it's the one where bond has a platonic relationship with a woman and hugs people i was very into that and skyfall managed to blend some of the goofier aspects of classic bond with this new brooding take on the character and it was really really good also it was mendez's third collaboration with saint roger deakins the pair worked together on jarhead and revolutionary roads so skyfall is also very nice to look at and then he made spectre and it was not good i am sorry to say spectre was trash well film trash but this movie was a big hot mess written by most of the same people who wrote skyfall so i don't know but hey remember that time christoph walt spent like 10 minutes monologuing about sticking james bond full of needles which would render him senseless and unable to move and then james bond got stuck full of needles and shot his way out of this building whatever it wasn't good but everybody gets one dud and after this he made 1917 and a thing you'll notice in all of mendez's films is like he loved a long take even before he made a whole movie like that he loves to let a camera linger on a scene it's probably a relic of his background in theater he talked in the commentary about telling multiple stories in one shot and allowing an audience the time to look around which i think is neat and very rooted in how audiences watch stage productions but he also understands the value of collaboration 1917 was the only screenplay he ever worked on so he collaborated with all those other screenwriters he works closely with his cinematographers and i used this clip in my knights tale video but i'll just play it again here because it's good he asked scofield to write to his mum which is a line that christy wrote one of the very good reasons why you need a co-writer who doesn't think like you and is not the same sex as you or the same age as you is they come at it from a totally different perspective and one of the many wonderful additions she made to the script was a line like that which i suspect i would never have written myself yay for film being a collaborative medium also because i don't have anywhere else to put this i have to mention this little bit in the commentary where he complements the acting decisions of a baby an ivy in her stroke of genius then chooses to move her leg just so you see that little tiny leg sticking out of the drawer like that i just think that's very funny so the movie actually pulls a little trick on the audience early on a simple but very effective one in basic terms a movie is usually driven by the wants or needs of a protagonist it's driven by motivation we as an audience are always going to be gripped by conflicts and motivations so the character driving the story is usually our protagonist our true protagonist is william schofield but the first half of the movie tricks you into thinking it's tom blake often in war films it's the young blood that survives not the seasoned veteran schofield has survived the psalm and received a medal for it and blake is the younger of the two of them age before beauty in another movie we would watch blake's maturation through the prism of war and even more than that there's the fact that it's blake's brother that is the driving force of the mission blake is going to get to the second devons and stop this offensive and save his brother blake has the motivation and drive that pushes this story forward scofield is a passive secondary character for the first half of the film he's hesitant and doubts their mission constantly urging blake to slow down and be more careful in one scene when a booby-trapped german barracks nearly buries scofield alive it's blake who drags him out of there and to safety after that scene scofield even asks why he was chosen to come along i didn't know what i was picking you for no you didn't you never know that's your problem he doesn't even want to be on this mission he would much rather be back in the relative safety of their base with the 8th battalion and in a very literal sense the camera tends to follow both boys or it focuses on blake further highlighting him to the audience the only time we focus on scofield exclusively in the first chunk of this film is for this one to punch yikes yikes it's so subtle you might not even really notice it but when we reach the farmhouse the camera leaves blake and starts following scofield and then a plane crashes into the farmhouse blake is the one who insists on saving the german soldier from the burning plane but we follow scofield as he goes to get the man some water and while his back is turned the pilot stabs blake the boy dies an agonizingly slow death in schofield's arms come on dory yes yes i think you are and these two were good friends we only get a few brief glimpses of their camaraderie and when he does the rap bites clean through his [ __ ] ear and runs off with him oh he made a hell of a fuss but you can see the bond between them goes deep as he dies he asks will to write his mother and tell her tara wasn't scared and then he asks if will knows the way and will reassures him i'm going to head southeast until i hit a coast it will be dark by then that won't bother me and will just sits and holds his friend's hand until he's gone but due to will's loyalty and love for his friend from here on he's gonna go through hell to try and get to the second devons and pass on the message to stop the attack which will hopefully save tom's brother and then i'll find your brother just like you a little older tom passes the mission to will as he dies and with will's promise the drive of the movie now rests with him and i just really appreciate how the movie tricked me and presumably other audience members as well we think we're watching a movie about these two boys and we think this one is going to be our lead and that we're going to watch him grow to meet the heroic deeds of war instead he dies tragically and unceremoniously by a farmhouse and a field of cut down cherry trees that look just like the ones his family grew back home and with that let's talk about how hollywood treats war films [Music] so let me start by saying i am not a historian i tend to remember history and broad strokes but i'm not really talking about real history right now i'm talking about how hollywood understands history so just for a bit of numbers here i made some spreadsheets to track every world war 1 and 2 film which has been made specifically by english-speaking countries because you know western media trends and so on because when we get down to it hollywood treats a lot of our history in very specific ways like if you watch an american-made vietnam war film you are going to get a two-hour trip of disillusionment and nihilism a recent example being spike lee's excellent film de five bloods or how i like to think of it what if apocalypse now was better or if you watch a film about the iraq war you will either get uncomfortable american nationalism or an exploration of trauma and ptsd now when we want to talk about what is arguably hollywood's favorite war world war ii too fast too furious the sequel that's bigger stronger and this time with fascism we have to talk about how much hollywood loves world war ii because it's the one with the clear good guys and bad guys there's no gray area here unless somebody feels like adding it because we're fighting nazis this time and we're going hard if you watch a world war ii movie you can probably expect some good dudes beating up nazis we're gonna be doing one thing and one thing only killing nazis of course all of western media has a similar bent when depicting world war ii i just think america is the most prone to it pushy americans always showing up late for every war there are 705 world war ii films that have been made from english-speaking countries now wikipedia doesn't delineate between war films and holocaust films and i would separate those two here's the requisite plug go watch my jojo rabbit video i'm very jewish and we should talk about romani victims of the holocaust more anyways with all that being said world war ii is an easy backdrop for so many stories because film has distilled it down to the simple narrative of us vs nazis i hate these guys so it's pretty easy to write a cool action-packed movie with them as the villains and we've got all sorts here we've got your prisoner of war films we've got your d-day movies we've got zombie nazis we've got saving private ryan and fury now i assumed going into this that there would be more american films that ignore the pacific arena of world war ii because well america doesn't exactly come off quite as well by the end of that conflict but of the films we've gotten in the last 30 years or so it seems to be a pretty even split and yet when we think of world war ii movies we inevitably think of this we shall fight on the beaches we shall fight on the landing grounds we shall fight in the fields and in the streets we shall fight in the hills we shall never surrender and that brings us to world war one for reference there are 134 world war one films on the list from english-speaking countries about 80 plus of those were made during world war 1 and up through the mid-1940s which makes sense film has always tended to look back on recent history for inspiration after world war ii happened there were a lot less films made about world war one for fairly obvious reasons roughly 50 films have been made since 1945 the most recent film of course being 1917. and compared to the multifaceted and frankly more cinematic world war ii it makes sense that hollywood prefers stories set in it versus the much more muddled and confusing world war one first off the history of it is extremely convoluted this archduke was assassinated in sarajevo and suddenly every country is teaming up and pointing guns sure is a nice day for a drive today of course being june 28 1914 wouldn't you agree arc duke friends ferdinand of austria it's not a conflict that can be easily boiled down into good or bad guys like world war ii and on top of that world war one was largely based in trench warfare men would be dug into trenches stuck and unmoving for weeks if they were lucky they might gain a few inches of ground before the other side beat them back and unless you've got wonder woman around or a war horse world war 1 doesn't get very cinematic so folk tend to leave it alone arguably one of the most brutal and well-known depictions of world war one is actually the lord of the rings trilogy both the books and the films j.r.r tolkien was a lieutenant in the british army during world war 1 and many have pointed out that so many elements of the story are clearly influenced by his time spent in the war whether it's frodo being so scarred by his journey he can't really live in middle earth anymore or the industrialization and war that's destroying the countryside or most notably the dead marshes when it rained the trenches and shell craters would often fill with water and the corpses that were still lying in those craters would float and the filmmakers were certainly aware of this when they created the dead marshes on screen there were things that haunt me and probably will haunt me till the day i die that i had never seen before the strongest of which is the dead marshes my understanding is that description really came from tolkien's experiences in world war one of course a few people have said that tolkien got the inspiration if you can call it inspiration for this stuff from the first world war when he saw bodies of soldiers lying in the shell holes the flooded shell holes and i should probably state this isn't me advocating for more war movies or more world war one films in particular but i found myself observing these trends particularly while i was researching this video and i found it intriguing to try and dig into because i find myself wondering what is it that we get out of war stories in a 2014 article for the guardian andrew pulver mused on the prevalence of war films and world war ii films in particular saying the war itself a gigantic conflict that played itself out in a myriad of theaters across the globe that traumatized entire societies and triggered seismic political technological and ethical upheavals has almost endless potential for storytelling there are little-known military exploits to recount reassessments to be made newly significant relationships to be detailed he goes on to quote author frank cattrell boyce who wrote the script for the railwayman and says on the subject of world war ii films it reached a tipping point at some time the war has become a metaphor not just history you can map onto it any way you want and i think there is something to that wars are conflicts on an international scale there's space for big and small stories full of drama and heroism and love and loyalty i myself am a bit of a pacifist and yet i find myself enjoying a fair amount of these films for the heroism and the drama but somebody else might enjoy them for the history in some cases these movies could even be said to stir up a nationalistic sentiment which is a critique i've heard of 1917 that i can't argue for or against i honestly don't know i hear british nationalism looks a bit different to american nationalism so like yeah what i think can be said is that war can heighten the worst and best aspects of humanity it's what makes it such a popular tool for storytelling even beyond historical fiction you've got your star wars your lord of the rings middle earth wars you've got your matrices and your hunger games i mean i hope in real life we stop fighting but i imagine on film there's going to be wars for quite a long time make of that what you will i suppose what i like about 1917 in particular is for all its genre trappings it is an anti-war film not just in the individual moments [ __ ] look after three years fighting over this we should just let the bastards keep it or in the fact that the only moment we see the enemy up close we see he's a boy even younger than our protagonist the central point of the entire movie the crux of the narrative is about stopping a battle from happening this entire quote-unquote war film is about witnessing the toll that war takes on its participants and on the land itself and it's about preventing more unnecessary violence from occurring if will schofield succeeds in his mission he will not win the war but he'll stop a battle from taking place and he might save up to 1600 men [Music] so after blake dies it's up to will to get to acoust and get to colonel mackenzie to stop the attack and the movie barely even gives will time to mourn his friend's death it seems almost cold to watch will casually strip his friend of his few personal belongings but of course there's no time to give his friend a proper burial and he might be able to deliver these few belongings to tom's next of kin his brother with the second devin's and just as it's beginning to sink in for will and for us the audience that he's alone now he's found by a sympathetic ally a friend in a few short words will explains his mission the orders for general mackenzie stationed near acoust lucky for him captain smith played beautifully by mark strong for a few short minutes is headed in that direction he orders will to come along and with barely a moment to grieve his friend he's forced to move on if you look closely will does take one last look at his friend before walking through that building and to the long line of trucks waiting to make their way onwards another bit i find fascinating is the way the tone subtly shifts here there is a melancholy but as captain smith tells will later it doesn't do the dwell on it and the movie signals to the audience how quickly we're forced to move on to go from the tragic to like a line of dudes peeing against the side of a building is such an abrupt shift into banal reality it almost hits you in the face that shift continues when they get to the road and there's this general just berating these dudes as they try to lift an entire tree out of the road while captain smith convinces the general to let will hitch a ride on the casuals truck i'm not going to be able to just lift it give it the front end to the left oh found god saying just move it he has orders yes yes and then as will climbs in the truck smith tells him he's sorry and not to dwell because in these kinds of high stress situations people are often forced to compartmentalize in order to function which is sad as hell so he climbs in the truck and we're treated to this long meditative scene as the boys in the truck mostly ignore the stranger in their midst and just talk to each other about nonsense they tell stories do impressions and share cigarettes all while will sits quietly and tries to absorb his loss it's all interrupted of course when the truck hits a snag in the road and get stuck none of the other soldiers really care but of course will does he's got places to be you got somewhere you need to be and he's a stranger to all these men but he begins to order them out of the van so they can push it out of the mud come on all right a couple of dudes try to help but it's no go until will turns and begs for everybody's help just begs please i have to go now please and they don't know him but they start to get that he's in the middle of something intense and so everybody helps and will puts everything into shoving this stupid truck even with his messed up hand and he didn't get the chance to cry for tom before but i'm pretty sure that scream was for him and you know it works with everybody's help they get the van moving and this soldier who is credited as sepoy jandalar played by naban rizwan is the one who helps him up off the ground and he's the one who really seems to notice more than any of the other boys that this kid is just really going through it right now they get back in the car and jandalar is the one who asks where he's going and why and as will answers the other soldiers get curious how many sixteen hundred and one boy asks the most heartbreaking question of all why did i send you on your own they didn't there were two of us the boys question whether he can make it and will with his determination resolved says he'll make it in time of course the truck soon hits another roadblock and so will's forced to make his own way the boys all wish him good luck or tell him thumb goes up and john delar or more properly jandalar singh says i hope you get there and before we leave these boys i want to talk about supoy jandalar singh's inclusion in the film and the history surrounding that so this fictional character is sikh and his inclusion in the film has been praised by the likes of actor rahul kohli and author amna saleem although jandalar singh's time on screen is very brief there's a lot of life to him as we watch the man joke around with his fellows and be so quietly empathetic to the lead character also i've been told his turban is extremely accurate in size and style compared to characters like kip and the english patient although this character's beard would not have been trimmed you could not be in the indian army as a sikh with a trimmed beard it was simply not allowed it would have been tightly rolled or in a beard net also the name jandalar is just not a thing so i'm told it might be a play on the word jalan dar which is the name of a city and a district in the punjab state but according to one of my sensitivity readers it would be like if he wrote a gum chewing new yorker named brook lin sepoy just indicates the character's rank which is equivalent to being a private and the word sipoi means soldier and this character's inclusion as well as two unnamed sikh extras was enough to make people like actor lawrence fox complain about forced diversity you know there is something institutionally racist about forcing diversity on people in that way which is of course [ __ ] and many historians spoke up on the topic in an interview in timeout london mendes said the way you make the movie reflects the society you live in and i wanted to reflect the multicultural society that made this film at the same time there were sikh regimens west indian regiments and indian regiments i wanted to reflect and acknowledge that it wasn't just a war fought by white men in world war 1 there were soldiers from the caribbean and africa and over 1 million indian soldiers at least 74 000 of whom died in the conflict and many of those soldiers were sick according to the uk punjab heritage association although they accounted for less than 2 percent of the population of british india at the time sikhs made up more than 20 percent of the british indian army when the war began although sikh involvement in the british indian army has a complicated colonialist history after the uprising of 1857 sometimes called the sepoy mutiny or soldiers mutiny the british designated races of india as marshall cast or non-marshal cast martial races were considered to be brave and well built for fighting while the non-martial races were those races which the british considered unfit for battle because of their sedentary lifestyles and while that is deeply gross the army was a method of social and economic advancement for sikh people and their involvement was a point of pride for many and while some complained that having one scene with a few sikh soldiers and a troop of white dudes was somehow a historical in 1917 military historian simon walker said that at the beginning of the war soldiers of different races were often in their own regiments but by the middle of the war it would not be unusual for the sikh soldiers to serve side by side with their british comrades as was necessitated by the demands of the war and losses gurappal professor of sikh and punjab studies at soas university of london told the daily mail my understanding is that most indian troops were kept apart from british troops and had specific functions for example logistical support or in areas of combat these troops were of course officered by british and were closely monitored for any signs of disaffection however it is not inconceivable that on occasions and in particular actions indian troops were involved in joint actions with the british troops and if you're unfamiliar with the sikh faith it's important to understand sikhi is not hinduism and it is not islam which is a common misconception in america and many other western countries the sikh faith began in the 1400s in the punjab region of india it began with the teachings of guru nanak and the nine other gurus who came after him their scriptures are called the guru granth saab and their faith preaches that their god waheguru or wondrous teacher is omnipresent timeless and sightless sikhs believe in the equality of all god's creations and of giving back to the community common but not universal sikh practices include abstaining from eating the meat of any living creatures or drinking alcohol they have the five articles of faith often called the 5ks or punj kakar these include the kesh or kesa tradition the practice of not cutting one's hair since hair is considered an indispensable part of the human body many sikh people will wrap up their hair in a special turban style wrapping called a destar there is the practice of carrying a ceremonial comb called a kung gar that is worn in a sikh person's hair and is used to comb their hair twice a day there is the wearing of an iron bracelet called akara which is a reminder that one's hands should only be doing what is in keeping with the guru's teachings there is the kesherar which is classed as something between outerwear and an undergarment worn on the lower body with a tie knot it is supposed to remind the wearer to maintain self-control lastly there is the ceremonial dagger known as the kirpan which signifies a sikh's duty to defend those in peril and that's just a very basic overview much like my own faith it is hard to summarize an entire culture in a few paragraphs but i'm learning more as i write this than i ever knew before and it's important to note the sikhs have had a long and difficult history the teachings of guru nanak were antithetical to the dominant religious forces of india hinduism and islam many of the early gurus and prophets were murdered or tortured by the rulers of the region the partition of india in 1947 was a difficult time in sikh history where large numbers of the sikh population were forced to leave the newly created islamic republic of pakistan where they no longer felt safe and moved to india and there were riots from the muslim population moving in the opposite direction leading to resentment and violent reprisals in the 1980s there was a movement for greater autonomy of the sikh majority state of punjab and in some quarters there was a call for full independence there were militant attacks to try and claim the land and heavy-handed policing of the population in 1984 the prime minister of india ordered the indian army to enact operation blue star against the separatists where they raided the sikh's holiest shrine the golden temple of amristar in an attempt to kill or capture the separatist leadership that was there the engagement was fierce and cost many lives as well as the destruction of rare and treasured manuscripts when the sikh reference library was destroyed and two thousand sikh soldiers mutinied in the days after this engagement and on october 31 1984 the indian prime minister indira gandhi was assassinated and this triggered a series of anti-seek riots the ruling indian national congress was complicit in organizing the riots and it is estimated that up to 3 350 sikhs were killed nationwide while other sources put the death toll as high as 8 000 to 17 000 and seki is the fifth largest religion worldwide with about 25.8 million people following its precepts there is a significant sikh diaspora living all over the world in countries like canada australia the united kingdom east and west africa and the united states in 1907 in bellingham washington 500 men many of whom were members of the local asiatic exclusion league attacked the local sikh and south asian community beating them and causing the entire sikh population of bellingham to flee on april 15 2021 a young man in indianapolis shot up a fedex killing 9 people three of whom were sikh women and one sikh man members of the community have correctly pointed out that there has been a rising trend of crimes against the sikh population in america since 9 11. in 2015 the fbi reported that sikhs were among the most targeted religious groups according to the sikh coalition's website although a 2017 article from propublica states that there are no credible statistics regarding the number of hate crimes directed at sikhs each year and when it comes to the representation of sikh people and media the inclusion of one seed soldier for about five minutes in a 119 minute film was criticized as forced diversity while historians will readily bring up the erasure of sikhs from the history of world wars 1 and 2. in world war 1 they were heavily involved in major military actions like the battle of ipra first-hand accounts that were offered to the british library in 2018 speak of racial segregation and discrimination while showing bravery and a desire for independence there was actually a recent special committee in april of 2021 established by the commonwealth war graves commission in britain looking into the lack of commemoration for black and asian servicemen since world war one this unequal acknowledgment was said to be due to pervasive racism and as many as 350 000 personnel of largely egyptian and east african descent were not commemorated by name or in some cases not commemorated at all scottish pakistani writer amna saleem spoke on the whitewashing of history surrounding both world wars in the uk the author had only learned a few years ago from her mother that her great-grandfather died for the british during world war ii the story of the world wars is very much romanticized in britain she said i think the unwhitewashed history should definitely be a part of the curriculum when rauhul kohli spoke to nbc news about the film he spoke about his personal journey of learning about indians who served and wanting a story focused on that amna saleem said i would love to see a film like that adding the stories of the african soldiers who served also needed to be told we keep seeing it from the white point of view so i would love to see something with these black and brown soldiers so while this brief moment of 1917 is commendable and coming from a good and thoughtful place i think the conclusion we can draw is that these communities should get to be telling their stories and get to be the main characters of those stories 1917 was never going to be able to do more than what we saw given the story is centered on two young white men and i think that's okay for this one film but there is more history here that could be shown to us on film and taught to us in schools so now let's talk about the cinnamon topography so we've got to talk about the man the myth the legend roger deakins because this movie looks rad as hell and he literally invented new techniques for this movie and managed to work in so many unpredictable outdoor settings achieving these absolutely stunning visuals at one point in the commentary sam mendes says nature basically gave us what we wanted either that or roger deakins has a deal with god and i just think there's a lot of gorgeous filmmaking on display here like i'm not a particularly aesthetic viewer i can tell you all through film school i would get these assignments like write about the most important lighting source in this scene in eight and a half and i bullshitted my way through so many of those assignments with mixed success and unless a creator is beating me over the head with a distinct visual style i would be hard-pressed to point at any individual shot and say more than it's pretty i had teachers and classmates who would look at a shot like this and be like oh the composition is so unsettling look at those uneasy jagged lines and the fact that the composition is heavy on the left side of the frame implies the presence of capitalism i'm more of a writer than a visual stylist and i don't often find opportunities while watching films to admire compositions or whatever this is what i like about the long take in the commentary mendez pointed out that feeling that you're telling several stories simultaneously that the eye is free to wander that was very important to me and this is what i love about 1917. i'm not usually going to sit and really take in all the elements of a scene because there just isn't time my favorite movie mad max fury road deliberately went in the opposite direction having lots of shots with the important action in the center of the frame specifically so that the edits could be even faster and audiences would still be able to track the action because their eyes wouldn't have to travel around the frame and my adhd ass watches a lot of movies more or less the same way but the long take and a movie made to look like a single take forces me to slow down and really think about the individual images i'm being shown when scofield walks up to this tree at the end of the film we watch him take every exhausted step we look at this gorgeous tree and the blue sky and the wariness of his shoulders i find this technique to be deeply immersive like is it a gimmick yes do i like it yes i actually find the video game comparisons really interesting and i don't just mean with the subplot of scofield's canteen in this scene he empties it to clean the dust out of his eyes he finds milk at a farmhouse and fills his canteen and later he finds a baby who needs milk is it convenient sure do i care nope but an element of the movie that does remind me of video games is the way the camera moves often directly behind the characters in a way that's reminiscent of a first person shooter if people want to call this the best video game movie ever i won't even try to argue it i actually really love noticing how because this movie can't rely on edits to bring us from a close-up to a wide shot to a two-shot the camera has to constantly be moving to get us those angles and i just think it's really neat this is the sort of movie where understanding all of the moving parts behind the scenes only makes me love it more like for instance a lot of the trench sets and the farmhouse set were actually specifically built by having the actors walk through their entire scenes in an empty field and putting down flags to mark the amount of distance they covered between each specific beat of a scene and so these sets were specifically built to give the actors the space to deliver their lines before hitting specific landmarks the land cannot be longer than the scene and the scene cannot be longer than the land and i mean if you want to you can absolutely find some of the edits that are stitching these lengthy shots together frequently an object will cross the frame and that functions to wipe the frame and transition into the next shot sometimes they use blends or morphs obviously anytime the screen goes black that's a cut and this is clearly a bit of cg to bridge these two shots i just think finding the seams makes me admire the end result even more so anyways after schofield leaves captain smith and the casual's truck behind there's this tent scene where he tries to cross a broken bridge and gets pinned down by a german sniper after he thinks he's shot the man he goes inside the broken down building to check so you know he doesn't get shot in the back while trying to cross this big open area it turns out the soldier is not dead yet and so when will opens this door they both shoot each other and will falls down the stairs and we have the only visible purposeful edit in the entire movie with this really long cut to black when will wakes up some hours later we get the night window scene a beautiful nightmarish sequence where will has to run through the now destroyed town of acoust somewhere nearby german soldiers are sending up flares and so will has to try and traverse this terrain and stay out of sight while his surroundings vacillate between bright enough to be easily spotted by the enemy and blinding darkness it's such a strange impressionistic sequence that feels so unreal and all the more haunting for it deacons actually used real flares attached to wires and cranes in order to control their direction and movement to better light the scene and i really love this one moment here when will completely out in the open and exposed by the light of the flares ducks to the ground and just glares up at the light passing overhead he's clearly waiting for the cover of dark to find somewhere better to hide and it's such a human little moment in the middle of this dreamlike horror i just really love that look but once the flares stop he finds the burning church at the center of town another stunning and hellish tableau and then a german soldier finds him and chases him he ducks into this building and finds this young french girl and a baby hiding from the soldiers german friend it's a moment that allows will and the audience to just rest for a moment after the frenetic pace of the previous sequence and i think it's sweet when this young woman decides to help him out and seeing will be really good with this baby is just nice the idea for the scene came from the fact that sometimes when the germans invaded they would kill the men and leave the women and children not always but sometimes according to mendez he also said this whole scene was a little bit of an ode to his young daughter who was less than a year old when he was working on the script which i think is very cute but this respite can only last for so long so after he gives them his rations and the canteen full of milk he leaves them behind and ends up being chased and shot at again leading to him jumping off a cliff and into a raging river where he almost drowns multiple times when the water finally calms we find will clinging to a bit of driftwood and almost falling unconscious or just giving up and letting the water take him but he nearly drowns and that wakes him up and then we get a little reminder just let me read to you what was written in the screenplay for this scene the current begins to slow white petals float on it a patchwork blanket cherry blossoms scofield is swept through the white petals scofield raises an arm from the water and sees the petals clinging to him blake and if that doesn't make you cry i don't know what will but the reminder of his friend is enough to get scofield moving forward again so he starts to swim for sure and there's a horrifying moment when we see multiple dead civilians whose bodies were thrown into the river and all caught and piled up against this fallen tree will has to literally crawl over the dead bodies in order to get to shore and when he finally does he just stops and cries this poor boy has been through so much he just breaks down for a minute and it breaks my heart but he's distracted from his tears by a distant voice singing he stumbles through the woods to find a crowd of boys listening to one young man's haunting rendition of wayfaring stranger it turns out will has found his way to the quasial woods and to the second evans so one crucial thing i haven't actually delved into yet is the performance of dean charles chapman and george makai as thomas blake and will schofield respectively it's been pointed out by better critics than me that these two are not necessarily the most complex of characters the writing of them is fairly straightforward but like listen luke skywalker wasn't exactly the deepest character and we all loved him forever this isn't a negative this is just an observation what i think elevates these characters is twofold first the performances and second the details so the performances okay first off this just blew my mind but according to mendez in the commentary you know when blake is dying and he just goes white as a sheet they didn't do anything to alter his face until after the character was dead then there was some digital altering but this this dean charles chapman just acted so hard he did that and george mackay good god i love so many little things about his performance these moments of sheer animal bravery and then the moments of such human frustration this boy is going through so much and you can see all that horror living in his eyes also i cannot stress this enough look at this good boy do the good run listen he's doing such a good job and i get tired watching him but i do also love the little details that build up both characters and the dialogue and the blocking the moments where you see schofield's hand shaking on his rifle or checking the contents of this tin whenever he's nervous or this moment where blake kind of starts to break down a little bit after an argument i love the conversation between the two boys about how hard it is to go home to see one's family only to have to leave again when i knew i had to leave and they might never see and the medal scofield received for fighting in the psalm which are just a bit of tin to him but super cool and interesting to blake and it's not just bitten it's got a ribbon on it i love this little exchange in the german bunker what do you think's in the bags you cannot be that hungry and a million other tiny details that give these boys so much life and texture i just think they both did a beautiful job so now let's talk about the end of the movie after all of this and this and this schofield finally gets to the second evans but he's too late we're the second wave they don't send us all at once so many of the men are already out there about to leap out of the trenches for a strike that gets them killed will just needs to deliver this note and maybe maybe the fighting will stop although captain smith warned him earlier in the film make sure they're witnesses some men just want the fight so not even that is certain still will has miles to go and promises to keep and so he hunts for the general as the fight begins and the shelling starts it just keeps getting increasingly chaotic and the bombs are falling and where is colonel mckenzie he's further up the line the trenches are too full of people and too busy and it would take him ages to try and shove his way through so the only way forward is well what the hell are you doing i love the moment the idea hits him it's such a mad reckless idea but so much of this journey has been mad what's one more wild thing so he climbs up out of the trench and starts to run and it's so thrilling to watch i just love that the climactic scene of this war film is a boy running in parallel to all the action happening around him also that wasn't supposed to happen or that it's just a phenomenal pulse-pounding set piece and once he dives back into the trenches two more men try to hold him back but he manages to muscle his way inside the dugout to say you have been ordered to stop you have to stop it takes some convincing and we're all painfully aware that every second wasted is more lives lost including potentially tom's brother but will insists that the general said it was a trap and they have to stop and finally colonel mckenzie takes the damn note and orders the attack to stop major yes sir stand them down i really love this little moment here as will is just kind of still in shock that he managed to pull this off and the colonel says i hoped today might be a good day he says will might have stopped today's fight but the war will continue tomorrow last man standing it's a painful but necessary reality and then he tells him [ __ ] off that's corporal and then this major actually thanks will for what he did and tells him that blake's brother went up with the first wave of soldiers so if he's anywhere it would probably be the casualty clearing station so will stumbles into the station calling for a lieutenant blake and we get another long and sobering reminder that will was indeed too late many men will still die or have died already in spite of his heroics and after a while of wandering and calling for him he finds lieutenant joseph blake lieutenant blake yes and this scene hurts a lot because it takes the lieutenant quite a while to piece together why will is here tom's here where is he will tells him that it was quick he gives him tom's things and he starts to walk away but after a moment's hesitation he turns back and tells the lieutenant that tom was funny and always telling stories and that he saved will's life i'm glad you were with him did you know that this was richard madden's first take i don't know why but that hurts me more somehow finally lieutenant joseph blake shakes will's hand and thanks him and the final scene of the movie is will walking out into the field to sit beneath a tree he pulls out that tin he's been checking repeatedly throughout the film and we see pictures of his family inside a wife and two children on the back of the photo of his wife it says come back to us and for the moment it seems will can keep that promise too the final text on screen is a dedication to sam mendez's grandfather alfred the film was partially based on stories his grandfather told him and a variety of first-person accounts the whole thing with the milk and the rat chewing off some guy's ear and a concert in a forest all came from first-person accounts and the on-screen dedication says for lance corporal alfred h mendez first battalion king's royal rifle corps who told us the stories and that's the movie and there are so many individual moments that stick with me from the film banal moments harrowing moments funny moments and sad moments i'm not completely sure what made me fixate on this movie as hard as i did in the early days of lockdown maybe the beauty of nature that will inevitably win out in the end while i was stuck in doors staring at my walls all day maybe it was just that all the sadness and death will goes through was so far removed from the solitary trauma i and many others were experiencing at the time to this day i'm honestly not sure what made this movie somehow comforting to me at that time but it was and it still transfixes me every time i revisit it i think part of what draws me to this film aside from you know everything is the contradictions of it will schofield spends the entire movie trying to fulfill a promise and he both succeeds and fails he tries to stop one battle but there will be another one tomorrow he commits acts of desperate heroics that will mean nothing in the grand scheme of things and yet it means everything he's surrounded by brutality but also so many random acts of kindness and he responds in kind to all of it he tries to help two people stranded in the middle of a battlefield he tries to keep his promise to his dead friend and he tries as hard as he can to stay alive and come home to his family it's dramatic and desperate and horrifying and beautiful in its own right kate rockowski once wrote nothing ever ends poetically it ends and we turn into poetry all that blood was never once beautiful it was just red and after everything will goes through he doesn't get a happy ending but he gets a gentle one he gets to sit back against this tree a reflection of how the movie first began and he gets to rest knowing he did what he could and the rest well the rest is just blood and poetry so i just want to start by thanking reddit user pamender as well as gs bhatti angelina sandu and amandeep madra for all their help on the chapter 5 stuff it really is a privilege and i am grateful for the time they took to help me better understand the issues i discussed in that section i also want to thank my patrons thank you for your patronage your continued support allows me to make these videos thank you so much and that's all for now everybody thank you all for watching and i'll see you on the next one [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Ladyknightthebrave

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Id: -a9HaeQhf7k

Length: 58min 13sec (3493 seconds)

Published: Tue May 18 2021