The first movie I went to the theater this year was also a very good reason to enter the theater after the epidemic.
In this era of streaming media, there are always some movies that remind us of the irreplaceability of offline cinemas for audiovisual art, such as this "1917". The one-shot gimmick is undoubtedly the biggest expectation, and in general, it can be regarded as living up to expectations.
Except for the plot transition after a protagonist is knocked out in the middle of the film, the rest of the film is narrated by the pseudo-one-shot shooting method, and guessing the editing point has also become a great pleasure of watching the film. It is said that there are about 20 or 30 editing points in the whole film, but most of them are actually relatively easy to find, because the director did not deliberately hide the editing points, but generously showed various techniques in front of the audience. The occlusion transition, the transition in the dark, the high-speed panning, and the connection of the empty mirror with a fixed camera position are rich in techniques, which can also be called a teaching demonstration of "one mirror to the end" shooting.
This way of shooting creates an unparalleled sense of immersion. Especially the scene where the two protagonists cross trenches and no-man’s land in the first paragraph, many people commented that it was like playing FPS, which made people feel like they were in the cruel battlefield of World War I. The shots are retreated, chased, panned, frozen, and panned (there is a shot of panning and panning across a mud pool that is particularly shocking). The scheduling here makes the best use of one shot, and uses a very realistic audio-visual narrative method to let the battlefield become extremely realistic.
But the success is also a shot, and the failure is also a shot. The natural constraints of this extreme shooting method have also caused many problems. One is the logic of the plot. The montage technique is naturally suitable for creating conflicts, and the quick transitions and the switching of perspectives of different characters make more room for manoeuvre in the script. In the end, Yijian must follow the protagonist firmly in time and space. In order to ensure the richness of the narrative, the screenwriter has to create more conflicts for the protagonist along the way, but it is easy to appear too dramatic and make the plot change. It has to be deliberate and contrived, such as the plot kill of the German pilot. At the same time, from the perspective of technical means, in order to promote the scene switching, it is necessary to bring "foreign aid" to the protagonist, and even sometimes the foreign aid is purely to help the director create editing points. The British army that suddenly appeared in the middle, on the one hand, played a role in helping the protagonist to transition, and on the other hand, through the two editing points of getting on and off, the shooting itself could be connected, but this sudden emergence of the British army made the early stage. The difficulty of the protagonist's journey through no-man's land alone becomes comical. In the opening scene, the protagonist was unable to hold on to the position for a long time, but after passing through the no-man’s land and the German trenches for a short period of more than 100 meters, they encountered the mobilization of a large number of troops, which did not seem logical.
On the other hand, it is the limitation of a mirror in time and space. Compared with "Reaper of Souls" and "Birdman", "1917" seems to be the first movie that tries to use one shot to the end in a complex open scene, but the two-hour movie time is more than ten kilometers away from the protagonist's nearly 24 hours. The march is irreconcilable. In terms of time, the protagonist's brief coma in the middle can only barely connect the time conflict before and after, but the rapid change between dark and dawn is obviously not in line with common sense. The problem of space is even more obvious. The intuition of the camera from beginning to end will not exceed two or three kilometers, but it is continuously packed into extremely complex scenes, especially the connection between the town and the forest is too fast, all of a sudden Disturb the audience's normal perception.
To make up for these problems, the director has adopted another strategy - diverting the audience's attention with an audio-visual impact. In addition, if the protagonist watches the dogfight of fighter planes in the distance, but suddenly finds that the downed German fighter plane is diving, this instant contrast shock from the object to the subject is undoubtedly an audio-visual spectacle experience that is difficult to bring by montage editing. In addition to the composition and color design, there are several sets of shots that are impressive, the raging fire in the small town church, and the falling leaves in the sky when rafting, giving full play to another unique charm of long shots.
If the first half is the style of realism, the second half is romanticism. Granted, both parts were brilliantly done, but it made the film a bit of a split, and ultimately a flaw. But in any case, Mendez completed his answer sheet on one test question in his own way. What is even more valuable is that in the context of the current era, he turned his attention to World War I again, to the desperate trenches, to the soldiers who died without meaning, to the madness of an entire generation and the lies above the temples.
To stop that damn charge may be the greater meaning of this movie.
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