1917

Yea, Tho I Walk and Talk Through The Valley of the Shadow...
or
Last Man Standing, Notwithstanding.

One shot. 

That's the strongest take-away from Sam Mendes' 1917, based on stories told to him by his grandfather, and which Mendes adapted, along with Krysty Wilson-Cairns, to make an extremely inclusive World War I film, with that one difference—make it appear as one continuous "take," seemingly without edits.

Mendes had experimented doing this with the first sequence of his previous film, SPECTRE—part of the James Bond franchise—a four minute seamless tracking shot during the "Day of the Dead" celebration in Mexico City as Daniel Craig's Bond "makes" his target, goes up to a hotel room balcony and then saunters along the rooftops to a sniper position to take the terrorist out.

It's not continuous, though. There are moments where the camera "settles" for a split-second on something—free of human beings and any sky shots with moving clouds, something inanimate and stationary—where invisible wipe-edits can be made to complete the illusion of continuity. But, in 1917, that tack continues for the entire run of the movie (with one exception, where a soldier is knocked unconscious by a bullet to his helmet), which is some two hours.* 

This is not unique—Hitchcock did it in 1948 with his experimental Rope, essentially a play without the proscenium arch and the audience on stage with the actors, doing 10 minute continuous shots (which was the length of a film reel) until he could focus on somebody's back for the reel-change—and has been done more frequently of late thanks to digital photography (think of Birdman, Gravity, there's a list of them on Wikipedia now). The effect has been used to create tension—when is the scene going to "break"?—ala Orson Welles' long opening to Touch of Evil. And World War I is ideally suited to this conceit, given its emphasis on trench-warfare, where the viewer is hemmed in by the narrowness of the space, used to very good advantage in tracking shots by Stanley Kubrick in Paths of Glory and emulated here by Mendes.

The film begins—as it ends (no real spoiler alert necessary)—with a soldier relaxing under a tree; Lance Corporal Schofield (George McKay) is soon told to get up by Lance Corporal Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman)—there's a mission  that he's been called to carry out and he's chosen Schofield to accompany him. What's the mission? No idea, he's on his way to the bunker of General Erinmore (Colin Firth) to hear what it is. The two slop to the make-shift HQ and given the task—word is that the Germans have not retreated, as has been the thought, but diverted to the newly-formed Hindenburg line where that entrenched position will allow them to decimate the Devonshire regiment who have been planning an attack that will place them right in the path of the German artillery there. Phone lines and communication are down, so the two men must hand deliver a message to call off the attack scheduled for dawn the next day lest the 1600 men be wiped out, including Blake's older brother who is stationed there. 

Time is limited. The two have to leave the trenches, weave their way through No-Man's-Land, pick their way past the German trenches, evade whatever sparse troops might be there on the way—IF they have, indeed, moved—make it to the city of Écoust, follow the river nearby and get to the Devonshires before the attack can happen. In other words, they have to go through enemy territory and any stray threats there to hand deliver written words that, they are warned before heading "over the top" by an embittered Lieutenant Leslie (Andrew Scott, always welcome) that the orders might not be believed, anyway.

The Devil of the trip is in the details and they come in the form of booby-traps, rats, blasted out landscapes, snipers, armed aerial reconnaissance and the general fog of war. Mendes' usual one-point perspectives keep a viewer focused on what's up-front, but the ever-moving camera has you exploring the edges of the frame, looking for hidden dangers that just might be slipping into view. 

The focus is constantly changing, although still hampered by the camera frame, giving one a 90° vantage of what is surrounding Blake and Schofield, immersing the audience in the step-by-step journey while also limiting the field of view. Yes, it "puts you there" but it is also frustrating that your vantage is from a letter-box.  At times, it has the feel of a FPS video-game (without the woozy headaches), but even then, you're controlling where the field of view looks. In this, you're just a prisoner.

Thank God, though, that the fellow who is controlling the view is Roger Deakins, one of those masters of light, a cinematographer who can make anything, even a pristine field, look magical. Technologically, the film must have seemed daunting—not just in the one-shot fluidity—but also in the various lighting situations—by candle, flash, flare, or flame—that Deakins has been honing over the last couple decades of working with demanding directors who were seeing the world a little differently from others and has managed to pull miracles out of the lenses he's been peering through. It's another wonderful example of Deakins excelling in an already crowded field of filming magicians who have moved the bar—or the f-stop—on what can be filmed, let alone imagined.

As beautiful as it is, though, one wishes there was more to it than that. For Mendes, of course, it's a personal tribute and a sentimental journey, a technical challenge well met, and impeccably done. At the end, however, one just feels a bit empty. Perhaps, that is as it should be, given that war, given that carnage, given its lasting effects on a generation—the "lost" generation, as it has become known in artistic circles. It is a story well-told, but not much of a story, as personally heroic as it might be. The monstrosity of that war and its futility has been better recounted for as long as there's been film...or near about's. Certainly as long as films have been giving out awards to itself.

It just pales in comparison to other WWI films, its technical prowess notwithstanding. And when one places it in comparison with...oh, let's say, They Shall Not Grow Old, which is also personal—interviews are with veterans, while memories are still green—and technically stunning—original Imperial War Museum footage, spit-and-polished up, sound-enhanced, digitized and colorized so as to seem new, not 100 years old, the effect historically, emotionally, viscerally is far more than 1917 can achieve. Yes, bravo for making it, but points off for making it an exercise rather than an experience.

* Slight time-error here: the mission is supposed to take six hours, so unless the soldier knicked is out for four hours this is some inevitable time-compression to allow for multiple showings at the cineplex—and that's assuming the time-estimate is based on the assumption of one or both of the soldiers being unconscious for four hours!

Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Walking the Walk and Talk
or
Every Man His Alcatraz (or That Obscure Object of Film-Making)

Riggan Thomas (Michael Keaton) is an actor who's been on a stale streak for awhile after making a name for himself in a string of superhero movies (as an act of integrity he didn't do the fourth one) and is now trying to make a forthright comeback of sorts by ambitiously staging a play on Broadway that he has written, is directing and is also starring in. The play, based on a Raymond Carver story* is as far afield from "Birdman" (the superhero character he played) as one can get, and the staging of the play proves to be problematic what with difficult actors, difficult material, and that the lead may be a bit crazy—cuckoo, if you'd rather. Left alone, which he rarely is, Riggan hears the voice of "Birdman" in his head berating him for past failures and current insecurities and, then, every once in awhile, Thomas displays a knack for telekinesis—moving objects without touching them.

Or more accurately, smashing objects without touching them. Riggan is a bit out of control, mercurial, and seems more than a bit unstable, all the while he's trying to keep his vanity project together. An accident (or is it?) on the stage one day eliminates the actor he's having the most problems with and replaces him with an improvement—Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), one of the better actors working, but also one of the most annoying, for his insistence on "truth" in performance. 

Is Thomas rolling his eyes, or is he willing something to happen?

Complicating matters is the presence of Riggan's daughter (Emma Stone) recently out of rehab, Shiner's wife (Naomi Watts), also in the play, a crusty theater critic (Lindsay Duncan) who is determined to trash the play sight unseen for Riggan's impertinence for trying to prove he's an actor instead of a celebrity, and Shiner's narcissism that hogs the limelight (and is in conflict with Riggan's narcissism). Through it all, Riggan's friend and lawyer (Zach Galifanikis) serves as buffer and punching bag.

Those who've followed the movies of Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel, Biutiful) know that Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is as close to a knockabout comedy as he can get. The self-possessed tribulations of actors amid the various roles they play are the stuff of both comedy and tragedy—tragedy in the intimate conflicts they struggle with within and without, and comedy in the lack of perspective they can possess entangled in those struggles. We're all actors. We all play roles, and sometimes we get lost in the performance of our lives—our self-made traps, self-imposed prisons. Every bird-man his Alcatraz.

Now, here comes Thomas, in the performance of his life, confined to a two-block radius of Broadway, trying to achieve more than he might be able to, and performing a dialogue with more than himself, trying to stretch himself in a flight of fancy while his past tries to sabotage it. He wants to soar, but the Birdman of his past keeps pushing him to the ground. 

Michael Keaton has never really retired from movies—he's been doing small parts here and there—but he hasn't top-lined a movie since his own fine directorial debut, The Merry Gentleman. But, it is good to have him back in something with a bit of substance. And, of course, he's perfect for this—an odd semi-meta-performance (at one point he says "I had a dream that I died in a plane-crash, and the picture they had in the paper was Clooney."). But, Batman never really held him back—fact is, he was always a better Bruce Wayne than Batman, a performance too still and cossetted in black rubber—it just didn't show him at his manic, quirky best. He's also better, like here, in an ensemble: in The Other Guys, one of his small parts of late, he has two scenes—one where he's playing off Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, where he is funny and exceptional, and the other—a monologue—where he falls flat. He is a character actor, at his mercurial best bouncing off the talents of others, and he and Norton have great scenes that are joys to watch for how good both are, in completely different styles. The part is tailor-made for Keaton, and he rises, literally, to the challenge.

At one point, Iñárritu stages an action set-piece that looks like the chaos
of every CGI superhero movie ever made

And the director doesn't make it easy for him. The thing is about theater and Iñárritu keeps the locale focused in and around New York's St. James Theater (you get to know every nook and cranny of it) and shoots the movie in a seemingly seamless stream of long "takes," where the actors have to really act and for quite a sustained while, then migrate in steadicammed transitons of "walk-and-talks" that Scorsese used frequently and became famous as a fast, busy way to throw out exposition on TV's "West Wing"—it's just that nobody's tried this so steadfastly since Hitchcock's Rope—not even the supposedly continuous Cloverfield could resist interruptions of static to cover the gaps.   

At times, as is the writer-director's way, the film is very obtuse, trying to communicate something while not being obvious about it to the point where it's obscure and slightly unreachable. Throughout the course of the movie, he also makes no distinction between reality and fantasy, between inner and outer dialogue, so it's often not easy to trust the image or the sound on-screen: does Riggan have telekinesis or is this all in his head and just some manifestation of control that he thinks he has over his Universe? Why does the film resolve the way it does, with a self-inflicted act of violence, for the visual joke of the Birdman's costume, or is it being precious with a well-worn cliche about self-defeating actions?  Sometimes the deflection doesn't quite work, but just as often, as in the film's final shot, it makes for a sublime moment, not too obvious, and a fine melding of fantasy and reality.

* I don't know whether it's interesting or significant or not, but Riggan's adaptation is taken from the heavily edited version of Carver's story and even includes a monologue not written by Carver, but by his editor Gordon Lish.

Still-life Superhero:  Keaton's Batman never moved much and had his
performance cossetted by leather.