1917 (2019) (2 Viewers)

[Robert Crawford]

Meant by whom? I don’t think 1917 was ever envisioned as a character study, and certainly not more than SPR.

People might think that because film appreciation/interpretation is so subjective which is why movies can be viewed differently than what the filmmakers intended or even what you think of it is. In short, we see things differently especially when it comes to artforms.

 

[Tino]

People might think that because film appreciation/interpretation is so subjective which is why movies can be viewed differently than what the filmmakers intended or even what you think of it is. In short, we see things differently especially when it comes to artforms.

Oh I agree. I was just responding to the assertion that the film was meant to be a “character” study which i don’t believe it was if you have seen the interviews with Mendes and what his goals and aspirations for the film were.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Oh I agree. I was just responding to the assertion that the film was meant to be a “character” study which i don’t believe it was if you have seen the interviews with Mendes and what his goals and aspirations for the film were.

Yet, that doesn't mean it's not going to be taken as a "character" study by some people. Once an artist releases his art to the public then it can become something totally different than what he intended it to be.

 

[Tino]

Yet, that doesn't mean it's not going to be taken as a "character" study by some people. Once an artist releases his art to the public then it can become something totally different than what he intended it to be.

Again, I agree.

 

[Tino]

Oh and by the way, 1917 is officially the BP front runner now after tonight’s PGA awards.

“Universal's war drama 1917 won outstanding producer of theatrical motion pictures at the 31st annual Producers Guild Awards on Saturday night, received by a producing team that includes director Sam Mendes.”

 

[Tino]

Deadline.


The Producers Guild unveiled the year’s best in film and TV producing Saturday at the 31st annual PGA Awards at the Hollywood Palladium, with Universal’s 1917 taking the top film prize. It keeps the momentum going strong for Sam Mendes’ World War I epic, which is produced and financed by Amblin Partners and New Republic, after it picked up the Golden Globe for Best Picture – Drama earlier this month.

The PGA via its marquee category has picked the Best Picture Oscar 21 times in its 30-year history, including Green Book, another Universal pic, last year, and Fox Searchlight’s The Shape of Water in 2018.

“Thank you very, very much Producers Guild,” Mendes said onstage in his acceptance speech. “This film was inspired by my grandfather, and my hope above all was to honor his experience. I have to pay tribute to the efforts on the part of every single member of this crew and cast.”

The Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures race this year included all nine Oscar Best Picture nominees — 1917 along with Ford v Ferrari, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Little Women, Marriage Story, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Parasite — joined by Rian Johnson’s Knives Out.

1917‘s winning producers are Mendes, Pippa Harris, Jayne‐Ann Tenggren and Callum McDougall.

 

[ptb2017fr]

Fury was a stunning movie with an extraordinary performance from Logan Lerman that Bard Pitt stood back and rightly allowed to take centre stage.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

I begvto differ that the mission given in SPR was a "PR" mission. Nowhere in that film was there any evidence that it was being done for public relations.

Yes, it is a PR mission. It's been a while since I have seen the picture but it opens at a command HQ I believe where someone has discovered that several of the Ryan brothers have been killed and there is only one of them left alive and he is in a combat unit somewhere. It would be horrible PR if the story gets out that a single family lost all of their sons to the war so for PR purposes they decide to remove Private Ryan from his unit and send him home immediately. So, it is not really a rescue mission at all. He's not captured, he is just out there with his unit doing what he is supposed to be doing.

Cut to the insane landing on Omaha beach where literally all hell is breaking loose and casualties are high. This section is used to show exactly how absurd the assignment to go find and retrieve Ryan is. It's not a mission that makes any sense particularly after Captain Miller and his men just survived that slaughter. They are none too happy to be handed a PR detail to retrieve the remaining Ryan sibling.

In 1917 the two soldiers are given a real mission that matters. Prevent a colonel that thinks he has the Germans on the run from leading his troops into an ambush. Nobody is asked to rescue anybody nor to bring anybody back. Just to get a message to a colonel to stop an attack they know will go badly because they have air reconnaissance showing what the Germans are up to.

 

[Tino]

You’ve got the SPR sequences mixed up Reggie.

The film opens on old Ryan visiting the graves in Normandy and flashes back to the D-Day battles witch ends with the scene of a dead Ryan brother.

It then transitions to Ryans mom getting the news and then the Headquarters scene where the PR plan is hatched to save the last remaining Ryan brother.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Meant by whom? I don’t think 1917 was ever envisioned as a character study, and certainly not more than SPR.

I am in agreement with Tino here and do not at all believe this film is a character study simply because...

Spoiler

...there really is no character to study because the film only reveals one thing about the two soldiers that are the main characters and that is that they are both wonderful human beings. So, it is not a study of these two men they are just presented as fantastic heroic men...end of character info. They rescue an enemy soldier, take time to help a woman and baby Schofield giving them all of his rations, and obviously risk their lives for the lives of the men under Colonel MacKenzie. I believe they are portrayed as such sterling people so it is easy for the audience to be right there with them on the battlefield. So, the character side of this is kept very simplistic because it is not the focus of the film.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

You’ve got the SPR sequences mixed up Reggie.

The film opens on old Ryan visiting the graves in Normandy and flashes back to the D-Day battles witch ends with the scene of a dead Ryan brother.

It then transitions to Ryans mom getting the news and then the Headquarters scene where the PR plan is hatched to save the last remaining Ryan brother.

Yes, I recall there is that bit with him going to the grave, what I can't remember is which comes first the Omaha beach landing or that scene at HQ where they discover that all the Ryan brothers are dead and they decide to create the mission to try to get the last one before he gets killed as well. Regardless, the film is attempting to show what I was commenting on.

Now I want to go watch Saving Private Ryan, ha!

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Just got back from seeing it. I was in awe of the cinematography throughout, but felt strangely distanced by it; instead of focusing on the journey of these two characters, I found myself focused on the craft that went into capturing it. George MacKay was incredible as the audience's POV, though.

 

[Tino]

Just got back from seeing it. I was in awe of the cinematography throughout, but felt strangely distanced by it; instead of focusing on the journey of these two characters, I found myself focused on the craft that went into capturing it. George MacKay was incredible as the audience's POV, though.

I was expecting a much more detailed review from you Adam as usual. Why the brevity?

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I was expecting a much more detailed review from you Adam as usual. Why the brevity?

I didn't really have a lot to say about it. I enjoyed it, but not as much as I expected to.

Part of it is that it's a pretty simple story: two soldiers are assigned to cross dangerous territory to deliver a really important lesson, and that's more or less what happens. More so than any other film I've seen this year, the power of 1917 comes from being experienced. It does that well. But there's less for me to unpack because of it.

My favorite scene in the movie was when Schofield is hiding from the Germans in Écoust-Saint-Mein and happens upon the young French woman hiding out in the basement apartment of a bombed out billing, with someone else's baby that she'd found abandoned. In a movie where human decency is not much rewarded, it was nice to have a moment of grace amidst all of the horror -- even though he left the woman and child to a pretty hopeless fate.

 

[Malcolm R]

Sounds like The Lord of the Rings with a smaller fellowship.

 

[Tino]

My favorite scene in the movie was when Schofield is hiding from the Germans in Écoust-Saint-Mein and happens upon the young French woman hiding out in the basement apartment of a bombed out billing, with someone else's baby that she'd found abandoned. In a movie where human decency is not much rewarded, it was nice to have a moment of grace amidst all of the horror -- even though he left the woman and child to a pretty hopeless fate.

At least he left her his

Spoiler

milk and food.

 

[David_B_K]

Just got back from seeing it. I was in awe of the cinematography throughout, but felt strangely distanced by it; instead of focusing on the journey of these two characters, I found myself focused on the craft that went into capturing it. George MacKay was incredible as the audience's POV, though.

I had a similar reaction. With all the talk here about whether this film is like SPR or other war films, I got sort of a Dunkirk vibe from it, as it was a very subjective POV experience like the earlier film (even tough the plots are dissimilar).

 

[Edwin-S]

Sounds like The Lord of the Rings with a smaller fellowship.

I know you are half joking with this statement, but at one point in the movie that was my exact feeling; that I was watching Frodo and Samwise trekking across Mordor. Except that there was more character development with Frodo and Samwise.

At one point, while I was watching, I asked myself, "what is the point of the second guy"? To be a bullet magnet for the one trying to save his brother?

I said it was a good movie, but I also feel quite negative about it as some sort of "masterpiece". Frankly, for a film with horror and blood depicted, the story as a whole felt completely "bloodless". A person should feel something for what is happening to the characters but all I felt like was a detached observer watching a series of events occur without any emotional involvement.

This film is supposed to make you feel as if you are the third squad member and yet I felt nothing during the scene where

Spoiler

the one guy got stabbed ( I've already forgotten his name and I only saw it yesterday)

.

 

[Malcolm R]

This film is supposed to make you feel as if you are the third squad member and yet I felt nothing during the scene where

Spoiler

the one guy got stabbed ( I've already forgotten his name and I only saw it yesterday)

.

Which also sounds like a riff on the SPR scene

Spoiler

of Mellish being stabbed.

 

[Edwin-S]

Yes, it is a PR mission.

You can believe it was a PR mission and I will believe that it was not because there was never any PR involved or depicted. Nobody in the film ever mentioned or brought up the optics that might ensue for the Army if the three brothers were killed. I mean, do you seriously believe that the Army would have suffered negative public consequences from three brothers being killed when thousands of families were losing sons in droves? The loss of her three sons would have been just another statistic and a medal.

Which also sounds like a riff on the SPR scene

Spoiler

of Mellish being stabbed.

You must be thinking of the scene where he was

Spoiler

fighting with the German soldier, while his drunk buddy was oblivious to what was occurring.

I was thinking more of the scene where

Spoiler

Blake gets stabbed by the German pilot that he rescued.

That scene reminded me of the one where

Spoiler

Wade gets hit by a piece a piece of shrapnel or a bullet during the machine gun nest assault in SPR. Except there, you felt like a helpless squad member while in 1917 a person felt like a clinician watching a patient die and the only thing you can think is, "being a humanitarian in war gets you killed." In other words, if it is a choice between saving an enemy or letting him burn then the safest route is to let him burn.