“But, chin up. There’s a medal in it for sure. Nothing like a scrap of ribbon to cheer up a widow.”
Long take cinema, working for me where Alejandro González Iñárritu films do not. The one-shot style transforms this war film into a suspense thriller, where each step can be a nail-biter, like Wages of Fear, because a new danger can appear in the distance out of focus or can surprise us with the immediacy of a gunshot. I’ve read the negative comment about how this makes it like a video game and there is one scene where I thought that, but one scene is not a movie. Also, there is a definite shift in tone – marked by an unmissable edit – where the camera goes from sticking close to the men to taking a more god-like view. This leads to moments of visual poetry and emotional beauty I honestly didn’t think Sam Mendes had in him, and a final detail that got me very emotional.
Sam Mendes is one of the most precise and calculating filmmakers working today. Every trench, every rat, every guest star is carefully planned out. I love the way the film thoughtfully peppers in its big name stars, little boosts to mark the journey. None of this takes away from the great performances and chemistry from the two leads, Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay. One of Mendes’ strengths is where he picks to build the suspense and where he lets it go slack. I am enthralled by the level of skill it takes to pull it all off, and that transfers easily to getting me emotionally involved in the characters on screen. I love the movie because of how much effort went into each visceral moment, and the moments add up to a series of final scenes that each have an exhausting emotional punch.
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