This phantasmagoric first world war nightmare from the
British director is ambitious and unshakeable storytellingSteve Rose on why pacifist war movies are on the marchSam Mendes’s 1917 is an amazingly audacious film; as exciting as a heist movie, disturbing as a sci-fi nightmare. Working with co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns, he has created a first world war drama of the Western Front and a terrible journey undertaken by two boys like a ghost train ride into a day-lit house of horror, periodically descending into night and then resurfacing into an alien world, bright with menace.
And it’s filmed in one extraordinary single take by cinematographer Roger Deakins, a continuous fluid travelling shot (with digital edits sneaked in, evidently at those moments where we lose sight of them, or in moments of darkness or
explosion – but where exactly, I mostly couldn’t tell) .