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Post by sgev1977 on Dec 23, 2019 16:06:48 GMT
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Post by sgev1977 on Dec 25, 2019 14:17:50 GMT
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Post by sgev1977 on Jan 9, 2020 10:56:58 GMT
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Post by mllemass on Jan 16, 2020 3:37:58 GMT
My local newspaper has a review of 1917 from a US paper, as it usually does. It’s almost a full page and has two photos, one of them being of Benedict! Do you think they said to him “You’re going to be in two minutes at the end of the movie, but we’ll be using your image in all our promotion”? Ha!
They gave it 3 stars out of 4. They didn’t think that the one-long-shot technique worked very well because it wasn’t in actual time. Huh? So the reviewer sat there looking at his watch, saying “Hey! Only two hours have gone by, not eight hours like in the movie!”. But at the end they recommended it because it’s “something you’ve never seen before”.
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Post by sgev1977 on Jan 25, 2020 2:25:28 GMT
Not exactly a review because I understand he isn't working as critic right now because tragically his wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer but these are some great tweets about the film:
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Post by miriel68 on Feb 1, 2020 10:16:57 GMT
Ok, so I saw it yesterday and I wouldn't call it an "empty technical achievement". It certainly has a vague oniric quality, and one is tempted to call images "beautiful", in spite of the horrors they show. The human dimension of the friendship of two young boys who are going together into this mission is very moving. However, it is a very linear, traditional story beyond the trick of one shot and it doesn't tell much about the war other than that it was so horrible (which we kind of know, don't we?). It doesn't make you think, other than regretting the absurdity of the war conflict. There are only two "real" people in the movie: the two protagonists. Firth, Strong, Cumberbatch are there to remind us about upper-class commanding officers and they recite their lines well, but 1 minute is not really enough to build something meaningful. I mean, even in "War Horse" (which I disliked) B. had an opportunity to create a character within his limited screen time. I would say that of the 3 British stars, Strong is the most interesting here (ok, he has TWO minutes, so twice as much as C. and F.)
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Post by sgev1977 on Feb 1, 2020 13:40:07 GMT
It's interesting because I feel that a lot of the criticism is that it is a patriotic film that doesn't have a clear anti-war message! I suspect it's by people that were offended by it winning the Golden Globe over The Irishman because others claim the complete opposite! And initially was described as an almost horror film!
The NYT actually suggested that the upper class actors were shown as some kind of wonderful status quo without any irony or yes, criticism! And others said, well, the complete opposite! They are the "stars" that almost arbitrarily decide the destiny of the much more humble soldiers, the real stars of the film.
I need to watch it!
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Post by mllemass on Feb 1, 2020 15:25:40 GMT
I don’t think there’s supposed to be a deeper meaning to having the big stars do cameos while the two main characters are played by relatively unknowns. Didn’t the director say in an interview that they wouldn’t have been able to make the movie without the big names to attract an audience?
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Post by miriel68 on Feb 1, 2020 21:44:40 GMT
I don’t think there’s supposed to be a deeper meaning to having the big stars do cameos while the two main characters are played by relatively unknowns. Didn’t the director say in an interview that they wouldn’t have been able to make the movie without the big names to attract an audience? Well, that much is obvious, as is the shameless use of Firth's and Cumberbatch's faces in the trailer. I wish, however, that they would be given a chance to develop at least a trace of personality: one of two minutes of the screentime and some additional lines of dialogue could have been sufficient to do it, them being such fine actors. sgev, it certainly doesn't "spell" the anti-war message in capital letters. And Germans are not important, TBH - they are just "enemies" you know, like in a computer game, the obstacle you have to eliminate to get to the final level. It is more in the images, I think, the waste land the protagonists hnave to cross, ruins, desolation, corpses, rats, dead horses. You have this rather poetic contrast: the very first shot on the beautiful peaceful field and then the devastation of the nature the war brought. But for the rest - well, you remember Parade's End? It was so much more insightful as far as the mechanisms of the war were concerned.
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