Review of 1917 (2019) by Compi24 — 12 Jan 2020

It is a rare, rare thing for me to feel as though I need to unsheathe the "M-word" from my vocabulary after seeing a movie. Though, with Sam Mendes's "1917" freshly in mind, I find the experience impossible to describe without dropping it at least once.

I don't think I've seen a filmic narrative since "The Revenant" that's more adequately aligned itself with the term "journey" than this one has. It is a wild, traumatic, and relentlessly thrilling, near-real-time chronicling of a fateful day in the lives of so many that I find infinitely more epic in scope and theme than any movie I've seen in the past few years -- and some of those had more than triple the budget Mendes had at his disposal.

This is what moviemaking is all about. So many moments come to pass throughout where not only the acting and writing, but the camerawork, production design, music, and thematics are firing on all cylinders, welling up feelings of wonderment, terror, anxiety, despair and grief at various points in a magnificently well-paced 2-hour running time.

They absolutely do not make movies like this very often, so do yourself a favor and immediately treat yourself to viewing this masterpiece in the biggest theater you have near you.