Review of 1917 (2019) by Netflic — 14 Jan 2020

The latest movie from a talented director Sam Mendes, who made "American Beauty", one of my most favorite movies. Nominated for 10 Oscars, it just won Golden Globe award. Our expectations were high, obviously.

How could Sam Mendes, after "American Beauty", make a film like "1917"?

A question comes to my mind, Did the director watch that movie?

It only made sense when comparing to Nikita Mikhalkov.

A film that was supposed to be a serious war drama turned out to be a video game filled with all kinds of cliches.

"Saving Private Ryan" - 2 it is not.

To begin with the episode inside German bunker which made me think something like "WTF?!".

Two protagonists enter it, notice it is rigged with explosives, and immediately there is an explosion. Half of the bunker falls on top of one of the two, with pieces up to two feet each. He lied there, trapped under those rocks, not breathing. The other one starts digging him out. The way he was handling those rocks, their weight had to be a pound or two, with density of a pillow. When the first guy was finally completely out, he could not either move or see. In a few minutes his vision was back, and he could even run. As a person with first-hand knowledge what falling rocks do to a human body, my suspicion was more that justified.

Closer to the end of the movie, the same protagonist jumps into a river that looked like a calm small city river that after the jump turned into a white water torrent. Not every experienced rafter would be able to get out of it, not even mentioning wearing a backpack and high boots. Then the guy gets into a waterfall, falls 100 or so feet down and then quietly swims ashore in a nice freestyle stroke.

Even corpses of soldiers here and there cause laughter instead of horror. I do not think it was intended. A movie about WWI, a horrific and senseless slaughterhouse, that gobbled the whole generation, deserves better than a-la Indiana Jones style flick.

If you want to see what WWI really looked like, there is a documentary "They shall never grow old" made completely out of restored reels of that times.