Before this year’s Golden Globe Awards, perhaps no one would have thought that Sam Mendes’ new war-themed work "1917" would defeat the acclaimed and watched elder Martin Scorsese’s "The Irishman" "Marriage Story" with the widow sister, won the two most important awards for the best feature film and best director in the movie category.
In the upcoming Oscars, the best picture and best director have become more suspenseful. Sam Mendes is very expected to win the statuette again after 1999's "American Beauty".
Some people say that Hollywood is not ready to award awards to movies made by streaming media represented by Netflix ("The Irishman" and "Marriage Story" are both from Netflix). But it is undeniable that both the technology and art of "1917" are enough to make people breathtaking, and the awards are enough to convince the public.
The technical shock and unique look and feel brought by one mirror to the end
With the continuous improvement of the application of CG technology, modern movies can almost create "nothing impossible, only unexpected" visual wonders. When the audience is getting more and more aesthetically fatigued with all kinds of fake and real CG products in the film screen, the exploration of film technology is still the direction that many filmmakers are diligently seeking. James Cameron is constantly upgrading his photographic equipment and technology, while Ang Lee is like Don Quixote on the road to high frame rate alone.
And "one shot to the end", this not unusual shooting technique, is the biggest highlight and gimmick of "1917". This "one shot to the end" is not a long shot in the film, but an uninterrupted long shot from the beginning to the end of the film. The shooting difficulty and technical requirements of the
long lens can be imagined. Many movies are widely praised for their impressive long shots, including "Son of God" and "Atonement". But movies that are truly one-shot are rare in film history.
Of course, a mirror is true or false. The representative of the true mirror is "Russian Ark", which is a film made by a photographer who really holds a camera and shoots for 99 minutes. The representative of the pseudo-one-shot is "Birdman", which won the Oscar for Best Picture a few years ago. It is actually composed of several long shots stitched together under imperceptible editing.
In China, many people have seen the charm of watching a one-hour "one mirror to the end" movie on the big screen in the film directed by Bi Gan, which was released on December 31 of the previous year, and that was Shinichi Mirror to the end.
"1917" is a fake one to the end, but the final technically presented effect, except for the obvious black screen, the traces of other editing stitching are too difficult to be found . Even the director proudly said, "Many of his movie friends can't see it."
is an experimental one to the end, which naturally brings a strong technical shock to the audience. At the same time, it also cooperates with the plot to give people a unique look and experience. The story of
"1917" is very simple: on the battlefield of World War I, two young British soldiers, Blake and Schofield, received a task and must immediately cross the front line alone and give an order to stop the attack within a limited time. The message reaches the general ahead. Otherwise, 1,600 soldiers, including Blake's brother, would have sacrificed in vain in a trap that the Germans had already set.
is a story line with a clear purpose, simple characters, and one-way advancement. The
lens surrounds the two soldiers, just like the third eye of the audience, forming an immersive experience of a first-person perspective war game. The audience is like the third participant, following the two through the barbed wire, crawling through the bomb pit, through the long and narrow trenches, and avoiding the rain of bullets, giving it an immersive feeling. The camera of
will follow the two of them for a while, feeling the tension and cramps; for a while, it will close up in front of the two of them, feeling the mood and expressions of the characters; for a while, they will be slightly away from the two of them, capturing the dangers around them that they are not aware of. The details, let people squeeze sweat for them. This unique look and feel of
reached the scene of Blake’s sacrifice.To a vertex. The camera followed Scofield back, and then turned around and Blake fell to the ground with a knife. In this way, the audience's consternation and powerlessness are instantly amplified. The premise and effect of
long lens is to maintain the synchronization of time inside and outside the movie. That is to say, after the camera is taken, how long the movie has passed, the audience watched it. But if this continues, the task of sending letters in the movie must be completed within 2 hours, which is difficult to satisfy the plot layout.
So, in order to expand and reconstruct the time capacity in the movie, Schofield had a faint after injury, and the screen was black. After the black screen, the camera has a new vision following Schofield's perspective. The macro, poetic, fearful, and lost atmosphere alternately arrives.
The audience also followed the camera to experience Schofield’s changing mood, he was panicked when he ran through the gunfire, and when he met a female civilian, he saw the falling cherry blossoms and floating corpses survive. And despair, stunned and at a loss when hearing the rumors sung by soldiers in the jungle.
Until the end, he reentered the trenches, and rushed out of the trenches to complete the task, and the scene finally had a rare vision of the whole film. He ran in the direction of surfing across the direction of countless soldiers' charges, running rampant and staggering, and became the most shocking climax of the film.
Everything has settled, as if Scofield, with a blank brain, is sitting under the tree again, just like the scene at the beginning of the movie. The uninterrupted long shots seemed to have completed a cycle, but the purgatory experience of his nine deaths in the middle could no longer be erased. Only the black and white photos of his family that he took out showed the only consolation left in his heart.
Different battlefield road films
War-themed movies generally tell the story from two different angles. One is to stand at the height of the overall situation of the war, to show the tactics, command and dispatch of military generals, or to reflect on the ugliness of war and politics; the other is to start from the little people on the battlefield and show the corner of the war through their perspectives. The cruelty of war and the devastation of people .
The former such as "Tiger Tiger Tiger", "The Battle of Midway Island" and "Road to Glory", while the latter is more such as "Saving Private Ryan", "Apocalypse Now" and "Hacksaw Ridge".
"1917" obviously also belongs to the latter. And the shooting form of - mirror to the end requires less characters in the content of the film, and the story is smaller than .
Blake and Schofield are going to complete the task of sending letters, traversing frontal positions with dead bodies, small towns controlled by the German army, and narrow and long trenches, experiencing the baptism, suffering and sacrifice of war, and the emotions they endured. , The sharp change in thinking, and indeed, the film has the characteristics of a road film.
Although they did not drive or cross the road, the connotation characteristics and corresponding plot design of the road film are all available. The narrative of the road film is to use a journey as the background to generate dramatic conflicts and discover changes in characters.
and a mirror to the end gives this road movie on the battlefield a different look and feel. The audience can follow the camera to get familiar with the protagonist and empathize with him. However, the characters encountered on the way to can only appear once. They are more like NPCs (non-player characters) in the game, and the background explanation and personality characteristics are naturally thin. This is also the inevitable sacrifice brought by the mirror to the end.
At the same time, every plot is like a game level, and the enemy German army has almost no depiction of it is extremely mysterious. These all make the audience's gaming experience stronger, which is clearly different from the traditional sense of cinema.
The meaning of anti-war
war movie must be anti-war. By recreating hellish war scenes, they portray soldiers and civilians suffering from war, and give audiences not far from the war a vivid and profound anti-war education.
"1917" describes the First World War more than a hundred years ago. Compared with the Second World War, the first World War had a less profound impact, but its cruelty was also rare in history. Some historians said that "the First World War was completely meaningless."In the era of cold weapon war thinking, the flesh and blood of countless young people became the victims of this stupid war, and 35 million lives were lost in the war. Vocabulary such as "Verdun Meat Grinder" and "Somme Hell" still looks frightening in history books.
In the history of film, the World War I movie is far inferior to World War II or even Vietnam. Including the recent years of war movies "Blood Wars Hacksaw Ridge", "Fury", "Dunkirk", and "The Battle of Midway", without exception, are all based on the background of World War II.
The only more influential Hollywood movies of World War I are Lewis Myerton's "No War on the Western Front" in 1930, Kubrick's "Road to Glory" in 1957 and Spielberg's "War Horse" in 2011. In 2019, Peter Jackson's documentary "They Are No Longer Growing Old" provides a very rare historical image of World War I.
Sam Mendes’ grandfather, like Peter Jackson’s grandfather, fought in World War I. The story prototype of "1917" is derived from the narration of Sam Mendes' grandfather.
Although the story itself is small and there are few characters, its anti-war nature is still reflected in the characters’ experiences, details and trivial matters. The battlefield with corpses all over the field and the sacrifice of comrades are all conventional angles. In the choice of actors for the two protagonists, director
made two unfamiliar young people take the lead, making it easier for the audience to realize that they are just unknown soldiers among countless soldiers, and feel the drastic changes in their lives and destiny caused by war. Substitute their perspective to form a stronger empathy. The two characters
are only 16 years old. Even if they are in war, they still have a minimum of goodwill. The first reaction to the enemy is not to kill the enemy. Blake's death was due to his unsuspecting attempt to rescue the German pilot who crashed. Schofield saw the enemy's family in black and white photos in the warehouse of the German trenches thoughtfully. Later, he encountered several enemies and either fled or tried to subdue the opponent. But he shot and killed German pilots and snipers, and the war turned him into a murderer. The
plot arranges for Scofield to encounter a woman and a baby who survived underground in the ruined wall. The baby was not born to a woman. The cruel environment, lack of food and clothing, the crib turned out to be a broken drawer. All this is the result of war. Schofield left all his food and milk, but how long can the women and children live after he leaves?
Schofield saw the light and shadow of the ruins in the gunfire at night. The scene had a suffocating hellish beauty, but it was filled with terror and death.
Schofield floating in the water, watching the petals falling all over the sky as if entering a dream, and in a blink of an eye, many floating corpses pulled him back to the cruel reality. He crawled over the floating corpse to the shore in horror, and finally broke down and burst into tears.
melodious and melodious ballads came from my ears. It was the British soldiers resting in the jungle sitting together, listening to the softly stretched singing voice of one of the young soldiers. Everyone's dull and blank gaze was the longing for the hometown that was sung in the ballad and I don't know if I can go back alive. When the singing is over, they will enter the long and narrow trenches again, ready to meet a new charge, waiting for Death to choose.
Soldiers were born to death, but the officers regarded the soldiers' lives as haywire. Colin Firth, who plays the general, revealed in an interview that his role has such a deleted plot: After the general has dispatched an almost impossible task to the two young soldiers, he began to spread the white tablecloth to enjoy. Afternoon tea. His disregard for the lives of the two young soldiers is even more obvious. There is also the colonel played by Benedict. On the way, Schofield was told that the colonel was warlike himself and would not necessarily follow orders. Sure enough, the colonel, who was finally forced to stop the attack, looked glum.
"1917" did not focus on the exciting scenes of the war, but looked at the war from the perspective of individual soldiers. The fate of the two soldiers also seemed to be explained at the beginning of the film: Blake lay on the grass with a helmet on his face, while Scofield leaned against a tree trunk to rest. The film finally returned to a similar scene, but only Schofield cloth leaned against the tree with his eyes empty, while Blake was already asleep under the ruined wall by the river.
The great crew behind the scenes
In addition to the two heavyweight awards at the Golden Globes, "1917" won the best film, best war/action film, and best in the "Oscar Outpost" Hollywood Film Critics Association of the Year Awards. Four awards for photography and best editing. This fully shows that professionals recognize and affirm this film.
A mirror is a rare and unique visual experience for the audience, but it is a great technical challenge for the film production team. It requires careful overall planning, the precise cooperation of all cast and crew members, and various difficulties to overcome. The
crew created a 5,200-foot-long real-life trench and rich battlefield scenes, which can be much more difficult than designing and developing a map in a video game. It took four months to rehearse the positions of the actors and the path of the camera, but there were still many surprises and surprises before shooting.
When shooting, scene scheduling and the movement of the camera are not easy tasks. The photographer must move with the characters and constantly change the camera position and angle. When a character walks, he holds a heavy object such as a Steadicam stabilizer; when a character runs, he needs to move the photography equipment to the car to shoot.
In order to match the image texture with the atmosphere of the battlefield, the photography team chose to shoot all the scenes on a cloudy day. In addition, one shot must be shot in sequence with time. If the sun is shining brightly, the crew can only be forced to suspend work and change to rehearsal.
Director, actor, camera crew, lighting crew, special effects, blasting , weather , shooting depends on the full cooperation of multiple departments, can not make mistakes in every link, can complete such a miracle Mission . The director said that more than 50 times were filmed in the 8-minute scene of the light farm hut.
And the photography of this film is the famous Roger Diggins. The legendary photographer who has accompanied the "Oscar for Best Photography" 14 times, finally won the first prize for his "Blade Runner 2049" last year. If there is still suspense in the other awards of this year's Oscar, the best photography is almost certainly not Roger Diggins.
In addition to the long lens, the most stunning night scene on the battlefield also highlights his masterful demeanor. In order to experiment with the best lighting method and design the best light and shadow effects, Roger Diggins and his team created a set of models of the town’s ruins and houses in advance, and then adjusted every detail, even The size of each window finally completes such a visual feast.
"1917" also won the Best Editing Award from the Film Critics Association. In the end, the pseudo-one mirror makes it difficult for even professionals to find the traces of the edit transition to explain the problem. In addition, the director revealed that the film was shot and cut on the same day, basically shooting according to the timeline. The editor Lee Smith was so powerful that he could cut those shots and accompany them with music that day, and present the edited effects to the director as soon as possible. Sometimes a shot is taken 28 times, and the director himself thinks that the 26th is better, but Lee will tell the director that the 12th is better because the cut is the best.
Making a movie is a tedious, lengthy and difficult job, and a movie like "1917" is even more difficult. We see smooth filming on the screen, but behind the scenes is the result of multiple fragmented and repetitive work. The story behind the scenes of
"1917" is as exciting as the movie itself. In the film, two young soldiers complete a mission that cannot be failed. The crew outside the film also challenged and successfully achieved this difficult shooting mission.
