1917 (Sam Mendes, 2019)

Once continuity editing became a thing, it was inevitable that directors would try and show their versatility by avoiding it with the longest possible takes limited by the amount of film a camera could load and thus disguising cuts in a way best shown in Hitchcock’s Rope which also has a number of very obvious cuts, as indeed does 1917 in which two soldiers walk, ride and fight their way through no man’s land in order to stop a doomed assault on the western front in which one of the soldier’s brothers will be risking his life and slowly the tension is ratcheted up with countering moments of beauty of cherry blossom and de Chirico illuminated ruined towns and Paul Nash canvases and distracting appearances from half the cast of Sherlock as we carefully balance the idiocy of the donkeys leading the lions with rather more smart generals who are aware of the deaths of the young men they are causing and so there’s a certain distaste in the distraction of formal skill from a subject matter in soldiers are trapped for nearly two hours and seemingly indestructible even at the cake and eat it assault that is over the top in at least two sense of the words as digital enhancements wear their effects on the sleeve to such an extent that one wonders if this is the dream of a dying man from a hundred minutes earlier whilst avoiding the discomfort of Atonement’s heavily augmented beach sequence.