As the continuous-shot effect unfolds, the camera following Schofield and Blake from all angles, Mendes places his viewers squarely into the mouth of war’s madness. The effect gives 1917 the tension of a horror film, as if at any moment the corpses could reanimate and stop the heroes before they ever reach the Brits. The result is haunting and brutal Mendes doesn’t have to show us the battles that have taken place, only the bodies left in their wake. What begins as a two-hander hero’s journey is a surprisingly intimate thriller, with the two soldiers maneuvering through trenches, crossing enemy lines, and witnessing the aftermath of battle up close. Thrust into their deadly mission, the pair must traverse the deadly and blown-apart battlefields of France at the height of the war, not only to potentially save a great number of their compatriots but also to avoid a terrible turning point in the war to end all wars. In a race against time-and against the unseen enemy-the pair have the fates of 1,600 troops on their shoulders, one of whom (in a plot point reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning World War II drama Saving Private Ryan) is Blake’s own brother. The film follows two young men, Lance Corporal William Schofield (George MacKay) and Lance Corporal Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman), soldiers on the Western Front who receive a near-impossible task: Carry a message across enemy lines to a British battalion that's at risk of being ambushed ahead of a planned attack against German troops.

Director of 1917