It’s the production gimmick to end all production gimmicks. A combination of the director, cinematographer and editor(s) working in such perfect unison as to pull off a feat that makes film scholars drool all over the world. I am of course talking about the legendary filmmaking technique of the one-shot: A film where everything that takes place is captured in a single camera take.
Not that all one-shots are created equal, though. Some come about through enough clever editing tricks that separate shots are arranged so that it all looks like it was done in one take, like with Birdman or some of the more memorable sequences from the films of Alfonso Cuarón. Others are more legitimate in their claims as they actually are made up of just a single shot, like the legendary Alexander Sokurov film Russian Ark. And sure enough, the latest production to attempt this has been sparking all kinds of awards buzz for the last few months, and it’s only recently made it over here to Australia. But is there more to this film than just the gimmick?
As far as the one-shot itself, this is from the Birdman camp
in that it only has the presentation of a singular take. The editing seams
themselves are rather obvious, whether it’s a moment where the main characters
are briefly obscured by a foreground object or even just the camera panning
quickly enough to cover up the cut. But for the story being told, it turns out
to be a rather fitting approach. The story takes place in the titular year,
where two British soldiers are tasked with carrying a message across enemy
lines to halt a planned advance that the Germans are preparing to sabotage.
At every moment in the film, we never leave the sides of
Lance Corporal Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Lance Corporal Schofield
(George MacKay), save for the editing trickery. If we’re not following them
from the front, we’re following them from the back, and even in scenes that
give the supporting actors focus like Mark Strong, Colin Firth and Andrew Scott
(fucking hell, this is an impressive cast list, by the way), at least one of
the two leads are in-frame at any given time. They are the focus as we track
their perilous mission, showing the film’s want to keep the human element
permanently at the center of everything else going on.
The depiction we get of warfare itself is at once bracing and somewhat unexpected. Admittedly, the latter is purely out of how rare films like this ultimately are, ones that focus on World War I as opposed to World War II, Vietnam or more modern battles between the U.S. and the Middle East. It’s a war that was as popular as any other, when all is said and done, but it doesn’t have, for lack of a less nauseating phrasing, the name-brand value in the eyes of film studios. And through that, the film’s display of empathy for those on the front line makes for occasionally warm moments, like the embarrassing stories the soldiers tell about each other, but mainly a sense of just how pointless this all is.
Part and parcel for the more humanistic depictions of real-world wars notwithstanding, it covers a fair amount of ground in terms of said pointlessness, and in rather poetic fashion at that. Territorial fighting over scraps of land that both sides don’t really know what to do with aside from ownership, wading through mud and the previously dead just to end up joining their ranks, not to mention it all being pretence just for the soldiers to feed their own bloodlust. It hits familiar territory, but because the framing keeps us locked onto the human perspective throughout, it still makes for quite stirring stuff.
There’s also how this film looks outside of the one-shot approach. It’s become somewhat of a cliché to even point out just how fucking amazing Roger Deakins’ camera work is (especially in the wake of his Oscar win), but as he’s continued to prove over the years, that doesn’t make it any less true. The firm but gliding movement he gives the camera keeps the perpetually centre-frame visuals fresh, and the set design captured by that is both impressive and difficult to look at. The way the settings play around with different forms of decay, from bombed-out towns, to trenches filled with corpses, to the moment where you trip and fall into where a person’s ribcage used to be, is very striking and shows a lot of intent that feels bolstered by the singular technique, not propped up by it.
Easy baiting for industry props aside, it’s easy enough to see why this film has been as hyped as it has. The performances are solid, with George MacKay finishing out a trifecta of excellent performances between this, True History Of The Kelly Gang and A Guide To Second-Date Sex, the visuals are quite beautiful in their own morbid way, and for an overall technique that can fall into the doldrums if left unchecked, the pacing is quite brisk for its nearly-two-hour running time. Hell, in terms of tension-fuelled depictions of war in recent years, this honestly turned out even more gripping than Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, making it a damn fine addition to the sub-genre.
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