Dean-Charles Chapman – Movie Musings

George MacKay is lost in the horrors of war in Sam Mendes’ one-shot 1917

Director: Sam Mendes

Cast: George MacKay (Lance Corporal Will Schofield), Dean-Charles Chapman (Lance Corporal Tom Blake), Benedict Cumberbatch (Colonel Mackenzie), Colin Firth (General Erinmore), Richard Madden (Captain Blake), Andrew Scott (Lt. Leslie), Mark Strong (Captain Smith), Claire Duburcq (Lauri), Daniel Mays (Sgt Saunders), Adrian Scarborough (Major Hepburn), Jamie Parker (Lt Richards), Michael Jibson (Lt Hutton), Richard McCabe (Colonel Collins)

No film can even begin to capture the unspeakable horror of war, and those of us who have never been in the middle of it can only imagine what it must have been like for those who have. Based on the experiences of his grandfather Alfred, Sam Mendes’ World War I story tries to immerse the viewers in the experience by staging a film designed to play out in real time, in two epic takes (actually a series of very long takes seamlessly spliced together). It’s a technical accomplishment, but also a film partly dominated by the precision of its construction rather than the emotion of its telling.

One day in April 1917, two young Lance-Corporals, brave and selfless Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and more war-weary Will Schofield (George MacKay) are tasked with a desperate mission by General Erinmore (Colin Firth). The next morning, a British regiment will walk into a trap set by German forces. Blake and Schofield must take a message through no-man’s land, cancelling the regiment’s planned attack, or 1,600 men will die – including Blake’s brother who is serving with the regiment.

Mendes’ film is a triumph whenever it is in motion. The time-limited race to travel across miles of hostile land – through no-man’s land, booby-trapped abandoned trenches, hazardous open fields and ruined towns that have become battlegrounds – works a treat whenever our heroes are constantly moving forward. Drawing a strange inspiration from Lord of the Rings, with its quest structure and Schofield as a Samwise to Blake’s Bilbo, the film is compellingly completed with the over-the-shoulder, walking-alongside intimacy of the camera work that follows every step of this journey, that never pulls ahead or shows us something that the soldiers can’t see and keeps us nearly constantly (bar one stunning shot of a ruined town lit only by firelight and early dawn) at the level of the soldiers.

It’s an epic experience film, and Mendes’ camerawork and ingenuity in the shooting create the impression of a one-take film – some shots seem to travel at least a mile, through winding trenches, with our heroes. The effect is justified by the desire of the film to throw us into the experience of the soldiers and to create the impression that we are sharing a journey with them – and hammers home the time pressure these men are operating under as we experience everything first hand, including the only undisguised cut (and time jump) in the film. The horrors of the war are superbly shown – dead bodies, many bloated or deformed by exposure, litter the frame but tellingly bring little comment from the soldiers, demonstrating how accustomed they have become to such sights. Each frame seems covered with muddy surfaces, and sharp freezing chills. Technically it’s a marvel, and you have to admire Mendes’ ambition in even attempting such a thing.

Perhaps, though, that is one problem with the film. You are so impressed with the showy intelligence and grace of the camera movements, the ingenuity needed to keep the camera rolling through takes lasting ten minutes or more and travelling miles at a time, that move in and around confined rooms and trenches, that you at time spend as much (if not more) time marvelling at the brilliance of the film making as you do feeling the emotion of the story. While the long takes add immeasurably to the many moments of peril, dread and terror that the characters go through (helped also by Thomas Newman’s eerily unsettling score), they also become as much about admiring the technical brilliance as they are investing in the story.

Of course, the story has been boiled down to something very simple and elemental – and it avoids many clichés you half-expect from the start. But the film itself gets slightly less interesting when the relentless march forward stops, when the characters slow down or take moments of reflection. A section in the middle of the film where the action pauses around a young French woman hiding in a bombed out French town doesn’t quite work, and has a slight air of spinning plates – you could have allowed a longer break in the single take effect to take us from one event to another. In fact you wonder if a film that had more of a time jump or had been constructed around 3-4 clear long takes with time jumps might have worked better.

This is not to criticise the two actors who embody the leads. George MacKay is superb as a soldier who experiences immense suffering and torment on a journey he is less than willing to undertake from the first, and finds himself opening up his emotions and feelings more and more as the film progresses. Dean-Charles Chapman is a good match as a slightly more naïve youngster, desperate to do the right thing and selfless in his courage. These two move on a journey that essentially sees them handed over from one big-star cameo to another (something that is sometimes a little distracting, if necessary to allow these brief appearances to have character impact) with Firth, Strong, Cumberbatch, Madden et al all delivering terrific work in a few short minutes on screen.

Mendes’ direction technically is faultless, and the style chosen really adds huge and unrepeatable visual benefits, all superbly caught by Roger Deakins’ sublimely beautiful photography. At one moment a flare is fired – and we see it arch out of shot and then repair behind us in real time as the characters move forward. At another, an aerial dogfight goes from distant to alarmingly close. The countryside recedes hauntingly as a ride is hitched from a motorised regiment.

The single-take effect does make it far easier to relate in these moments to the soldiers. It works less well at smaller moments – and arguably could have been replaced by a more conventional style here to give even more impact to the rest – but its execution is perfect. Maybe too perfect, as it doesn’t always make room for the heart. Hollywood’s directors seem more and more drawn to the long take for the immersive, big-screen quality they carry – four of the last five Oscars have gone to directors whose films are almost entirely made up with them. But they create – as is sometimes the case with 1917 – something that is a product for the largest screen, immersive experiences that perhaps lack rewarding depth on later revisits.

Timothée Chalamet is the war like Henry V in the confused The King

Director: David Michôd

Cast: Timothée Chalamet (King Henry V), Joel Edgerton (Sir John Falstaff), Robert Pattinson (The Dauphin), Sean Harris (William Gascoigne), Thomasin McKenzie (Queen Phillippa), Ben Mendelsohn (Henry IV), Tom Glynn-Carney (Henry “Hotspur” Percy), Lily-Rose Depp (Princess Catherine), Dean-Charles Chapman (Thomas, Duke of Clarence), Thibault de Montalembert (King Charles VI), Tara Fitzgerald (Hooper), Andrew Havill (Archbishop of Canterbury)

This is a story that is pretty familiar to most people now – after all, Shakespeare’s play has probably been being played somewhere in the world for most of the last 500 years. Edgerton and Michôd collaborated on the story and script of this restaging, or reimagining, of Shakespeare’s epic of the wayward fun-loving prince turned hardened warrior king. Despite being handsomely filmed, and impressively shot, this makes for an odd and unusual film which falls between the two stools, as it is faithful to neither history nor the Shakespeare original.

The rough concept remains the same. Prince Hal (Timothée Chalamet) is not just a young man who has fun in the taverns of London, he’s also quite forward looking in his attitudes, and just can’t understand why he should be made to carry on the rivalries of his father, the fearsome Henry IV (a broodingly miffed Ben Mendelsohn) or why he should continue the wars that the council pressures him into. When he becomes king, however, Henry is persuaded by his counsellor William Gascoigne (Sean Harris), that the path to peace for the realm – and safety for his subjects – can only be through unifying the kingdom by war with France. Appointing the only man he trusts – his old drinking companion and famed soldier Sir John Falstaff (Joel Edgerton) – as the Marshal of his armies, Henry heads to France where destiny awaits.

Michôd’s film is at its strongest when it focuses on the visuals and the aesthetic of its age. It’s beautifully shot, with several striking images, from execution courtyards to the battle of Agincourt itself, which takes place in an increasingly grimy field. The battle itself ends up feeling more than a little reminiscent of ideas from Game of Thrones – in fact a few core images are straight rip-offs from the famous “Battle of the Bastards” episode – but it at least looks good, even if there are few things new in it. The costumes and production design don’t feel like they strike a wrong note either with the grimy, lived-in feel.

More of the issues come around the script. The film’s concept of Henry initially as this rather woke modern king – he just wants peace and to give up these tiresome obsessive conflicts of his father – who slowly becomes more colder and ruthless as the film progresses does at least make thematic sense in the film, but it still rings a little untrue. Much as I would like, it’s hard to believe that any prince like this could ever have existed at the time, and so cool and calculating is Chalamet’s performance from the first that he never feels like a genuine, young, naïve princeling whom we can sympathise with early on.

It makes the film’s arc rather cold, and Hal an even more unknowable character than the film perhaps even intends. There is very little warmth or genuine friendship between Hal and Falstaff, and Hal moves so quickly to the imagining (and enacting) of war crimes during his time in France that his descent towards potential tyrant feels far too sharp to carry impact. Even in the early days of his reign he’s swift to have potential destablisers in his court executed with no mercy. Where is the fall, if he is such a cold fish to start with? And with Chalamet at his most restrained (like the royal baggage and the accent are a straight-jacket around him), how can an audience invest in him?

And what are we supposed to be making of this anyway, since the film is at equal pains to suggest that the king may be the subject of manipulation and lies that force his hand into war? This Henry, we learn, values truth and honesty highest – but this doesn’t stop him getting pissed when met with counter-arguments from his advisers (even Falstaff) or reacting with cold fury and disavowal when things don’t go his way. It’s a confusing attempt to add an ill-fitting modern morality to a king who essentially in real life spent most of his life at war, and was to die on campaign in France still trying to cement his rights at a young age.

Edgerton and Michôd’s script fails to really square this circle, and all the attempts to have its cake and eat it (the peace loving king still manages to kick arse, including killing Hotspur in single combat thus averting the Battle of Shrewsbury from ever happening) don’t quite pan out. Edgerton writes himself a decent role as Sir John Falstaff, here reimagined as a million miles from the drunken, cowardly knight into a courageous and hardened soldier who has no time for the compromises and deceit of court (in contrast to Henry’s other advisor, the Machiavellian Gascoigne played with a playful archness by Sean Harris). Making Falstaff a respected figure like this rather flies in the face of the logic of why Henry IV is so annoyed about his son spending time with him, but never mind.

It’s not really Shakespeare and it’s not really history. It sticks closest perhaps to Shakespeare in its portrayal of the French as arrogant fops – led by Robert Pattinson going delightfully OTT as the Dauphin – but it never really quite works out what it wants to be. With its Game of Thrones look and feel, and prince who is both great warrior and reluctant warlord, peace-lover and ruthless executor of his enemies, it feels scattergun and confused rather than coherent and whole.