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IT’S POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD! Is basically the criticism.
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Jan 25, 2020 19:20
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pospysyl posted:The question is whether Sikh troops would have been integrated with majority-white British units or put into segregated units, as black American troops were in WWII. Precisely, the question was about integration and not about the well-known fact that imperialist powers had no qualms about making subject peoples kill or die on their behalf, thank you very much. Should have expressed myself more clearly.
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Jan 25, 2020 19:43
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Global Disorder posted:Precisely, the question was about integration and not about the well-known fact that imperialist powers had no qualms about making subject peoples kill or die on their behalf, thank you very much. Should have expressed myself more clearly. Even the Daily Heil confirms that Sikhs fought alongside white British troops https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7911347/Soldiers-Empire-DID-fight-regiments-British-WWI.html
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Jan 25, 2020 20:12
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Global Disorder posted:Precisely, the question was about integration and not about the well-known fact that imperialist powers had no qualms about making subject peoples kill or die on their behalf, thank you very much. Should have expressed myself more clearly. A British Sikh from London or Birmingham would theoretically have been assigned to a British regiment just the same regiment as his white neighbours, but I don't know how much formal/informal discrimination might have been in place that would have affected this. Like I said in my other post, I think the scene in the movie is largely being interpreted as the Sikh soldier being in the same regiment as the white guys, but I read it as him being part of a Punjabi regiment that was sharing the trucks with an English one as they both moved up to their new positions.
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Jan 25, 2020 20:37
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Did I miss something in the abandoned farm scene or did the characters really fail to notice there were a few dozen British soldiers with trucks just a few metres away from them?
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Jan 26, 2020 03:32
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H13 posted:Also, in WW1, the trenches were usually really close. As in only 100-200ish meters apart. In this, No Man's land went on for MILES. It always irks me when a movie has both a hyper-realistic presentation, but then doesn't fully commit to it. You kind of acknowledge this in your post, so maybe I’m misreading, but the entire point of the movie is that the Germans just withdrew to a brand new, fortified line several miles back from the front and the British Army has only just begun to adjust. The old German trenches were a couple hundred yards away and all the ground covered afterwards was only “no man’s land” because the British hadn’t moved up.
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Jan 26, 2020 06:56
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Spermando posted:Did I miss something in the abandoned farm scene or did the characters really fail to notice there were a few dozen British soldiers with trucks just a few metres away from them? I feel like there were a couple of instances where there had to have been a slight time jump or distance skipping of sorts even if it’s one shot. Floating down the river being the other example I can think of. Everything just seemed a bit too close together.
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Jan 26, 2020 07:58
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George H.W. oval office posted:I feel like there were a couple of instances where there had to have been a slight time jump or distance skipping of sorts even if it’s one shot. Floating down the river being the other example I can think of. Yes, it’s almost as if they sacrificed plausibility in order to maintain the one-shot feel. Almost.
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Jan 26, 2020 11:50
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Spermando posted:Did I miss something in the abandoned farm scene or did the characters really fail to notice there were a few dozen British soldiers with trucks just a few metres away from them? One of them was dying when the trucks arrived, and the other was too focused on aforementioned friend dying in his arms to notice.
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Jan 27, 2020 15:17
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The entire movie operates on dream logic to give a greatest-hits version of war stories, and I’d say not noticing the nearby trucks is more plausible than what happens right after, where the trucks don’t notice the sniper fire.
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Jan 27, 2020 18:26
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I think the time when they're riding in the truck is supposed to be subjective, like the guy is lost in his thoughts and the time he feels passing is the time we see on screen, but I don't know how well that fits with a "realistic" cinematographic style. Pirate Jet posted:The entire movie operates on dream logic to give a greatest-hits version of war stories, and I’d say not noticing the nearby trucks is more plausible than what happens right after, where the trucks don’t notice the sniper fire. Are you saying the movie is derivative?
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Jan 27, 2020 23:15
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pospysyl posted:Are you saying the movie is derivative? A bit, but not to the point that I disliked it. I think it’s important to consider the film is a tribute to Mendes’ grandfather, and the stories he told him, despite Mendes not being a veteran himself. Operating on dream logic to get to the good parts of every war story fits that MO, though I can’t overlook the fact that it is massively cheating. The movie even ends with a dude falling asleep on a tree and begins with him waking up on one. Like, if we’re gonna criticize the film for logistical errors, then there’s fifty different places where the logistics of each scene’s connections don’t make sense. The woman in the basement is entirely solipsistic despite a big firefight happening outside, the men in the ruins don’t shoot at him down the river despite it being about a hundred feet long, etcetera. It’s not a war film so much as a two hour nightmarescape that vaguely resembles one.
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Jan 28, 2020 00:59
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I read the movie similarly, as a surreal and not-entirely-literal representation of the collective experience of WW1. The end text fixates on the stories survivors bring back with them. So yeah, it felt like a retelling and not a document, depicting the survivors' subjective experiences of what happened, or their personal memory of who they lost along the way. A lot of it feels like literature, with allegorical or symbolic features like a church engulfed in hellfire or cherry blossoms as symbols of death or rebirth or ephemerality. Fixating on "tactical realism" seems wrong-headed for what the movie is actually interested in doing.
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Jan 28, 2020 02:58
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therattle posted:Saw it last night. The movie didn't make me a feel a drat thing, apart from some shocks and revulsion (eg putting hand in corpse's chest). I thought that despite the technical wizardry and creativity on display it felt empty and calculated - ultimately, contrived. I also thought that it was implausible. If the mission is so important, why send only two men (instead of, say four pairs), but more to the point, why didn't they just drop the orders from an airplane? (I just did some research and they were doing this from 1914). I also thought it hit pretty much every trope about WW1 films squarely on the head. There are other WW1 films which manage to elicit much more emotion in me. This just felt tricksy. Because in the grand scheme of things losing the Regiment while annoying isn't a catastrophic loss to the war effort. They were probably already writing the unit off as dead when someone felt they should at least do ~something~ even if it was really half assed. As for taking 2 or 4 or a squad like in Saving Private Ryan, it feels like a stylistic choice to focus on two characters than an ensemble cast which keeps the run time down because you don't need to establish as many people. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Jan 28, 2020 |
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Jan 28, 2020 09:16
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Dinosaurs! posted:You kind of acknowledge this in your post, so maybe I’m misreading, but the entire point of the movie is that the Germans just withdrew to a brand new, fortified line several miles back from the front and the British Army has only just begun to adjust. The old German trenches were a couple hundred yards away and all the ground covered afterwards was only “no man’s land” because the British hadn’t moved up. Goons are bad at watching movies. It was exactly as you said, and that first "over the top" moment into the original no mans land felt like the "proper" WW1 movie to me. It was somehow more creepy that it was abandoned and all you have was the absolute devestation and landscape of mangled bodies. It didn't take them long to get to the original German trenches
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Jan 28, 2020 10:58
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I found that the first "over the top" scene, with navigating mud and barbed wire, felt wonderfully creepy and real at the same time. Anyone with any kind of rural background, at least, knows how much mud and barbed wire suck, and here's a whole landscape made out of them. Anyway, it was great hearing the audience at my screening go "ughh" when Schofield put his injured hand in the intestines.
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Jan 28, 2020 13:21
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H13 posted:Also, in WW1, the trenches were usually really close. As in only 100-200ish meters apart. In this, No Man's land went on for MILES. It always irks me when a movie has both a hyper-realistic presentation, but then doesn't fully commit to it. They slowly walked for what, a few minutes max, across No Man’s Land until they hit the German trench. It looks like it goes on for miles because the whole point of a trench is that everything is below sight level so it can’t be shot with machine guns.
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Jan 28, 2020 14:51
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Tree Bucket posted:I found that the first "over the top" scene, with navigating mud and barbed wire, felt wonderfully creepy and real at the same time. Anyone with any kind of rural background, at least, knows how much mud and barbed wire suck, and here's a whole landscape made out of them. Yeah, I did gasp when that happened. I also expected him to have developed an infection towards the end of the film, but I suppose it wasn't that predictable.
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Jan 28, 2020 16:07
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Why is everyone so laser-focused on how events seemed unrealistically close together? Like, duh, it's a movie showing something that occurred over a period of time greater than the runtime of the movie. The movie even spelled it out for you with the clocktower chiming. More importantly, the time skippy surrealism of the movie only really starts after the explosion in the abandoned bunker. Dude's concussed as hell.
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Jan 29, 2020 21:21
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Resting Lich Face posted:Why is everyone so laser-focused on how events seemed unrealistically close together? Like, duh, it's a movie showing something that occurred over a period of time greater than the runtime of the movie. The movie even spelled it out for you with the clocktower chiming. Realistic looking war movies brings out the armchair generals in droves. Every war movie is terrible, because it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny by not having the actors actually kill and be killed.
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Jan 30, 2020 14:55
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BigglesSWE posted:Realistic looking war movies brings out the armchair generals in droves. Every war movie is terrible, because it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny by not having the actors actually kill and be killed.
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Jan 30, 2020 19:12
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Just saw it, loved it. The crying captain broke my heart, that was so short but pure.
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Jan 30, 2020 19:58
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BigglesSWE posted:Realistic looking war movies brings out the armchair generals in droves. Every war movie is terrible, because it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny by not having the actors actually kill and be killed. I can't imagine being literal-minded to the point of being unable to enjoy things due to confusing narrative elements for plot holes, and worse, being proud of that.
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Jan 30, 2020 20:33
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Resting Lich Face posted:I can't imagine being literal-minded to the point of being unable to enjoy things due to confusing narrative elements for plot holes, and worse, being proud of that. I agree. It’s ludicrous. I remember a war movie once got genuine harsh criticism because some extra was carrying the wrong type of cigarettes. And Fury gets flack because the ACTUAL GENUINE WWII TANKS THEY USED didn’t behave exactly as they should’ve according to History Channel. But I digress. BigglesSWE fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Jan 30, 2020 |
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Jan 30, 2020 20:48
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Spermando posted:Did I miss something in the abandoned farm scene or did the characters really fail to notice there were a few dozen British soldiers with trucks just a few metres away from them? They weren’t scripted to load yet
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Jan 31, 2020 08:49
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BigglesSWE posted:And Fury gets flack because the ACTUAL GENUINE WWII TANKS THEY USED didn’t behave exactly as they should’ve according to History Channel. ehhh, in the case of Fury I get annoyed since it literally starts with "American tanks were inferior to German vehicles," which is blatantly untrue. It's a good movie and I do enjoy it, but the ways in which it strives for technical accuracy in some places just makes its failings all the more disappointing.
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Jan 31, 2020 13:04
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In some ways I'd even prefer the T-34 movie over Fury. Since the T-34 movie was unabashedly War Thunder: Russian Bias: The Movie.
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Jan 31, 2020 16:11
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the problem with the passage of time has nothing to do with it being a war movie. the problem is that it betrays the seamless effect from the film's shooting style, giving it the effect of being one of those haunted house tours where you're dragged from room to room to have a huge variety of mis-mashed poo poo to pop out and it feels remarkably phony. Hypothetically a standard structure would've served the film better if it wasn't using the 'one-shot' gimmick to cover up its lack of substance.
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Jan 31, 2020 18:02
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I dont understand people who dislike the one shot aspect. I think being able to literally watch scenes change without cutting is far more interesting than doing the cinematic equivalent of that "Five Hours Later" title card from spongebob
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Jan 31, 2020 18:41
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DOPE FIEND KILLA G posted:the problem with the passage of time has nothing to do with it being a war movie. the problem is that it betrays the seamless effect from the film's shooting style, giving it the effect of being one of those haunted house tours where you're dragged from room to room to have a huge variety of mis-mashed poo poo to pop out and it feels remarkably phony. Hypothetically a standard structure would've served the film better if it wasn't using the 'one-shot' gimmick to cover up its lack of substance. Right. The time discrepancies themselves are a fairly minor concern and calling them out is just a way to put a name to the reason why the movie feels artificial and empty.
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Jan 31, 2020 19:04
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also maybe its just me being a bitter jackass, but it strikes me a little bold to helm a 200 million dollar production about how your grandpa was the most perfect guy in the war who never once tried to hurt a single German soldier.
DOPE FIEND KILLA G fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Jan 31, 2020 |
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Jan 31, 2020 19:26
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DOPE FIEND KILLA G posted:also maybe its just me being a bitter jackass, but it strikes me a little bold to helm a 200 million dollar production about how your grandpa was the most perfect guy in the war who never once tried to hurt a single German soldier. I don’t think any of this was a literal representation of his grandpa being a perfect dude
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Jan 31, 2020 19:29
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Fly Molo posted:I don’t think any of this was a literal representation of his grandpa being a perfect dude
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Jan 31, 2020 19:49
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DOPE FIEND KILLA G posted:the problem with the passage of time has nothing to do with it being a war movie. the problem is that it betrays the seamless effect from the film's shooting style, giving it the effect of being one of those haunted house tours where you're dragged from room to room to have a huge variety of mis-mashed poo poo to pop out and it feels remarkably phony. Hypothetically a standard structure would've served the film better if it wasn't using the 'one-shot' gimmick to cover up its lack of substance. Great post. Totally agree.
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Jan 31, 2020 23:06
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Dinosaurs! posted:You kind of acknowledge this in your post, so maybe I’m misreading, but the entire point of the movie is that the Germans just withdrew to a brand new, fortified line several miles back from the front and the British Army has only just begun to adjust. The old German trenches were a couple hundred yards away and all the ground covered afterwards was only “no man’s land” because the British hadn’t moved up. Don't forget the scene at the end where the first wave gets sent over the top and our main character boldly strolls across the top of the trench to deliver the message before he eventually starts running and tripping over the other soldiers. The camera (I assume on a crane shot) lifts up and pulls back to give us a great shot of all the soldiers running across No Man's Land. However, we don't see the enemy trench which they would be running to. The end result is that it feels like a whole bunch of extras were running across a huge empty field. From the high angle, we definitely should've been able to see SOMETHING of the enemy trench, but nope. We just see grassland.
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Feb 1, 2020 03:22
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Brilliant film. Absolutely gorgeously shot. I think the technique was entirely justified, and worked absolutely to the benefit of the film.golden bubble posted:Getting shelled in trenches is way better than getting shelled in the open. The whole reason the war moved to trenches is that they couldn't withstand artillery in the open. During the Battles of the Frontiers in 1914, before the trench lines were set up, both sides were taking about triple the casualty rate compared to the majority of the war when everyone had trenches. It's also specifically why British helmets were shaped like that, and they are wearing leather jerkins. Once you're in a trench your worry is either a direct hit (in which case you die) or being showered by debris and shrapnel falling from directly above. As to the guy talking about the implausibility of them sending runners... What? Carrier pigeons only go one way. Field telephones need their cables laid, and were constantly cut by artillery. Aeroplanes dropping orders were both inaccurate and incredibly vulnerable to ground and air attack for some of the same reasons that they were poo poo as bombers at that time (and it's also a questionable allocation of a very valuable resource). Runners are absolutely the most likely delivery method for communications to a unit which has advanced beyond the forward trench in WW1. Couriers were ubiquitous, as they had been for the entirety of human conflict right up until the post-WW2 proliferation of squad-level radios. H13 posted:However, we don't see the enemy trench which they would be running to. The end result is that it feels like a whole bunch of extras were running across a huge empty field. From the high angle, we definitely should've been able to see SOMETHING of the enemy trench, but nope. We just see grassland. As explained at the beginning, the defences they were running towards were hidden. They're leaving what looks like a freshly sapped (possibly just a crude rear line) trench to cross empty ground and get mowed down. That was rather the point of the peril that is central to the story. It being a plain field is entirely in keeping with it being behind lines the Germans had been holding since the start of the war, and you don't need to see what they are running toward, you've been told. It's death. Lovely Joe Stalin fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Feb 1, 2020 |
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Feb 1, 2020 08:12
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The hindenburg line trenches were dug into reverse slopes, you wouldn't be able to see them. In hindsight I think the refusal to 'humanise' the germans is the right call. The Germans feel evil because they're trying to kill our protagonists and they dont like that. But everything they do is reasonable from their own perspective - even the pilot. Lots of war films do the 'actually good people on both sides' thing, what 1917 brings to the table is that doesn't matter, war forces ordinary people to kill each other just because they're on the wrong side. I think the film is a masterpiece, technically brilliant, probably one of the best war films ever made. You would definitely show it to children studying ww1 to help them visualise what it was like. The core conceit is a bit contrived (a regiment that found itself way out ahead of an advance to the point where there is no food or ammunition coming up and no artillery support would absolutely not try to attack) but it's a contrivance that's necessary for the film to happen.
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Feb 3, 2020 13:55
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The main thing this film conveys is everyone is scared all the time, they have to make the first move or else die, it’s just a bunch of terrified young men.
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Feb 4, 2020 14:55
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Now seen it twice, and yeah, this is an absolute masterpiece. The technical aspect is quite obvious, and the set design is perfect. I've never seen such a good visual presentation of the trenches and No-Mans-Land. They absolutely nailed the details (British trenches a lot more half-assed and German ones with concrete foundations and very deep dugouts. There's a particular detail I liked in their crossing: a truly humongous crater. I noticed some people in the audience that seemed to be puzzled by the sheer size of it. I took it to be the remains of a mine, but the movie didn't feel the need to explain it. I love that. Things just are in this world. Some other thoughts, I'll put them in spoilers: Right after they make it out of the collapsing mineshaft, Sco is quickly taking out his box and looks into it. At first I thought he was taking out a cigarette, but I realise now that he's checking that his family's pictures are still there. He's probably looking at them after every dangerous moment he's been through in the war. I can see a bit of a meta-thing in the parts of the main and secondary characters in this movie. Essentially, all high ranking officers are played by big names Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, Andrew Scott) whereas the main characters and really all regular soldiers are played by either completely or relatively unknown actors. The way I see it is this: Once an actor has gotten a real proper name to his career, he can relax a bit, and pick and choose movies and roles at will. New, ambitious actors however, need to crawl through the dirt and pick risky, sometimes disastrous roles, in order to get that big breakthrough. We see the same in the trenches: The high-ranking officers are more likely to be in the background while the lower ranks are thrust into the fray. The ending is a truly mixed bag of elation and despair; Sco succeeds in stopping the attack, but only after the first wave goes over the top. Blake's brother is alive, but Blake himself isn't. And here's the true tragedy of it all: Sco is in the same spot as he was at the beginning of the movie. In many other movies in which the main character survives to the end, despite all the danger, there's the sense or hope that his troubles are over. But Sco's adventure, while perhaps changing him, doesn't change the outcome of the war. His stated purpose in life is to survive it all and get back to his family. He took on Blake's purpose (to save his brother) as he died, and he fullfilled this purpose. But Sco's own is still hanging over him; he's a soldier, and relatively unharmed, so his participation of the war is not over. For all we (and he) knows, he'll be dead before the day is over. He survived this great journey, but the end of the war is more than a year away. There's a lot of stuff about trees in this movie, as has been previously discussed. I don't really have anything to add, but I'd also add the recurring theme of someone lifting up someone else. Not entirely sure what to make of it.
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Feb 4, 2020 17:23
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I think both this movie and Skyfall are far better if you accept their inherent dream logic. They kind of make you think that you're watching something realistic, but it becomes more and more evident that time, space and the behaviour of the characters is completely distorted. That's why it's more of an allegory for war and heroism than a realistic account. Imo, the lack of cuts is not meant to simulate realism, either. It's just a different way of immersing you in the dreamlike fluidity of time and space than we're used to from other films. Acebuckeye13 posted:ehhh, in the case of Fury I get annoyed since it literally starts with "American tanks were inferior to German vehicles," which is blatantly untrue. It's a good movie and I do enjoy it, but the ways in which it strives for technical accuracy in some places just makes its failings all the more disappointing. Fury lost me when the protagonist ends up having a "romantic" sex scene with some German chick while Brad Pitt and her sister wait in the next room. Gross as hell. Reminds me of autobiographical accounts of women who had to have affairs with higher ranking officers after the war, so they'd get enough food to survive. (Just to clarify, this type of stuff happened, it's just weird that the movie labours so hard to make it look innocent and romantic.)
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Feb 4, 2020 18:21
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