"A short road in the country is a person's life."
In the middle of the summer of July, the major theaters finally waited for the "spring" of slow recovery, as the first batch of new films "1917" on the line, foreign countries won Oscars, Golden Globes and other awards, although the box office performance in the Chinese mainland was not good, but it did not affect this high-quality film to try to use the personal story of the turning point of the First World War to convey to the audience the cruelty, grandeur, and lost intention of the war.
The protagonist of the story, the beautiful cherry blossoms on the battlefield, the cold barbed wire that reveals the cruelty of war
The Chinese people obviously paid little attention to the First World War, and China was far from the core battlefield at a time when the revolutionaries overthrew the Qing government and the Beiyang warlords were in a scuffle, and the participation was extremely low. However, there is no shortage of "World War I fans" in the world. The root cause is that the First World War was the first and last hegemonic struggle between the imperialist countries with the widest scope and the largest number of casualties (30 million), and after the First World War, the line representing the royal family, the royal family, and the nobility gradually declined, while the status of workers, peasants, and women began to rise, and after the war, the political and social forms of the core participating countries underwent fundamental changes.
World War I originated after the "Sarajevo Incident" in 1914, when the Grand Duke of Austria-Hungary was shot and killed by serbian youth, and Austria-Hungary, with the support of Germany, declared war on Serbia under the pretext of the events in Sarajevo. Then Germany, Russia, France, Britain and other countries successively went to war. After four years of european imperialist countries forming allies with Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy as the core, as well as the Allies with Britain, France, and Russia as the core, after four years, the smoke of wartime war filled the entire European continent, and finally on November 11, 1918, Germany officially announced its surrender. German representatives signed an armistice on the marching train of General Foch at the Campanile Forest north of Paris. The First World War ended here.
The main battlefield in Europe during World War I
The film "1917" is about two 16-year-old British soldiers at the height of the First World War, who receive an order to rush to the death line immediately, to convey a message to the general there to "stop the attack now". Strict time limits (less than a day), limited weapons, ammunition and supplies, and no one knows the enemy situation ahead, the story of what happens along the way. The whole film uses one shot to the end, the shooting level and editing technology are superb, it is almost impossible to see under what circumstances the lens has been replaced, and this shooting method makes the viewers follow the pace of the two young soldiers and feel the incomparable heart of putting themselves in the shoes of the two young soldiers. Unlike conventional anti-war films, which emphasize continuous gunfire, British director Sam Mendes reveals the anti-war theme and the nature of the war with several core sets of shots and dialogue. Next, let's explore.
One: The male second who has never experienced the moment of life and death and the male who has won a medal for merit have different attitudes towards honor
If the two warriors did not arrive successfully the next day to deliver the news of the prohibition of attack in the military camp where the second male Blake's brother was sent, the other party would fall into the trap set by the German military, killing and injuring countless people, possibly including Blake's brother. So at first, Scott said that it was not easy to be discovered when he said that he should go forward at night, and Blake refused at the moment and was even very angry. With such a contradiction, the two men embarked on a difficult and tense road in the scorched land of war.
When they successfully pass through the dangerous situation, the two of them will also chat. Regarding the fact that Scofe once won a medal, Blake asks twice in the film, and the first time, Scoofy only replies that he forgot where to put it. But as they experienced the moment when they nearly blew up through the German barracks, Scophy told the truth, and he exchanged that medal for a bottle of wine with another man. Blake was puzzled to ask why, and Scophel simply said, "Because I'm thirsty."
The director's intentions are wonderful, Blake's understanding of the cruelty of war, which has never experienced a moment of life and death, is distant and vague, and the daily casualties only increase in numbers, and the bullets have not passed through the bodies of his companions or passed by him. He threw himself into the war in response to the regime's call to destroy the enemy and to gain honor. And Scophie may have also experienced such a period of honor worship, but when he encountered the fall of his companions, his own life was hanging in the balance, and then the only thing he cared about was to let himself and his companions who cared not to experience death again, if he was more greedy, to live no longer in fear.
In times of war, the country's standing military strength will certainly not be able to meet the needs of the war, so it will definitely be conscripted. And those young beings were used to satisfy the aggressive intentions of the aristocratic crown, to seduce them and reward them with honor as a package, but at the cost of losing the opportunity to live. This metaphor will continue to be shown by the director next.
Because I am afraid of permanent separation, I am also afraid of a short reunion
Two: The officer of another barracks says to the lone man, "You must make sure that you have witnesses when you deliver the message."
Scoffy and Blake attempt to save a German.
At this point in the film, there must be an audience shouting that it is impossible! The German plane was hit and crashed just after landing in the area where the two were resting, the fuselage was already on fire, the German pilot shouted that I did not want to die, and the two teenagers rushed over to save the German. Here you can find that no matter how they were trained in the war, they were still childish, of course, this also brought serious consequences. Blake was killed at the hands of the rescued Germans. Scophy was alone.
While mourning, he met another British legionnaire, Scoofy in a military truck that had shifted his position, young soldiers he didn't know around him telling anachronistic jokes, and the truck staggered on the vast grass, and in the distance was an endless green, seemingly pleasant landscape full of destroyed buildings and cows shot by the Germans. The road was blocked by trees blown up by the Germans, and Scophy needed to say goodbye to the passing army and go on his own. Captain Smith heard of Scoughfield's mission praising his courage, while also giving advice that "preaching is that there must be witnesses, and some people just love war."
Unlike always praising his country's victories, the director let Captain Smith reveal with humanity and reason that no matter how many victories a country has won in war, it is at the expense of individual lives. Dignitaries and politicians who have drawn ordinary people into war in order to defend the status of the country and the honor of the nobility should be ashamed.
Captain Smith's advice
Three: The interplay of the cross and the open flame is like coming to the hell of Yama, under which there are still people living in secret
Scophie also nearly died. Waking up in an abandoned building, the town beneath his feet had been burned down almost every inch by German artillery fire. He staggered downstairs with a sharp headache to prepare to continue on his way, but was suddenly shocked by what he saw. The sight constitutes an ironic contradiction, the cross of God loves the world standing in the fires of war, and a German officer in the distance, without shouting or cannon fire, but also feeling that this is a hell of Yama across the screen.
Scofe almost died here, but the director puts a plot in such a cruel environment, that is, Scoffy hides in a basement where a woman and the orphans she has picked up live. Candles flickered softly in the house's walled quarters, and Scophy seemed to be away from the outside world for a quarter of an hour.
Crosses and wars
Burned buildings like countless tombstones
Under the land of war, there are still life trying to live
Four: The dead Blake seems to have saved Scophy's life again
Escaping the German pursuit, Scoffy jumped into the river, and after passing through the rushing river, Scoffy was exhausted with a piece of driftwood, and almost involuntarily closed his eyes, and his physical and mental fatigue reached its limit, and he seemed to be unable to think about anything. When it was about to give up, the cherry blossoms on the riverbank slowly drifted down and gently landed in the water and on Scofe's face.
Scophie opened his eyes and caught the cherry blossoms with his hand, and I thought he must have thought of Blake, remembering that they had also encountered such a cherry blossom forest cut down by the Germans shortly after they set out, but Blake told him that the flowers could not die, and the fallen fruit could grow more trees. So he got up and swam to the shore, brushed aside the dead floating corpses in the river, and went ashore.
The falling cherry blossoms were like a fleeting nostalgia for Blake, and reaching out to grasp the cherry blossoms was like grasping a little hope of continuing.
The camera shifts from the cherry blossoms back to the reality of hunger everywhere
"1917" is definitely not a deliberately sensational film that makes you cry, and the director uses a quiet film narrative language to slowly reveal the side of the First World War to people through the two young protagonists. The grandeur of the First World War was spectacular, the role of the course in history, after the abdication of the German Emperor and the abolition of the monarchy; the October Revolution in Russia, the abdication of the Tsar. It was cruel, brutal because thirty million people lost their lives and their families in this four-year war. As people always like to mention, "A grain of ash of the times falls on a person's head, which is a big mountain." "A short stretch of the country is a man's life.
Friends who are interested in the background of the story of the First World War can also go to see one of the "Giants Trilogy" by Ken Follett, "The Fall of the Giants", which selects the five most representative groups of characters in the four countries of the First World War: Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States, which play an important role.