War is a part of history, and when we talk about history, we often can't ignore it. From the ancient Roman era to the two world wars, from the great chaos of the Spring and Autumn Warring States period to the modern battles recorded in the annals of history, war has become a means of competition and survival for human society. People often can't maintain a rational attitude when opposing war, like Arthur. As Haley wrote in "In High Positions": War is going to happen sooner or later, because war is always inevitable.
Many major wars in human history are not only related to life and death, but also cause changes in population, territory, living patterns, social structure, political and cultural environment, and these changes determine the development and change of an era or a society. Therefore, war will become a turning point in the development of human society.
It is precisely because of this that the works related to the war are brilliant. Especially in the fields of fiction, drama, film, music, sculpture, painting and other artistic fields, war is not only a source of inspiration for many writers and artists, but also a constant and new topic.
At the beginning of this year, the 92nd Academy Awards kicked off, and Korean director Bong Joon-ho won four awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Film for "Parasite", which can be said to be the biggest winner of this Academy Award and the highlight moment in the history of Korean cinema.
Enjoyed most of the films on the list of winners, and the favorite was Sam. Mendes's 1917. This film changed my view of war movies and made me feel the charm of immersive cinema for the first time.
Sam in 2000. Mendes won the 72nd Academy Awards for Best Director for "American Beauty," and 2009's Revolutionary Road made the actress, Tt. Winslet won Best Actress in a Feature Film at the 66th Golden Globe Awards. Sam. Mendes doesn't do much, but he's one of Hollywood's most storytelling directors.
Works such as "Relocation for the Son", "Pot Lid Head", "Road to Destruction" and other works are all acclaimed and popular movies. Through these films, we can get a glimpse of director Sam. Mendes's mastery of the film's narrative rhythm and choice of content.
And this "1917" and Sam. All of Mendes's previous films were different, and to exaggerate, this movie was different from all the war movies before it. 1917 is a film about World War I and a film about front-line teleporters. Sam. Mendes's grandfather was a world war evangelist, and the film was conceived from the stories his grandfather told as a child.
Unlike some technical war films, this film uses a large number of long shots through which the audience can intuitively see rough and simple trenches, ubiquitous craters, torn barbed wire, hidden danger plains, dense woods, swooping planes, burning buildings and bomb-destroyed ruins. The film recreates what happened to the communicator, his nervousness, fear, despair, faith, and persistence.
This extremely "real" description strengthens the audience's sensory experience and also achieves the three core purposes of war movies: presentation, remodeling, and memory.
"Real" is the life of war movies, so what does "real" in war look like?
Book critic Liu Yisi wrote this commentary: The real history is not a film and television drama and an online game, but during the period from the "918 Incident" to the surrender of Japan, China paid more than 35 million deaths and injuries; it was during the wartime that hundreds of millions of soldiers and civilians in China were often in a state of semi-starvation; it was Shen Chonghai, who drove a plane to hit the Flagship of the Japanese Army" "Izumo" during the "Battle of Songhu", a high-achieving student in the Department of Civil Engineering of Tsinghua University, who was only 25 years old at the time of his death; during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, in order not to shake the hearts of the army, even the Peking Opera "Silang Visiting Mother" had to be banned ......
This is the "reality" of war, not the abstract words, but the living beings. If "1917" is such a "real" film, then what supports "real" is not the so-called technical means, but the time flowing in the long shot.
Time, let the two telegraphers look down on life and death together. Time, let the two interrogators shoulder the mission and responsibility. Time, giving the ordinary soldier the sacredness to make death immortal. Again, it's time to be human.
They encountered an accident in the tunnel abandoned by the German army, the bomb exploded, and they escaped, so there was this dialogue:
"Truth" is like this, there is cowardice, there is joy, there is tension, there is cursing. "1917" is good here, Sam. Mendes did not follow the custom of designing a heroic figure, but designed an ordinary teleser. He was not great, he just completed the mission and avoided heavy casualties. This countless ordinary people, and the responsibilities they carry, are the most impressive places in war movies.
Now let's start with 1917 to understand the three purposes of war movies: to present, to reshape, and to remember.
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War films have one of the most basic narrative propositions, and this proposition happens to be the watershed between war films and other genre films—shaping heroic characters and praising heroic acts, thoughts, and spirits. From an entertainment standpoint, "Hero" does have enough gimmicks to get the audience into the cinema. But the development of film to today, it is not only a way of entertainment, but also a medium to convey values and spiritual civilization.
Although the theme of heroism has always been one of the narrative cores of war movies, the connotation and purpose of "hero" have constantly changed with the times. The film 1917 tells the story of the First World War, which took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the war began in 1914 and lasted for four years, ending in 1918. The war was one of the worst in European history, with about 65 million people fighting and more than 30 million people killed in the war.
In traditional war films, "heroes" are often a simple setting, they have extraordinary courage, almost god. On the one hand, it is because the film needs to take into account the ideology of the society at that time when shooting, and also abide by a conventional narrative rule. And "1917" did not follow this rule, Sam. Mendes just presented.
In 1917, as World War I was in full swing, two sixteen-year-old British soldiers were ordered to rush to the front immediately to convey a message to the generals guarding there to "stop the attack." The time is only eight hours and ammunition is limited. So the two soldiers became messengers, hoping to cross the silent land of the dead and carry out the mission.
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When talking about war, it is often said that only those who have experienced war are qualified to talk about war. Probably because war itself has multiple attributes and meanings. Our civilization today is closely linked to the wars of the past, in other words, wars have shaped our civilization today.
However, when war becomes film fodder and brings us visual spectacles again and again, no matter how profound or original the view of war, each war movie will more or less reshape our cognition.
When we talk about war, the first thing that comes to mind is death. And in the movie "1917", Sam . Mendes defused the visual impact of death, such as when one of the messengers was stabbed by an enemy, Sam. Mendes chronicled his journey from injury to death in a long shot, a slow and painful process. Another so-caller witnessed the death of his comrade-in-arms, powerless and helpless.
There is no pain in tearing the heart and lungs, and there is no manifestation of pain, and life slowly disappears in the gentle pain, like an hourglass gradually leaking the last drop. "Whether descending to the earth or ascending to the throne, those who travel alone go the fastest."
Most war movies can be called spectacle movies, and we can see the raging fires, the warriors who fight to kill the enemy, and the wise and intelligent generals. These eye-catching contents have brought great shock to the audience, reflecting the spectacle while also reshaping people's cognition and understanding of history again and again.
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My favorite description of the war was Karl. Feng. Clause written by Clausewitz in "On War" says: War is an act of violence that forces the enemy to obey our will. War is the continuation of politics through another means. Politics is a bloodless war, and war is a bloody politics. War is part of political interaction, politics is the end, and war is the means.
I admit that war movies used to make my blood boil, but "War" made me hate every war. For war means the transfer of power, the beginning of a new reign, the beginning of an unknown era. In this unknown, the fate of mankind and the world civilization are in an undecided position, and they may collapse at any time.
So, war movies are meant to remind us of how those days of fear came about.
In 1917, when a messenger arrives at the front, he needs to find a commander and relay instructions. He walked through the unobstructed field, the sound of artillery fire roaring in his ears, remembering that his comrades had fallen behind him one by one. All fear, nervousness, and confusion become "faith" at this point.
Until the end of the whole film, the heroism of the messenger is truly reflected, before that, he was just a soldier, afraid of war, afraid of death, otherwise how could he fight the German soldiers in the ruins with all his might, and then run with all his strength.
Therefore, the war movie is to let us remember that the so-called hero is just an ordinary soldier who has survived. The so-called faith is nothing but the performance of duties.
The greatness of "1917" is precisely that the director Sam. Mendes does not create a perfect hero, but truly embodies the process of a soldier on a mission. Receiving mission orders, setting off on time, witnessing the death of comrades, fighting the enemy alone, crossing unobstructed battlefields, and exhausting when completing tasks.
There is no exaggerated emotion, no superfluous sensational elements, the long shots render the cruelty of the battlefield and the melancholy of the warriors just right, and the carefully designed colors, communication, scenes and details make the whole film clean and pure. The scent of flowers in the wilderness masks the stench of death, but it cannot dispel the scent of war. The wire is stuck in the palm of the hand, but it cannot separate the responsibility and the mission.
After completing the task, the messenger leaned against the tree and looked through the pictures of his family, as if he saw the pictures and saw the hope of returning home. And he hates going home, because he doesn't know when he's going to go back to the battlefield.