1917 film (spoilers)

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Yes, Hitchcock's Rope did it back in 1948.  More recently, Silent House (both the 2010 Uruguayan and 2011 Hollywood remake) use this technique.  Other films have done it since then.  I haven't seen any of those films, so I cannot comment on how successful they were. 

Rope is a criminally underrated film.

Also, to answer your question, they were the prototypes for the storm troopers after all.

[A True Kaniggit]

16 hours ago, Maithanet said:

They were pretty accurate, definitely accurate enough to hit the main character when he's only like 30 yards away.  WW1 rifles were a good bit more accurate than the weapons used in the American Civil War, for example. 

Virtually everyone shooting at the main character (aside from the one sniper) was shooting from the hip while running, which is extremely stupid and inaccurate.  No army would ever teach their soldiers to do that, and veteran German troops 3 years into the war would not be making that mistake.  Thus, the only explanation is that they were drunk.  Which is plausible, given the situation.

Yeah, everyone else shooting from the hip and missing can be forgiven. That first sniper though..... 

Anyone else notice that Schofield left that woman's door open when he left her home? Dick move.

[Veltigar]

On 1/19/2020 at 10:40 PM, dog-days said:

Also, I felt that in general the soldiers of "our side" were overly idealized. I wonder if that partly comes from Sam Mendes's grandfather providing the seed for the story; if mentally you're populating the British Army with "my lovely granddad and other people like him" it's hard to show any darker side. I admit that feeling partly comes from my misery over Brexit -  WW1 & WW2 movies aren't completely to blame for the vote to go the way it did, but I don't think they helped in shaping the way Britain sees itself. 

 

I think that is the only point of criticism I would leverage on the film. it was pretty one-dimensional, but with all the rest being so brilliant it really is a minor thing.

[Jace, Extat]

2 hours ago, Triskele said:

I finally saw this last weekend and loved it.  Even though it had plenty different from Dunkirk it's hard not for me to think of them as similar in that they're these kind of different, minimalist, war movies.

A question I had:  I felt like when the Mark Strong character warned our protagonist to make sure there were witnesses around when he met with the Cumberbatch character that it was a Chekov's gun of sorts, but it seemed like when we got there it turned out that there were witnesses necessarily and it just didn't come back to roost at all.  One did at least see that character's initial resistance to the message, at least.  

I loved that part as well, it was excellent storytelling as I was sitting there on the verge of tears should Cumberbatch continue the assault.

[Corvinus85]

2 hours ago, Triskele said:

I finally saw this last weekend and loved it.  Even though it had plenty different from Dunkirk it's hard not for me to think of them as similar in that they're these kind of different, minimalist, war movies.

A question I had:  I felt like when the Mark Strong character warned our protagonist to make sure there were witnesses around when he met with the Cumberbatch character that it was a Chekov's gun of sorts, but it seemed like when we got there it turned out that there were witnesses necessarily and it just didn't come back to roost at all.  One did at least see that character's initial resistance to the message, at least.  

I'm thinking that was more of an added characterization for Cumberbatch's character, as we weren't going to get that much in the actual scene. Just like we learn about the brother way before, so we're not that surprised on how he behaves when we meet him.

[kairparavel]

I took an afternoon off work a few weeks ago to see this with MC and it was quite excellent. I wondered how hard it was (probably not at all) to get the Firth, Scott, Stong, and Cumberbatch to sign on for roughly 2 minutes of screen time each. Well, Mark Strong got slightly more. But still. My one regret was watching some of the pre/post effects shots on Twitter because

Spoiler

I realized early on in the theater that Tommen was going to die at some point. The actual scene surprised me though. 

 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

18 minutes ago, kairparavel said:

I took an afternoon off work a few weeks ago to see this with MC and it was quite excellent. I wondered how hard it was (probably not at all) to get the Firth, Scott, Stong, and Cumberbatch to sign on for roughly 2 minutes of screen time each. Well, Mark Strong got slightly more. But still. My one regret was watching some of the pre/post effects shots on Twitter because

  Reveal hidden contents

I realized early on in the theater that Tommen was going to die at some point. The actual scene surprised me though. 

 

 

I was glad I went to this one cold because that scene came as a complete shock

[Heartofice]

4 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I was glad I went to this one cold because that scene came as a complete shock

 

Spoiler

It was also perfectly shot, the stabbing being off camera, at a point where you don't expect it. I don't know why but it affected me in a very profound way, and I suspect that was due to Mendes' brilliance. I was also hugely affected by the scene involving the baby. Usually in war movies like this I can watch those scenes stony faced and it will have little effect on me, but this really hit hard.

 

[A True Kaniggit]

28 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

It was also perfectly shot, the stabbing being off camera, at a point where you don't expect it. I don't know why but it affected me in a very profound way, and I suspect that was due to Mendes' brilliance. I was also hugely affected by the scene involving the baby. 1) Usually in war movies like this I can watch those scenes stony faced and it will have little effect on me, but this really hit hard.

The thing about this scene is I think you're supposed to think,"what a shitty German, the Brit tried to save him, yet he stabbed him in return".

But I kinda get where the German pilots mind was at. He'd just crashed, and his legs were friggin on fire. So he comes to and sees an enemy uniform above him. Grabbing a knife and stabbing seems like an understandable response.

 

1) Saving Private Ryan. I think most of the parts in SPR are dumb. But that scene where Mellish is getting stabbed makes me cringe every time.

 

 

 

It's a spoiler thread yeah?

 

[Heartofice]

16 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

The thing about this scene is I think you're supposed to think,"what a shitty German, the Brit tried to save him, yet he stabbed him in return".

But I kinda get where the German pilots mind was at. He'd just crashed, and his legs were friggin on fire. So he comes to and sees an enemy uniform above him. Grabbing a knife and stabbing seems like an understandable response.

 

1) Saving Private Ryan. I think most of the parts in SPR are dumb. But that scene where Mellish is getting stabbed makes me cringe every time.

 

 

 

It's a spoiler thread yeah?

 

Yeah it wasn’t really played in a way where you are supposed to go ‘ooh you rotten Kraut!’ , I watched the scene seeing a guy who was in immense pain and acting in a primal manner, who reacts to the nearest thing to him. It was a great scene because it was so shocking, seeming to come out of the blue

[Corvinus85]

A Chekov gun for me was the pilot's knife, as the camera carefully showed he was armed thus, and I expected it to be used. But the death was still a shock.

[Nictarion]

I know it was in the heat of the moment (no pun intended) but I kind of wondered what they were planning to do with the German pilot after they saved him? Just let him go? They certainly had no time to deal with taking him with them. 

[Ran]

Saw this in an early afternoon showing in the new IMAX theatre in Gothenburg. Spectacular, as everyone has said, in its cinematography, direction, and production design. The ruins of Écoust at night, lit only by the orange glow of a raging fire and the cold, white light of magnesium flares, was remarkable. Fine performances. The recognizable actors didn't really take me out of it, though as I've seen two other films with Mark Strong in quite recently (Robin Hood and Shazam!) I recognized his voice immediately. 

It's true that the one-shot conceit did lead me to sometimes spend time thinking not about the movie but about how they achieved certain "invisible" cuts, but for the most part the approach made everything feel like you were there following along. If I had any real critique, it had specifically to do with two scenes featuring a river which were too clearly the work of VFX rather than filmed in real-time. I would have cut those and found some other way to have tension in the scene without needing to resort to that.

Mendes ought to grab Best Director and Deakins should nail Best Cinematography again.

@Nictarion

They were being decent lads not letting him burn to death, so I don't think they thought beyond being humanitarian. Given his injuries, assuming he hadn't turned hostile, I'd assume they'd transfer him into the shelter of one of the buildings, do what they could for said injuries, provide him some food and water, and try to indicate they'd try to send someone to recover him when they could. Just a guess, though. (I thought of this in part when I thought about Schofield later telling Lt. Blake about where his brother's body was, and perhaps they'd get permission to go out and give him a Christian burial.)

[Jace, Extat]

It seemed clear to me in every scene where they appeared that the Germans were depicted as having nowhere to go. Nothing to do except fight. Whereas our British aligned characters are always talking about going home.

The Germans won't have a home if they don't fight to the death. We see repeatedly that they do not just run away. They fight. And that's why the scenes are tense as fuck even when there ain't a sausage loving, sauerkraut stuffing bastard in sight. The movie tells you repeatedly that this attack is going to end poorly not by stating such, but by showing you that the Germans are not just running away. They do not run, even when their legs are burnt to hamburger.

You get all of that plot information without a character turning to the camera and explaining the strategic situation as if the audience is stupid. Like in a movie.

[A True Kaniggit]

5 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

You get all of that plot information without a character turning to the camera and explaining the strategic situation as if the audience is stupid. Like in a movie.

Yeah. They didn't once say the words "Hindenburg Line". Good on them.

[Jace, Extat]

16 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Yeah. They didn't once say the words "Hindenburg Line". Good on them.

Germans called it the Sigfried line right? Because of Django?

[A True Kaniggit]

27 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Germans called it the Sigfried line right? Because of Django?

L F I NO. 

Edit: Sorry. I take it this is a Django Unchained reference? Though I consider my memory pretty damn good, it's not perfect. And I haven't seen that movie in a while.

Better watch it tonight to refresh.

[A True Kaniggit]

12 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Germans called it the Sigfried line right? Because of Django?

After my rewatch I still couldn't connect the dots, so I just googled the phrase, "Sigfried because of Django" The result:

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-django-unchained-siegfried-20130413-story.html

 

Further research reveals the Siegfried Line was the one built during the interwar period across from the Maginot.

Edit: Still more research after Ran’s post states yeah, the name was first used for the WW 1 fortifications. I shoulda went to the next page of results to get all the facts. Though in my defense, look over there.

In the end, I do finally get the Django joke. Ha. 

[Ran]

Siegfriedstellung (Siegfried Position, but the Brits called it the Hindenburg Line) was built in 1916-1917. 

Neither has anything to do with Django Reinhardt or any other Django.

[dbunting]

On 1/22/2020 at 6:56 AM, A True Kaniggit said:

Anyone else notice that Schofield left that woman's door open when he left her home? Dick move.

Kinda had to so the film style of not cutting away from the main characters could continue. The camera would have to follow him out and then pivot out of the way to show him closing a door.

As to the Cumberbach character, I thought it played out pretty much like the guy warned him. Cumberbatch was ready and eager to fight and it took some convincing to get him to hold off even after seeing the orders. IMO had he been alone he would have waved off the guy with the orders and the attack would have continued.