Review of 1917 (2020)

Review of 1917

A Good Film of the Great War

“I believe that perfection handicaps cinema”

Jean Renoir, director of La Grande Illusion

“The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men ”

Henry David Thoreau

“We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing from ourselves, from our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.”

Erich Marie Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

Sam Mendes’ 1917 was inspired by his grandfather’s experience as a front line soldier in World War I. Artistically this is both the film’s strength and weakness. The emotional bond to the material parallels the storyline. A brother seeking to save his brother from certain peril embarks on a seemingly suicidal mission. The military planners knew no soldier in their right mind would stay the course unless he had his family’s blood on the line. In the end the brass might view the result as favorable, but the brothers’ might see a pyrrhic victory. Artistically the same might be said of Mendes. No doubt the result is impressive, but did the director’s family allegiance blur his vision?

Subverting expectations drives the script which is wholly appropriate for a film about WW I, “the war to end all wars.” Seasoned military leaders thought the fighting would cease in a matter of weeks and deployed cavalry horses. The war ground on for nearly half a decade with trenches of soldiers obliterating each other with newly designed airplanes, tanks, flamethrowers and chemical weapons in a macabre stalemate. Mendes’ heroes, two infantrymen, are tasked with the impossible: a critical trek across enemy lines at the height of conflict to deliver a message to save a battalion of soldiers (1600) entering enemy territory.

Rather than raging machine guns, they are met with eerie silence and a vast apocalyptic landscape of carnage evoking Goya’s prints of dismembered bodies in The Disasters of War. In real life the ferocity of the battle can be illustrated by the present day Zone Rouge. This is a 500 square mile area in France that is STILL uninhabitable due to the munitions used in this conflict. While traversing this end-of-days backdrop the audience experiences the metaphorical landmines of unexpected plot twists just at the moment of repose. Our heroes discover the booby trap in the tunnel before it’s too late, then calamity strikes. They take a respite on a peaceful farm, then the unthinkable occurs. The unconvinced follower morphs into the committed leader. The refugee mother and child, are unrelated. The waters’ calm in the heretofore raging river reveals, a pile of corpses. Nothing is settled. The audience must keenly study the rubble for clues knowing they can never anticipate the reveal.

Kudos to Mendes for meticulous attention to detail. The film creates an endless meandering journey though miles and miles and miles of trenches, mess tents, holding areas, battlefield ruins, abandoned buildings, blown-up infrastructure, sylvan farms, orchards…. All is presented with the smooth glide of cameras that following everything in real time. The entire action is revealed in less than a day with a cast of hundreds of English & German soldiers and civilians caught in the middle. The expertise in World War I is twinned with a knowledge of cinematic history. Mendes applies the technique forged by Hitchcock’s Rope, a virtual one take movie, into the battle arena. There a myriad of references to other war classics such as the trench scenes in All Quiet on the Western Front, the river sequence in An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge and the singing sequence in Kubrick’s Paths of Glory.Perhaps this last reference best illustrates a shortfall in this otherwise outstanding film.

One of our heroes comes across soldiers in the woods listening to an angelic singer. The troops are about to be led into a disastrous battle and Mendes’ presents a moment of pure innocence. The voice of God temporarily pushes back the gates of hell. Compare this with the closing Kubrick’s masterpiece where a young German girl is dragged up in front of a drunken hall of French soldiers who cat-call her into performing. They are also on the cusp of battle and demand some raucous entertainment. The young women quietly starts to sing, it is barely a whisper. The crowd quiets. The men slowly morph into lonely lost boys. The yearning for bawdy sex is swept away by the sweet soothing melody. It takes the soldiers back to their lives before when they were sons, husbands and brothers. The dogs of war are tamed. There isn’t a dry eye in the house as they quietly prepare to return to hell. Mendes’ song was beautifully rendered and wonderfully portrayed but it was merely tender. We were pulled into the beauty amidst the hell-scape, but never lifted to heaven.

1917, despite its mind-blowing acting, direction and set design, fails to cross the into the sublime. Of course there are searing moments of horror and compassion but the protagonists are chained to the majesty of the moment. Strangely their status is anchored in their goodness. The central characters of other war classics follow the dictates of battle and engage in what civilians would consider immoral behavior. The central figure in All Quiet on the Wester Front kills a soldier in an offensive maneuver with his bare hands. Kubrick’s Col Dax executes the innocents. Renoir’s Rauffenstein kills his beloved French prisoner. Mendes’ heroes never commit the sins of war. The soldier who lies peacefully in the field in the opening and ending sequence of 1917 is more scarred, more experienced, but unsullied. The changes relate to acquisition of wisdom, rather than regrets. He will probably cherish holding this medal, unlike is badge from Verdun. Despite the unworldly, terrifying journey through the 9th circles of hell, his saintliness remains intact. Even after witnessing the death of a beloved friend he never engages in retribution. He is given ample opportunity but he chooses not to kill, even going so far as to avoid shooting an enemy soldier whom he encounters in a dark, barren cityscape. This is admirable and surely speaks to the beloved grandfather whom Mendes rightly honors. Perhaps, from an artistic perspective, a major thematic subversion of expectations was in order. Maybe the protagonists could have exhibited a chink in their moral armor. There are many cowboys with white hats, but people remember the one who wears a mask.

Mendes beautifully illustrates the evil nature of war. His exacting gaze showed us honorable men doing their best in conditions beyond our darkest imaginings. But strangely our heroes are impervious to the temptation in a land that has renounced all semblance of humanity. It is a journey of white knights on a quest. They give comfort to the enemy, endure the contumely of their superiors and even give sustenance to the innocents. It is both electrifying and inspiring, to a fault. It will bring tears in the theater, but maybe not in reflection in the following days. It is an excellent film, but misses greatness. Strangely heroes with less inspiration can be more inspiring. The evil of war isn’t born of devils, but angels who have fallen. The journey was captivating beyond all imagining, but in a worldly manner. We all know that gold doesn’t rust. But war should remind us of the possibility that it can. What if the friend wantonly killed others in revenge? What if cowardliness took hold? What if the brother blamed the friend? Your grandfather would never believe it, but this is when it is important to politely smile and say, “you wouldn’t, but others might.” In truth the elder Mendes might nod with a knowing glance. It took him decades to breach the subject of the physical horror, perhaps others moral decay should stay on the battlefield. The director gives a celebration of righteousness. He does his family proud. But maybe that is only part of the larger story of war. Just look at the faces of the soldiers as they sing along with the German maiden in Paths of Glory. They join and hum as they recognize her as more than the enemy. In Mendes recreation everyone sits in silent adoration. The voice is untouchable, angelic; maybe too much so. Perhaps a soulful visit in the other side must be part of the journey. Heavenly beings deserve our admiration but they shouldn’t mask a disquieting truth: good men can do bad things. Just ask the ghosts in the Zone Rogue.

Review of Ad Astra (2019)

Review of Ad Astra

The Wrong Stuff

“It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice”- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”- Col. Saito, Bridge Over the River Kwai

“If they can send one man to the moon, why can’t they send them all”- T-shirt slogan

Per aspera ad astra, through hardship to the stars. This is a fitting summation of the hero, Roy McBride, played by Brad Pitt in James Gray’s Ad Astra. His quest to be the consummate astronaut is compounded by being the son of the world’s most revered spaceman, Cliff McBride, played by Tommy Lee Jones. The father vs. son battle is twinned with the motifs of the zealot plagued by doubt and the leader consumed by mission. All this is presented in the guise of a space action-adventure drama. The result isn’t a launch pad failure but a mission desperately in need of course correction. Rather than entering a clear dark sky of dazzling stars, everything is overcast. We are trapped in the space between “Houston, we have a problem” and “Houston, you are the problem.” It is an odd problem as Gray has a proven record of producing strong, focused, decisive genre films. Little Odessa, his breakthrough feature, is a heartbreaking, innovative, mafia saga. Two Lovers is a moving romantic tragedy set not far from the upheavals of the actual little Odessa. Ad Astra leaves the confines of this world and is, despite the flash, a step backward. It is encouraging that his next project, I Am Pilgrim, will return to the terra firma of New York City.

Before detailing the myriad shortcomings some accolades are in order for the teams behind the the escape and chase sequences. Soon into the opening minutes we see astronauts cascading off a “sky elevator” that stretches from earth’s surface to the stratosphere. The dangling bodies mingled with crashing infrastructure brought to mind Cuaron’s wonderful meteor pummeling of a space station at the beginning of Gravity. The Mad Max inspired moon buggy battle will also keep audiences appropriately tense. In addition there is the gruesome rescue sequence where no one would have suspected the monster hiding behind the pulsating astronaut’s back. It is also impossible not be rooting for our hero as he battles 4 advesaries in zero gravity after crawling through a rocket ship during lift off. The audience is swept up into the visceral hardships. Unfortunately the reflective moments have a monotonous fixed orbit.

The denouement of the father/son reunion is particularly awkward, in all the wrong ways. To paraphrase father-Cliff: “thanks for coming out here.” I’m surprised he didn’t follow up with: “was it a rough trip?” It is as if the filmmakers took all the emotional heft of a pulp romance novel and grafted it on to a torturous family encounter. No doubt this is a family with issues. No doubt they would never utter any of this dialogue. This moment is the most stilted in a parade of encounters Roy has with fellow travelers, pilots and officials. His steely, coldness seems contrived. Unfortunately this creates questions about the action. One begins wondering if certain scenes were scripted to illustrate his bravado, rather than being simply part of the narrative. Space Command’s only option in transporting the key man in a “save the world” mission is to ride him on a moon buggy through bands of terrorists? There was no way to avoid the, nearly deadly, SOS rescue? These plot anomalies would play if there wasn’t an opaqueness about our hero. Roy, unfortunately, has a dissonant quality that wears badly on an action hero. As an example: no one questions whether James Bond is trying to kill himself when he jumps from a building, helicopter, train…. If Gray wants an ambiguously motivated protagonist, he should have not have made an action movie. 

The younger McBride finds solace in reflecting on the sole emotional connection he has made on earth’s surface which brings to mind a Joni Mitchell song. Joni’s male partner says, “I am as constant as a Northern Star”. Her retort sums up the experience of being Mrs. McBride of either generation: “Constantly in the darkness. Where’s that at?”. Adding to his emotional misery is the specter of the dead hero dad, who turns out not to be dead or a hero. Strangely whether the father is dead or a hero is more ambiguous than one might assume. Herein lies the heart of this strange amalgamation of plot lines: What is it that makes people good? To whom does one owe allegiance? The director appears to be heading in one direction, then, akin to many plot points in the narrative, we are whip-lashed back to earth. In every sense, not just emotionally, this script is nothing, if not peripatetic.

After the title sequence, we see Kubrick’s HAL, the monster in 2001. We note the military uniforms of the NASA-like institution have black shirts over black jackets evoking the SS or other fascist armies. The dystopia also has a 1984-like master computer system that does mandatory psych evaluations. It is all give and no take. The astronauts are plumbed to their deepest fears and given a pass/fail at the end of the session. It isn’t therapy but rather the Facebook/Google scheme of personal information disclosure being mandatory for gateway access. Strangely the human bleakness of the earth is no match for the dingy creepiness of the moon and Mars. The latter is a dressed up truck stop and the former is akin to a worn-down Mall of America. At one point McBride confesses that if his father had seen what they’d done to the lunar landscape he’d have wanted it destroyed. This is one of the rare moments that the younger McBride, or others, disclose personal details about the older astronaut.

The father’s opaqueness mirrors his son’s. These are dedicated career men who are at the top of their game. They are also brimming with hopelessness. The young McBride’s psych profile exhibits clinical depression. He is careful never to express his general rage at the system. He wants to continue his mission as a “good soldier”. Even during the darkest moment of mutiny, he has allegiance to “the system”. The director’s vision of earth “sometime in the near future” is familiar. The technology and information gathering is appropriately futuristic but certainly tied to the trajectory of the present. The Ad Astra world has stopped asking big questions in favor of the convenience of technology. There is nary a mention of religion, politics or philosophy. It is mere factional fighting over resources and information set amidst brutal controlling authorities. Our hero’s American-like regime is peopled with loyalists who never ask too many questions. The McBrides are absolutely perfect soldiers, until they aren’t. The father/son spacemen are strangely united in a sense of duty to a system they love so much that they feel they, alone, can dictate the rules. It is on odd contradiction cradled in the psychosis of wanting to preserve the system by completely destroying it. 

The junior McBride knows that there is discord between himself and the space fleet. Once he realizes he has been betrayed, he seeks, not vengeance, but a path to righting what he sees as the wrong path to neutralizing his father. This involves murdering those who go against him. Meanwhile his father has gone mad and liquidates those who appose his “pure” view of loyalty. Ironically that mission involved making contact with those with the ultimate outsider point of view, aliens. It is almost as if the elder McBride realizes humans have become morbidly self-involved. His messianic obsession with making contact is admission that he cannot abide by humanity in its present condition. Perhaps this is the seed for his desire to destroy the earth. Ad Astra’s humans certainly give credence to the idea of exiting to the stars. Unfortunately there is no respite. They need an escape from themselves.

There is a dreariness to the depiction of space life. Rather than expanding conceptions of humanity all the grand engineering seems to have knocked mankind off the tower of babel, metaphorically depicted in the opening sequence. Everyone is a cog in a technological web. Roy’s peers seem happy enough with the drugs and comfort rooms, where images of nature are projected on the walls. Perhaps Donald Sutherland, who plays an elder mentor can shed light on the father’s sense of purpose. He is the perfect character to illuminate the son as he was an intimate of his father. In fact he jokes about his father’s single-mindedness in thinking that Sutherland lacked patriotism. This is an odd notion as the elder officer has been specially chosen to represent the government in supervising the son. This puts distance in their fast friendship. Is Sutherland a true friend or merely an extension of the every present “psych evaluation”? In the end Sutherland is as indecipherable as everyone else. Rather than illuminating Cliff McBride he breaks the cult of worship with evidence of the father’s psychotic crimes.

The Space Force took the path chosen by all states who discover their idols have clay feet: they masked the betrayal and doubled down on the motif of “national hero”. Roy is merely bait to lure the grand prize, Cliff, to his death at the hands of a government wanting to keep up appearances. Roy’s realization of his pawn status sparks a curious reaction. He turns out to be every bit his father’s son. Roy has every reason to loath papa. He was a cruel, negligent father. He is also a deranged murderer. Did I also mention he has killed scores in an effort to destroy planet earth? Yet Roy manages to hatch a redemptive plan that attempts to “save” the father in addition to the home planet. He is completely devoid of any anger towards the space force that has treated him with contempt. The logistical absurdity of his mission is an equal match for the utter lunacy of his state of mind. In the end our hero saves planet earth, but not the father. He returns a hero, despite defying orders and killing four colleagues. He is now ready to find the meaning of life by cuddling with his sweetheart. It sounds as unsatisfying and unrealistic as it plays. All the grandness of the film is overrun by the movie ending equivalent of Hallmark greeting cards. What are we to make of all the interstellar Strum und Drang?

Most villains are self-serving monsters who wish to bend the world to their own egotistical ends. The senior McBride’s evil, like Heart of Darkness’ Kurtz or Bridge Over the River Kwai’s Col. Nicholson, is cloaked in extreme dedication to a cause, seemingly outside of themselves. The quest to be uber-heroes creates the human equivalent of emotional black holes. Their madness is rooted in spending too much time in the vastness of the outer reaches of “civilization”. The human mind breaks when confronted with constant exposure to the metaphysical voids of outer space or unmapped continents. The writer Borges wrote, “here is a concept that corrupts and upsets all others, I refer not to evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite”. The hardship of isolation brought them to the darkness of their imaginary worlds. This is fertile ground for artistic reflection. Unfortunately our hero, McBride Jr., is bereft of any real introspection. He is mired in the relentless drumbeat of despair coupled with idealized domesticity. This is the stuff of soap opera rather than myth.

There is a film that squares the circle of combining the low art of the chase, with the high aspirations of sketching the complicated duality of monster/heroes. Not Ad Astra but rather a relatively obscure film Sunshine. It is the paradigm Heart of Darkness space thriller. The two films share crews on “save the earth” missions complete with nuclear bombs. They also encounter a fellow traveler who has gone mad in by gazing into infinity. Cliff McBride faces the darkness of space whereas his doppelgänger gazes directly at the sun. Sunshine, however, has a taut plot and simple motivation. The heroes save the planet. Roy’s story drifts into the dangerous territory of asking “who is a hero? What is worth saving?” It is valid to raise the questions. Unfortunately it is unsatisfying to hide answers with spectacle.

Stripped of the dazzle of big name performers and excellent special effects, Ad Astra’s hero is the benevolent version of the deranged dad. The film SUGGESTS a journey of emotional growth. Unfortunately the stasis is masked with the dazzle that only a big budget feature can provide. The movie twists, turns and explodes but its hero remains embedded in his father’s repellent isolation. Roy obviously fails his father, but more significantly, he fails himself. How long will the reunion with his partner last before he exits in an escape pod? It is easy to imagine him back on the space elevator or the moon or mars or just in space. No doubt he will “constantly be in the darkness”. This film wallows in hardship. It is all pain without the escape of the heavens. Duris in laboribus, through hardship to hardship.