despair

Film Review: 1917 (2019)

A brown flagIt’s morning and the sky is gray with muted colors. The solders have no villain to blame and the greatest longing of everyone is to go home. Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay) get called and they take on the mission.

The film’s sole vision of life is a nameless baby in a devastated city. The protagonists have Friendship, Loyalty, Brotherhood and Courage. It isn’t much, but it is what they need to charge past the rats and snipers and barbed wire and dead bodies.

1917 suggests that the audience recall the despair so that today’s challenges are not so oppressive.

Cinematographically, the movie is flowing and continuous. Much of the film is a single continuous shot. Most colors are chosen to have a low saturation. The screen is filled with browns and blacks, tans and grays. The result is a draining sadness.

1917 is full of sadness. The stark beauty of the devastation and the heightened emotions are what make the movie both repulsive and beautiful at the same time. One’s mind absorbs tension and danger from the screen. The bland colors are a muted reminder of how the extraordinary can become ordinary.

The spectacle follows winding trenches and broken walls. As the critical battle is approaching, a soldier is singing an incongruously beautiful song. Then, the urgency is redoubled as the mission might fail despite the herculean journey.

1917 is a really beautiful film. It successfully aspires to be a great work of art.

Don’t go when you want to have fun or to get joy and hopefulness. All I could do by the end was weep in empathy as Schofield looks at his distant family, hoping one day to return. As I listened to the closing credits pass, I was ready for change.

The almost empty glass of the Spectacular Age

Thought bubbleThe question of the day is “is the glass almost empty or is it almost full?”

The lens that identified a glass as half empty or half full hardly seems relevant. Such subtle semantic differences don’t matter in the Spectacular Age we are in.

I noticed a bumper sticker today. “Refugees Welcome” with the outline of Indiana. I suggested to a friend that it was really a good message. My friend was concerned that we’re running out and can’t afford such people.

It made me think about how much American perceptions are disassociated.

One can look at the glass and see that it is almost full. We have enough creativity, dedication, courage and hope to solve the problems facing the world.

Or, one can see an almost empty glass. The government is too expensive, the cost of doing business is excessive, society is about to collapse and only radical action can help.

I don’t know how to find a way to pour from my almost full glass to help relieve the thirst of the almost empty glasses. Do you?