Sam Mendes’s 1917 is a particularly beautiful war film, a technical feat that turns a somber mission into a burnished action thriller, one designed to look like it was shot in two hour-long single takes.
Taking any situation, such as the horrifying trench combat of the First World War, and turning it into cinema will smooth away some of the crueler realities, no matter the director’s intent. Some of moviemaking’s most indelible images have come from dramatizations of battle, from the early Oscar winner All Quiet on the Western Front to Christopher Nolan’s 2017 blockbuster, Dunkirk.
Hollywood has long excelled at mining beauty from war.
