TV Premiere: One of the greatest war movies of all time is shown tonight – beautifully staged and starring two “Game Of Thrones” stars!

It doesn’t matter if it’s Oliver Stone’s “Platoon,” Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” or Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk,” let’s think about the best, most famous and most oppressive -) war films of the last decades, they are almost always set during the Vietnam War or in WWII Europe.

The visually stunning front spectacle “1917” by Sam Mendes, which started in German cinemas shortly before the outbreak of the corona pandemic and was one of the most successful blockbusters of 2020, is distinguished from the said genre representatives simply by its location in the First World War . But that’s not all: the war film, which has been showered with four Oscars and numerous other awards, is also unrelated to the plot what makes it such an extraordinary movie experience is the superb craftsmanship. She pulls you into the action from minute 1 – and turns it into a masterpiece for the author of this article.

But unfortunately there is a problem precisely at this point Watch “1917” at its free TV premiere on May 19, 2023 at 8:15 PM on RTL ZWEI: Because in the television broadcast, the commercial breaks tear you out of the epic that is so carefully edited and seems to be cast in one piece. We therefore recommend that you grab Blu-ray, DVD or VoD to enjoy the film as it was intended: it seems as if it was shot in almost one shot, so without any editing.

That’s what “1917” is about

Northern France, April 6, 1917: In the British sector on the Western Front, young soldiers Will Schofield (George MacKay) and Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman, known as Tommen Baratheon from “Game Of Thrones”) receive an extraordinary order: They should be given to British Colonel Mackenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch) personally delivered the message to call off the imminent attack of his approximately 1,600 soldiers on the German troops. Although Mackenzie believes the Germans retreated in a disorderly manner, British aerial reconnaissance officers have discovered that the maneuver was a sophisticated ruse (which went down in history as “Operation Alberich”).

For Tom, who doesn’t hesitate to take on the perilous two-man mission with Will, the case is particularly important: his brother, Lieutenant Joseph Blake (Richard Madden, Robb Stark in “Game Of Thrones”), also fights in Mackenzie’s battalion and , like the other soldiers, to certain death if the news does not reach the Colonel in time. So the two set out together – but are the German trenches, bombed-out courtyards and muddy battlefields along their path really as desolate as they seem?

The star is the camera

The first few minutes make it clear what makes Sam Mendes’ blockbuster such a visually extraordinary experience: Comparable to Sebastian Schipper’s brilliant real-time drama “Victoria‘, which was actually shot in just one take, makes 1917 seem like a sophisticated one-shot film (although it really isn’t).

Academy Award-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins guides Will and Tom through the narrow trench, past soldiers, sandbags and rubble. Sometimes the camera rushes ahead, sometimes it follows the two, sometimes it slips into a hiding place or squeezes through barbed wire, sometimes it backs off or gets a bird’s-eye view. But above all, it literally sucks us into the action – we are (almost) always on hand and can hardly help but be amazed.

It could all have been filmed and edited with a shaky handheld camera. But the guns are silent, as they often are, and the images seem remarkably calm. You can imagine the enormous planning effort that required: Like Alfred Hitchcock on “Cocktail for a Corpse” or Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu on “Birdman,” Mendes ran countless takes until the partial sequences were filmed with precise choreography and cut seamlessly . become.

The two-time James Bond director succeeds with absolute perfection, especially since the elements of nature are no obstacle: the camera plunges into rivers and elegantly glides over crater lakes, films kites in dogfights and when they crash, fight through muddy masses of earth or impermeable fabric. When Tom and Will break up, the camera follows only one of them – some things happening off screen, others up close.

Not a bloody massacre, but a blistering spectacle

What makes “1917” such a gripping wartime spectacle are not so much the gory battlefield scenes, which only last a few minutes in all. In addition to the bombastic show values, it is mainly the real-time character that makes a perilous tripping hazard, a breakneck escape through the nocturnal village of Écoust or a deadly duel with a sniper an even more feverish affair. If you ignore a longer phase of unconsciousness, there is not a single visible cut and no real jump in time.

The two hours fly by as Mendes gives us a few breathers – and yet his work develops an uncanny emotional impact. When at one point the battered Tom leans against a tree and can hardly get up from exhaustion, then we realize how much we love the brave young man with his feat in record time. It also calms down a bit when you run into a French girl or when you drive a mile, which goes by surprisingly quickly.

Smaller logical weaknesses like this (even a dawn breaks within minutes) shouldn’t spoil the fun. The deliberately limited perspective is also extremely exciting: Since the camera literally sticks to the main characters and does not allow for an overall picture of trenches, cities and battlefields, we never know what is happening in front of or behind the protagonists – and we get more than a bitter surprise…