ONE SHOT AT GLORY

The audacious 1917 follows a pair of soldiers on an impossible mission

ANTHONY BREZNICAN

Two British soldiers are racing a ticking clock as they hurry across a blistered, battle-torn landscape. They have an urgent message that could stop 1,600 fellow service members from walking into a trap, but the wonder of 1917 is that it all plays out as if it's one continuous, unblinking shot.

Director Sam Mendes cowrote the script with Krysty Wilson-Cairns, but they really wrote two scripts—one with dialogue and direction for the actors, another with maps for the crew as they tried to disguise the various cuts.

"What cuts?" Mendes joked. He spent nine months preparing with legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins to make sure the story seamlessly tracked its two heroes, George MacKay (11.22.65) and Dean-Charles Chapman (Game of Thrones), across streams, battlefields, and broken towns.

"It was fundamentally an emotional choice," Mendes said. " I wanted to travel every step with these men—to breathe every breath with them."

Directors have tried to simulate one long take before (Hitchcock's Rope in 1948, the 2011 horror thriller Silent House, and 2014's Birdman), but 1917attempts it on an epic scale. Designing the locations required precision timing. "Every location had to be exactly the correct length for the scene. We had to walk every step the characters would take long before we designed the sets.... I've never rehearsed a movie for as long or in such detail."

Moviemaking, not unlike war, means never surrendering.