Just when you think that there is no new angle for a war movie, English tag-team director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins come and shake the whole thing up. Deakins, who has shot such remarkable-looking films as Blade Runner 2049, Fargo, Skyfall, Sicario, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and No Country for Old Men among literal countless others, commands the aura of a film in a way that few other cinematographers can and paired with Mendes’ seamless one-take presentation of this WWI epic, 1917 amounts to a striking piece of capital C cinema, and one that presents a unique ground-level take on war. Set against countless wowing technical merits, the WWI epic recounts a powerful personal journey through a hellish war-scape that will leave audiences gasping for breath.

1917 begins in a field of flowers where Lance Corporals Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) rest their backs against a picturesque tree. Pretty as a postcard, their backdrop changes without pause. Soon they will be dispatched across enemy lines, tasked with warning the 1,600-man-strong English Second Division that they are walking right into a German trap, but for now they lament canceled leave and dream of full bellies. As the two make their way through crowded English trenches and across an absolutely nightmarish bombed-out No Man’s Land, we’re witness to the devastation of the French countryside, its landscape littered with spent artillery shells, pocked with explosion sites, scarred with 6-foot trenches. The dead erupt from the earth like flowers, dug into the ground itself. The rot of the land is pungent even without smell-o-vision.

By virtue of Mendes’ hugely impressive “continuous take” approach, 1917 becomes a walkabout through said devastation, tracking the remarkably otherworldly parfait of natural beauty and man’s destruction, as two men strike off to save many more. Working from a script from Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns (also tasked with penning Edgar Wright’s upcoming Last Night in Soho), 1917 explores the deeply personal experience of war with Mendes’ POV approach allowing us entrance to the headspace of his characters. By presenting the narrative from almost claustrophobic proximity, Mendes abandons traditional narrative framing devices about the brotherhood of war to chase the idea that war is as punishingly lonely as just about any experience. Every war is fought by a collection of individuals. Every man goes to war alone. Every man returns home alone.

That doesn’t mean that 1917 doesn’t crave meaningful relationships, the bond between Schofield and Blake at times reminiscent of Frodo and Samwise venturing through unknowable horrors to save Middle Earth. When they emerge from the vile trenches and come across an abandoned barn, the juxtaposition of natural order and war’s will could not be more stark and the palpable joy of being amongst life and greenery is easy to read across the characters’ faces. There is camaraderie and companionship here and it builds to a satisfying and emotionally powerful climax but1917’s always-on-the-run presentation speaks to its larger overwhelming sense of isolation. War is hell indeed, but it’s also a place of immense solitude. Where death comes at the hands of a slight miscalculation or the glimpse of misplaced compassion. Where companions who’ve saved your life bleed out in your arms. Taking their last breath dreaming of home. Nothing is more lonely than holding the gutted corpse of a once-friend.

Along the journey, the Lance Corporals encounter a menagerie of recognizable English talent including Colin Firth, Andrew Scott, Richard Madden, Mark Strong, and Benedict Cumberbatch who grace the frame with their towering presences and then drift off, never to be heard from again. It’s a neat little trick, putting all these bigger marque names on the fringes of the feature, and adds to 1917’s unceasing sense of building momentum but remaining stubbornly locked into a single narrative. The story always charging forward, sparing no time to look back. Strong’s commander at one point underscores this very idea to Schofield, “It’s best not to dwell…” Though horrors lay behind, so too are they the solitary path forward; an unavoidable evil closing in on all sides. Through this idea of looking forward, always and only forward, the film carries its traumas like soldiers carrying their wounded, collecting them like battle scars as it moves towards a striking, if somewhat overcooked, conclusion.

The great strength of 1917 remains in its mixing of craftsmanship and storytelling, Mendes and co. managing to smuggle in meaningful thematic complexities against the backdrop of such a flashy technical masterwork. Take the production design, for example. The sheer scale of 1917’s production endeavors – the endless trenches, the battle-gnarled landscapes, towns in ruined, the mesmerizing recreations of war-torn France – can be quite literally jaw-dropping. And though the whole single-take aspect can unwind a lesser director, Mendes’ touch is rarely overbearing. He bends the tactic to his will, a true master of his craft. By keeping everything relatively ground-level, the film may lack in the massive-scaled traditional battle sequences of war films of its kind, opting instead to keep everything within the limited framework of its main characters and remaining squarely on a human level. Punctuated by Roger Deakins’ lighting, the effect is mesmerizing and tense as hell.

Drifting from bright blue promising skies to the hellish rake of the literal fog of war, through burned-out cities and dunked in frothy raging rivers, Deakins shots the film with a grandiose operatic sense of majesty. He captures the texture of the landscape, adding volume and emotion to a scene by the simple virtue of tapping into the heart of each image and juxtaposing it against the hero’s journey. Comparisons to “The Odyssey” may be obvious but with Deakins’ brilliant cinematographic taste and Mendes’ humanist framing, 1917 still feels like a refreshingly unique take on a well-worn genre. And one (surprisingly enough) chock full of surprises. At once subdued and complex, their film is one of great technical stature that’s sure to leave audiences absolutely wowed, walking away from affected and utterly impressed.

CONCLUSION: ‘1917’ takes an intimate humanist approach to war epics to often staggering results, the proven pairing of Sam Mendes and cinematography Roger Deakins impress top technicians working at the top of their craft to tell a ground-level story of the solitude of heroism.