1917 HUSBAND VS. WIFE MOVIE REVIEW ｜｜ After 3 attempts, it's finally here!
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
199.15016
Summary
In this episode, we review 1917, a movie about two British soldiers tasked with delivering a message to a nearby village to call off an attack which has turned out to be a trap that the Germans have set up.
Transcript
00:00:00.160
Hello beautiful ladies and gents and welcome to today's video
00:00:03.200
where we're going to be doing a husband versus wife movie review on 1917.
00:00:13.520
In your own time gentlemen. Must be something big if the general's here.
00:00:19.520
You have a brother in the second battalion? Yes sir. They're walking into a trap.
00:00:25.040
So to start us off we're going to go through an expressed version of the review in total
00:00:32.160
because this is attempt number three. As far as I'm aware your videos don't have terrible
00:00:39.360
technical difficulties in their infancy from when you started but now they've come to fruition.
00:00:44.400
The teenage years of them. This is this is the time. The time has come and it is terrible so we are
00:00:51.200
going to do this. This is the final time. If it doesn't work this time we are not filming it again.
00:00:56.640
And in fact we're going to change our opinions about 1917 to be neither good nor bad but so neutral
00:01:03.040
and blasé it doesn't deserve a review. Pretty much. So why don't you give us like a quick overview of
00:01:07.520
the plot? Sure. So 1917 if you're not already familiar, although you should be, 1917 is a World
00:01:14.800
War I movie about two British soldiers given a mission that they have to accomplish to
00:01:20.960
hoove a set of orders a few miles on the war front in France to a nearby village to deliver a message to
00:01:28.560
a group of soldiers to call off an attack which has turned out to be a trap that the Germans have set up.
00:01:33.920
Yeah. So that that's the level of plot that this movie has because the movie is
00:01:38.560
not about the story. It's not about the plot. It's not really about character development.
00:01:43.520
It's about the experience of the characters and what they're going through.
00:01:46.720
So Jacob when we saw this movie was incredibly enthusiastic. He loved it. It was his favorite
00:01:52.640
movie of the last morning. Favorite movie released in the last year. In the last year. I've seen movies
00:01:58.160
that I liked better in the last year but those are more in the vein of Beckett or The Lion Winter and
00:02:04.320
stuff like that which are from the 60s. Whereas I saw the movie and I thought it was a good movie but
00:02:09.120
I didn't think it was amazing mind-blowing. So how could one of us be so wrong?
00:02:16.560
You get to decide which one. We were trying to discuss kind of why it was that Jacob felt so
00:02:23.520
strongly about this movie and why I felt a little bit less strongly. So you tell me which version do
00:02:31.120
you think our followers should hear first? I think they should hear your side first. That way I don't
00:02:38.560
feel like my side is being trampled on. Fair enough. We previously were discussing the movie when we got
00:02:44.000
out of it and it was very contentious between the two of us because there was such a gap between our
00:02:50.000
two perspectives on the movie. I don't know if this is the way it is for you all but I've noticed that
00:02:55.360
when you have two people who disagree about something and even if they're on the same side
00:02:59.760
of opinion they both like something if one person this is like neutral loves it and the other person
00:03:06.240
likes it the person who loves it feels threatened by the one who likes it and also by the same token
00:03:12.640
I've been on the side of things where I just liked something and I judge someone for loving it.
00:03:17.760
Why do you find so much significance in something that hasn't earned it? Why are your values so shallow
00:03:23.920
that you think this is great? It's definitely something I've thought before. The first time
00:03:28.000
we recorded this it was the most husband versus wife review that ever existed. The most husband
00:03:32.800
versus wife review. It's not the most husband versus wife. Yeah oh no no. Don't put the emphasis on
00:03:37.680
husband. It was the most husband that there's been. Yes. I've been more husband at other times in life.
00:03:43.600
When I saw the movie there were a few things that stood out to me that I felt made it less great and they
00:03:50.240
were kind of the things that made it so unique. So one of the things that this movie does is that
00:03:54.720
the entire movie is supposed to look like it's been done in one shot and there were two reasons why I
00:04:00.800
wasn't a huge fan of that and there are also there's also a reason that I like it. So the reason that I
00:04:05.120
like it is because it does put you in the story. It feels like you're walking through all the scenes.
00:04:10.880
You're experiencing it yourself. I guess there's actually three reasons why I wasn't a huge fan of it
00:04:16.560
otherwise. So the first thing that I wanted to mention was that it felt like a video game
00:04:21.760
and the reason I say this is because I only just recently started playing video games and so for me
00:04:27.520
I've started understanding the kind of format of video games where you're following someone around
00:04:33.360
sometimes. She was playing Red Dead Redemption or Zelda Breath of the Wild things like that where you have a
00:04:39.280
third-person perspective on the character where it's usually as if looking over their right shoulder.
00:04:45.040
Exactly and so a lot of this movie is shot just that way where you're watching the film over
00:04:51.840
someone's shoulder and so I was watching it I was like well it's kind of like playing a video game
00:04:55.920
and if I wanted to play a video game I would play a video game but instead I'm watching a movie that
00:05:01.360
I'm not able to control. So that was what stood out to me. Rebut it. So the criticism that there are
00:05:09.120
visual elements that at times bring you to mind what you if you play video games you have as a
00:05:14.720
mental image which is that characters here cameras here looking in on them perspective that third
00:05:21.760
person over the shoulder perspective yeah that's there I mean the camera doesn't hold hold on it it's
00:05:27.360
like what many movies do where you kind of follow them from here then the camera kind of moves around
00:05:32.400
to get facial reaction or look at the environment and then snap back so it's far more dynamic and
00:05:37.760
enough other movies have done stuff like that Darren Aronofsky and the wrestler he did it there I mean
00:05:43.280
I've played a good number of video games I grew up playing them it was my hobby you had better ones
00:05:48.240
and so I was seeing that perspective for many hours did not occur to me when I was watching this movie
00:05:55.120
you mentioned it makes sense it was not so distracting to me maybe because to you the experience
00:06:00.480
of video games is relatively novel and recent and so it's very striking but to me the conventions of
00:06:06.800
mostly video game cinematography take for granted exist sure whatever this movie doing what it did
00:06:12.800
was so unique that it didn't cross those wires for me also because the camera was dynamic enough and did
00:06:18.400
pan off the shoulder and look around the environment and like trace around for conversations between the
00:06:22.880
two main leads I if it were only that way all the way through especially for more action-oriented
00:06:28.240
sequences as if looking at the back of their head when they're doing it that would be very video
00:06:32.480
game-esque did not do that so it's more like you walk into a building and you have third person
00:06:38.080
perspective so you can feel the dread of they're going into the unknown you see what they see and so
00:06:45.040
it's the unknown for you and you're worried what's going to happen to them so to me that was more
00:06:48.960
self-identifying with the dread of the character and like things can happen to you which is actually
00:06:54.400
kind of what a video game is going for it's going to happen to the character it's happening to you as
00:06:57.920
the person playing that but then it moves away from that it's dynamic so uh i think you're wrong
00:07:03.600
fair enough it was not an obstacle that way but i can i can absolutely understand your your view of it
00:07:09.280
i think that makes total sense the second reason that i wasn't
00:07:13.120
now we're doing a review of joker oh god yeah yeah looking phoenix dancing i'm tired of joaquin
00:07:20.800
phoenix the second reason that i didn't love the cinematography was that you knew that something had
00:07:29.600
to happen at every given point they weren't going to allow him for example to get on a truck and ride
00:07:36.640
it for 20 minutes because it's supposed to be happening in real time there's only one time in the movie
00:07:41.520
where there's a cut and it's when he gets knocked out and one of the two main characters uh yes one
00:07:47.200
of the two main characters and the rest of the movie is supposed to be in real time so i found that kind
00:07:54.160
of distracting because i was always waiting for okay when's the next thing going to happen when's the
00:07:58.000
next thing going to happen i know that this can't take us too long i mean no so that's that's fair about
00:08:03.680
the nature constraint of trying to do a a one-er a one-shot style movie um because if everything is in real
00:08:11.200
time and we're not going to have cuts that smooth and jump the process you know cut to the next
00:08:16.320
relevant scene unless you're tarantino in once upon a time in hollywood where you will throw in for fun
00:08:22.800
along extended driving sequences right for the mere joy of brad pitt's charisma driving a car which
00:08:29.200
actually is real his charisma driving a car does exist but all that aside yeah it means that plot wise
00:08:36.960
you know the conceit of this is going to limit what could feasibly happen in the story it's kind
00:08:42.480
of like how in a horror movie you know that bad things happening to the main character only occur
00:08:47.600
in certain shots when you're in the close-up on the character from a certain angle you know you're
00:08:52.000
safe and the jump scare is not going to happen because you couldn't film the jump scare that way
00:08:55.840
it wouldn't work whereas once you go out to a mid shot oh no now i know something's going to happen
00:09:01.280
whereas if you're in a really wide shot oh i'm safe now because then we wouldn't be able to get the
00:09:05.280
money's worth out of the special effect because we wouldn't see him well right so oh the big shot's
00:09:09.520
frightening in a horror movie i know conventions of cinematography you can only do it here so in
00:09:14.400
this movie as you were mentioning uh at one point so main characters are trying to get from a to b
00:09:19.360
what's helpful in traveling distances automobiles so the main character gets on a truck a troop transport
00:09:26.000
to go and you know that well the movie's not going to cut so we're not going to watch this guy for the
00:09:31.440
next hour and a half or hour and 15 minutes of the movie sitting in the back of a truck
00:09:36.000
so he's not going to be on the truck for long and so certain beats and pacing and elements in the
00:09:40.640
movie you can predict will turn out a certain way which takes you out of it because now you're thinking
00:09:45.360
about the constraints of the style on the movie and for something like this you don't want to be taken
00:09:51.360
out of it like that it's not like tarantino where the style is the movie right here it's meant to get
00:09:57.600
out of the way of filmmaking in general so that you can like feel the experience of these soldiers
00:10:03.520
so it is kind of like uh it's an irony in this movie that you're pointing out is that
00:10:08.720
the nature of the style to make it one shot give you dread everything like that give the exhausting
00:10:14.160
nature of this hero's journey through uh the world war one battlefield oh that's the artistic mission
00:10:19.680
of the movie and then yet we're being taken out of achieving that because of the very way that
00:10:25.360
you're trying to get there right so yeah no that's a fair criticism of the movie also trying to find
00:10:29.520
the seams oh how did they do the next sequence here because i know they didn't literally film
00:10:34.560
all of this at once so like you know like um when you're watching a magician's act you're trying to
00:10:39.760
figure out how you did it a little bit of that in here yeah wasn't an obstacle to me but i agree that
00:10:46.720
is a fair criticism it's a fair constraint on the style that you're going for with that imperfection
00:10:51.280
of mind still great no and i i would agree with those with what you said and then the last thing
00:10:56.320
that kind of bothered me and then i kind of want to say just a couple short things that i liked was
00:11:01.360
that because the whole thing was shot this way it felt like sam mendez was the main character the camera
00:11:07.680
was the main character and i think that may have been the point in a lot of ways but i not a huge fan of
00:11:15.760
that i tend to i'm not a big fan of really artsy films that are for the sake of the art and not for
00:11:21.360
the character development or the plot or are made for me film is about getting to know characters and
00:11:28.480
getting to know and getting into their heads and and going through specific plot things that can't
00:11:33.600
happen very easily on stage or whatever it is so when the cinematography which i also am a huge fan of
00:11:40.160
cinematography i think it's cool but i don't like when the cinematographer and the director
00:11:45.280
become the main focus of the film you don't like it when the style is the substance yes that's
00:11:51.680
exactly right so you say that the um characters are the main point of the story and to me it's not
00:11:58.240
necessarily so that being character and plot driven is what the point of a film is for its story for its
00:12:05.520
artistic message uh you know i don't like artsy stuff that's long and indulgent it doesn't actually
00:12:10.240
have a point we saw the movie we're never really here starring joaquin phoenix at a given weight with
00:12:15.040
a given bad relationship with an awkward mother as a given form of socially estranged deranged man
00:12:21.120
aside from all that i didn't think this movie was that this movie did not really care about its
00:12:25.680
characters that much the actors were acting they had characters but it's not a character driven movie
00:12:32.720
in that you reveal things about the character as they develop and they change over the course of the
00:12:38.160
movie that's not the point here instead the characters are there so that you care about them as
00:12:43.920
men so that the horrors and threats and dangers around them acting upon them are something that
00:12:50.160
you care about because they're happening to a human being and your empathy comes into play and the
00:12:55.120
artistic purpose of this movie was to have a sense of empathy for the scale of horror of experience of
00:13:02.960
being a world war one soldier going through this and it did it i think effectively and i think it did it
00:13:08.800
in a worthy way i think that's a goal that does matter in the same way that poetry is different
00:13:13.520
from prose you know prose novel you have a journey you have a plot characters develop you're accomplishing
00:13:19.520
something and it can be written in spark notes a poem puts you in a place and a feeling and an emotion
00:13:24.720
and it says a state of it gives a state of mind in a way that you couldn't just explain a more dry
00:13:30.160
normal speech it's just a different artistic purpose this is more like a poem but it wasn't artsy
00:13:35.680
fartsy so it wasn't as incoherent as a poem might otherwise be and i think it did it the one shot i
00:13:41.440
think accomplished it you just feel this unrelenting sense of anxiety and exhaustion you have moments of
00:13:46.880
reprieve that then just kind of shift into horror again i don't think you could accomplish that the
00:13:52.320
same way with like normal traditional breaks because you get a reprieve you have a sense that this scene
00:13:57.440
is for this this scene is for that whereas in this movie everything just flows and so you have the
00:14:02.080
sense of like oh buoy and sam floating back up out of the deep where it was dragged down and then oh
00:14:07.120
god the horror's coming back and like back underwater well what i will say is that now that i have had
00:14:13.680
more time for this to kind of percolate i think the movie's grown on me because the more times we've
00:14:19.600
reviewed this the more time i've had to kind of reflect on it and i do think that it's absolutely worth
00:14:27.520
seeing i think there is more worth to a film like this than i originally gave it credit for
00:14:34.240
and i do think that there are these special moments in the film that for me feed my soul in a way that
00:14:42.400
if this was just you know following someone through their trials and tribulations it wouldn't but there
00:14:48.240
are some character moments that i think are really really special and give it that little extra
00:14:54.560
bit of soul soul yeah and so i do think that it's worth seeing and i tell us about the scene in the
00:15:02.160
movie there's a moment where one of the main characters shows up and sees this woman who is
00:15:09.680
taking care of another person's child she found their child in this go war orphan baby and there's just
00:15:17.200
this emotional connection between a soldier and a civilian in this moment where he probably hasn't
00:15:24.400
seen a woman or anyone who's not a soldier for a very long time especially a baby and the innocence of
00:15:32.560
a baby in the midst of all of this destruction is i thought was really well done and really moving and
00:15:39.200
a really important aspect of the story that wit or of the film rather that um gate like i said gave it
00:15:46.400
that that that little extra bit of soul that makes it worth seeing i mean yeah that scene was really
00:15:52.400
quite affecting and uh you know i think what's pointing about it is you know you have the baby in
00:15:57.440
the war tummy of the woman and so woman's the domesticity it's away from war even if she's caught
00:16:02.720
in the middle of it like the front line troop so he doesn't see that and um the one with the baby
00:16:08.720
you at once have like a feeling of irony that like woman and the home front and baby the future for your
00:16:15.040
country for any country for any civilization is there and is so fragile and is so hope inspiring
00:16:20.720
but its fragility is so threatened by the mass destruction of the war that it's ironic that a
00:16:25.920
country could go to war for the sake of the fragile woman the fragile child but by its nature be so
00:16:31.520
destructive that you can't imagine a woman or baby existing in the wars and it's just like that kind of
00:16:36.720
a thing not to be hippy-dippy about it because i'm not being hippy-dippy but i'm not extending that to be
00:16:40.640
i was not gonna say hippy-dippy i was gonna say just very philosophical in a moment that yeah as
00:16:45.520
a literature major it's a second nature to the degree it's useful it's nice to the degree it's
00:16:49.920
annoying and self-indulgent i apologize it's a very good choice to slap that in there uh the previous
00:16:55.200
time that we attempted this review i made this comparison i just want to make it now if you've
00:16:59.040
seen children of men a movie from the mid-2000s starring quite own julianne moore it's a dystopic
00:17:06.080
future story i believe it was a novel and then adapted to film mankind has stopped fertility not
00:17:11.360
deliberately just people have not been having more kids a new person has not been born in 18 years
00:17:16.720
and so there's this sense of decay and dread and falling apart to all society because without a
00:17:21.920
future the economic base is falling apart people aren't motivated depression is rampant society is
00:17:26.400
kind of unraveling the main character ends up being responsible for the protection of the one woman with
00:17:31.680
the first new child in 18 years and so just there's a moment where there's all this fighting
00:17:35.600
happening and then the baby starts crying and all the adults all the grown people are fighting
00:17:40.640
stop and there's an eerie silence all these soldiers all these gorillas are doing nothing and they're in
00:17:45.360
awe as the woman is carrying her baby shepherded by clive owen down the stairs it's a very affecting
00:17:51.440
scene this movie had very strong vibes of it just a baby in a war zone the innocence the fragility
00:17:56.880
the sense of context for why any of this would be taking place very powerful before we go i do want
00:18:02.480
to say my criticism of the movie oh which is your criticism of the movie well it's it's more of
00:18:07.040
like a kitschy thing okay but you and i share this so your video game analogy yeah in the previous
00:18:12.000
edition you brought up a very important point which we're calling the last review of the the last
00:18:16.320
edition the last edition second edition this is third edition review new annotations you have to pay
00:18:21.280
another full price for this it's like a college textbook oh i love that yeah yeah guys subscribe below
00:18:26.080
that's that's your payment so the movie was like a video game in the sense that it's not just over the
00:18:32.480
character but you have checkpoints and npcs voiced by famous actors what do we mean by that well you
00:18:39.840
may have seen from the trailer that colin firth is a general at some point in the movie giving orders
00:18:46.240
to the two main soldiers so that they can go and do their mission so we start off with like the opening
00:18:51.200
cutscene you know a little movie within the video game where a big important plot point happens yeah so
00:18:56.160
it's colin firth celebrity cameo focusing on him yes very conspicuously because almost no one else in the
00:19:02.320
movie is famous except for these npcs you just keep hitting these famous people and for a movie
00:19:08.560
that's all about trying to bring you in and make it feel like you're the one experiencing it it's the
00:19:15.920
easiest way to take you out of the story because you're like hey look it's benedict cumberbatch like
00:19:20.560
hey look it's richard madden from game of thrones and the bodyguard right what oh it's mark strong
00:19:25.520
of every guy ritchie movie fame wow and it's just like every 20 minutes there's a british celebrity who
00:19:31.520
comes in to be world war one edition british celebrity cameo and it's like it's like why why
00:19:36.560
would you go for that yeah it's so conspicuous it's so upsetting it's funny because if you take
00:19:42.480
an actor and he's well known but you give him a role then it gives him the opportunity to be
00:19:49.280
in that role to be taking on a different character but when you put him in for two minutes just in
00:19:54.400
the middle it's like oh there's that actor he came to get a paycheck and lend his credibility right
00:19:59.440
and it's not to say that they didn't act well they did but you have two minutes on screen and
00:20:04.640
everyone knows you as and recognizes you so it's just it's just put a mustache on him it's fine
00:20:10.720
it's bandit car rush no it's not it's a mustachioed it's mustache general it's mustache general
00:20:16.560
he's great yeah bring it your general mustache man to finish off this review i think we all know
00:20:21.280
the answer but would you recommend this film oh absolutely see it in theaters if you can whatever
00:20:27.200
is the biggest baddest cinema experience that you have access to if it's an imax seat in imax if you
00:20:33.280
have a better quality theater splurge if it's more expensive then the lower quality theater this
00:20:38.560
deserves to be full spectrum full scope it's something as an experience that film uniquely
00:20:45.360
can accomplish as compared to small screen television as compared to live theater as
00:20:49.920
compared to a novel and it deserves to be respected in terms of what's trying to achieve and i would
00:20:55.520
recommend it as well again i didn't feel as strongly as jacob but i do think it's worth seeing and i
00:21:01.600
would say go see it so thank you guys so much for watching please subscribe to my channel and blog if
00:21:06.880
you haven't already head over to my twitter instagram and facebook and follow me there and we'll see you