When they left their own trenches and moved across no man's land, that was one of the more chilling parts of the film, seeing all of the dead men strewn about, their horses, death scattered everywhere.
And that was the experience J. R. R. Tolkien took back with him (he served on the Western Front, I believe) when he created the Dead Marshes in the LOTR trilogy.
The whole No Man's Land sequence was almost unbearably tense. And it was simply two guys walking. All it took was the scenery, one-take (or clever editing) and a foreboding score.
I think the score made this scene 1000% more tense. Louder and faster, almost to the point where you’d feel anxious to see what’s on the other side of the trench
In way older movies they didn't have scores for most of the movies, if at all and would have to build suspense through acting and scenery alone. Even without color. The musical score is done masterfully here and ads a building on top of the movie. It's more impactful with the music but even without it some scenes would still do very well without it.
That shot going down the Crater and the camera went along the water. That was sick as hell!!! They could have followed them to the left. Nope, we’re going to do it the hard way
My grandfather was killed in this war in this same year 1917. I have a photo of him and my grandmother on their wedding day, both young and beautiful, unaware of what was to come. When I was a young boy in the 1960s she once told me she still missed him.
@@low5738 Right above me hangs the photo of my great grandfather. He was captured by the British in 1916 and spend 4 years in captivity. If he had died back then, I wouldn't exist. He learned English as PoW and even later in his life he called "Kartoffeln" "potätesle" because in English it's potatoes. Life is crazy.
@@jacobpowers352 Wars don't end when the war is declared over. The affects reach far beyond for not only the lost but those injured as well. Blessings to your family sir.
The whole sequence crossing no man's land was when I knew this was going to be a special movie. The commitment to never cutting surprised me, in that it forced the audience to see how these characters deal with a traumatic situation from moment to moment. It grounded the whole thing in a way I didn't expect.
Yeah, after watching They Shall Not Grow old and seeing how desolate no man’s land really was, I was impressed with how well Sam Mendez was able to recreate such a horrifying wasteland.
One detail that they added that made me happy was how the german trenches were better than the british ones, being less muddy and reinforced with concrete. This was because the german lines were built on a elevated position so it was less damp, and german high command decided to heavily invest into fortifying the trenches because they correctly guessed that the war will enter a stalemate, as opposed to the british who thought trench warfare would be temporary and only made temporary grade fortifications.
The didn't just assume it would be temporary, they full on wanted to make it as uncomfortable for their soldiers as they could to not be advancing. From what I understand, visiting officers would dismantle any improvements made for comfort where they could find them. 'You want out of the mud? Then defeat the Germans!' was the mindset.
Sam: "There are dead things- ...dead faces in the water!" Gollum: "All dead, all rotting! Elves and men and orcses... A great battle long ago... the 'Dead Marshes;' yes, yes! That is the name! This way. Don't follow the lights!" (Sam stumbles on a puddle) Gollum: "Careful now! Or hobbits go down to join the dead ones and light little candles of their own!"
The most horrifying thing for me about this movie were those corpses. Those were men once. Ordered to charge in another hopeless assault. And now their bodies lay there, forgotten and rotting away for months, maybe years, before another soldier just happens across them.
@@greenthunder1000 jeez. Heres the hothead who cant think outside their own brick skull. I mean theres more people who focus on WW2 and its impact and tend to not comment on WW1s impact. Its not necessarily totally forgotten, but its typically overshadowed by WW2. Sorry i didnt write a novel for my original comment so your thick head would not have gotten so worked up over it. My bad
rewinded this scene like 5 maybe more beautifully directed, great musical score Thomas Newman never dissapoints (Less than zero, Shawshank redemption, Green mile, American beauty, Road to perdition, Revolutionary road among others) just bravo
I love the hard work, cinematography, score, visual details put into this scene. But what really makes me love it even more is that they decided to go with “Fuck me! They really have gone!” That’s exactly what an enlisted infantryman would say. That’s authenticity right there that brings it home for me, as a Veteran.
The music early on complimented everything so well. It portrayed a very grim and ominous mood to an environment that is the closest thing to actual hell on earth.
Oh, and it wouldnt just be the bodies, though that likely would be the worst. Those trenches and craterz would have been occupied for months and the accumulation of piss and feces would have been impressive. They would have taken steps to dispose with latrines etc, but sometimes when a soldier has to go and he cant leave his post....
when i saw this in theatres this part of the no mans land sequence hit me hard. the music changes at this particular point to help tell the story the landscape of the crater is telling. this is a single, enormous shell that took something like 20 lives. The crater makes you imagine how tragic and powerful the moment of impact was. one hit, immense death. It speaks to the absolute waste and tragedy in war greater than any moment in the sequence. What a masterful scene. Where they can make walking and a hole in the ground bring chills
Crossing no mans land, the soundtrack is called Gehenna. Youll remmeber the general referring to the rhyme “down to gehenna or up to the throne, he who travels fastest travels alone” Gehenna was a garbage dump outside of Jerusalem during the roman era of occupation. Originally it was the valley where the Judean kings would sacrifice children by fire, since then it was a “cursed place” it became a dump and its where unwanted children were thrown, garbage, dead or dieing people and animals, the fires burned continuously there. Leapers and the homeless went there to eat, it is a depiction of hell. Hence, no mans land. If you die in it, you’d stay there until you were either buried by the dirt or churned to pieces by shell fire, eaten by rats and the buzzards, or if you were lucky enough, recovered if you were close enough and taken to be buried in the rear. It was not a place you wanted to be, shell fire, leftover gas, or even mustard agents strewn through the mud, unexploded ordinance, snipers, MG fire. The dead and dieing, trench raiders, half decomposed corpses. WW1 on a scale was never before and never will be exceeded until the battle of Mageddo, WW2 was world wide BUT ww1 was horrifying for those in it. those who get excited about war have no idea of what is involved with it and what its capable of. Do not dare go there, your eyes see it but your mind cant comprehend it.
I watched this film when it first came out 5 times in a row and this scene scared the fuck out of me worse than any horror movie I've ever seen... I read a lot of first hand accounts from ww1 soldiers and whoever directed this film did a great job.
Just...it looks like they’re in a purgatory...a hellish land, We can only imagine what it was like and what if felt like to physically see that with their own eyes...
The straight finger trigger discipline and high ready position of walking and aiming are a bit of modern anachronisms. It would have been more time period appropriate to have the finger either inside the trigger guard, or behind it. Also, walking with rifle above the hip and pointed forward, stock braced against the body, would have been more appropriate than walking and aiming with the stock in the shoulder. A tactic that was taught back then, where the soldier almost quite literally would shoot from the hip at close distances. So despite the uniforms, props, and setting, one of the biggest sellers of authenticity is also language, both spoken and body. Still, excellent film. If there was one thing that they captured well, was the foreboding feeling and sense of scale. It was incredibly gripping.
That bomb crater is absolutely MASSIVE. Maybe it was meant to portray the result of that ultra massive bomb(s) the Brits/Allies detonated after tunneling almost under the Germans. Imagine what it feels like to throw just a mere shovelful of dirt a few feet, then try to multiply the force necessary to propel such a massive amount that high and that far. Not at all an ordinary bomb crater, and quite unbelievably impressive for the set builders to dig and dress.
Or probably a dicke Bertha or those Austrian oversized mortars that were send to the western front. The amount of artillery on that front was just crazy.
I went to a crater on a school trip 20 years ago which was bigger than that would you believe! I think it was Lochnagar Crater. I'll never forget that school trip for many reasons. I grew up a lot with the things I saw there, it's really stuck with me.
The reason a human corpse smells so distinct is all the levels of iron in the body. Idk if you've ever smelled a dead body or large amounts of blood before, but it has a scent like a big bag of coins and rotting flesh.
How the fuck did this lose Best Production Design to Once Upon a Time In Hollywood? The sets on this film are epic in scale not seen since Cecil B Demille was directing
"No Man's Land is an eerie sight, at early dawn in the pale gray light. never a house and never a hedge, in No Man's Land from edge to edge. and never a living soul walks there, to taste the fresh of the morning air. only some lumps of rotting clay, that were friends of foemen yesterday". - Capt. James H. Knight-Adkin
I loved this movie, but one issue I have with it and Saving Private Ryan is how quiet many scenes are. War is an incredibly noisy business. Even if nothing is going on in your area there will be something going on in someone else's and artillery is LOUD. You are going to hear shells falling 20 miles away.
Unfortunately I haven’t seen this movie yet and will eventually so not concerned about “spoilers” but the way this movie was shot is pretty incredible. As for that war itself, I think it is more terrifying than the Second World War. Granted more weapons in that one but tactics were nearly suicidal in the first one.
I love this scene, but the camera shows the German trenches before the characters actually see down in them and I really feel like they could've timed that part better. The part I am commenting on is at 2:00. Pause the frame and you can see the Trenches, establishing that there is no one down there before the characters and music establish there is no one. This movie was amazing but I just wanted to point something out. Have a good day!
My question is even if the Enemy base wasn't abandoned why would those 2 go in all by themselves thinking they can over run the several troops that could have still been inside?
they cannot use telegraphs because both sides can intercept their conversation. So they relied on soldiers as messengers. It's scary to leave the trench but it is also breathtaking to walk across no man's land
I hope someday someone makes a similar movie about the eastern front of Ww1. We have seen so much already about the trenches of the Western Front, seeing the Eastern Front or maybe the southern front would be refreshing
Whenever actors flag each other with the gun's muzzle I'm never quite sure if it's because they are just stupid actors or because it was period appropriate behavior during the time period or something.
One near thing to note at the gap in the wire; The shell crater has two varieties of helmets. German and British showing both sides had fought over the strategic gap
This movie was a masterpiece beginning to finish it touched nearly every emotion and mood particularly the hopelessness that is the conflict in general and alot of anger regarding the Germans like the allied soldiers were probably feeling. Let me also say amusingly I named my cat Wilhelm, forgetting about the kaiser and after walking out of the theatre and heading home, I immediately changed it to Will.i.am.
I saw pictures of this hole but in real life and I was petrified by what bomb they used to make a crater that deep. Scary to think about the noise and huge kaboom felt through the land beneath my feet. Nothing else to do but clench my rifle
That hole was most likely made by a mining operation. During WW1 when both sides were locked in place, both sides resorted the medieval tactic of tunneling beneath the enemy and placing several hundred or thousands pounds of explosives beneath the enemy line and then detonating them. The most famous mining operation of WW1 occurred at Hill 60 near Ypres, Belgium. It was said when that when that mine blew, the sound could be heard all the way back in London. A type of warfare that was largely overlooked during WW1.
You can highkey watch the entire movie on RU-vid hahaha just gotta follow the trail of scenes. But obviously it’s just smarter to rent the movie or get hbo max haha. But I’ve following the rabbit hole to see how far into the movie I can get.
I really liked that they included the historical detail that the German trenches were better made. This wasn’t due to “German engineering “. It was deliberate by both the French, British and Germans Because the Germans stopped so deep into France their strategy was to hold what they had and negotiate from a position of strength. Their trenches were meant to be permanent fortifications. Because the strategy of the British and French was to repel the Germans their trenches were thought as temporary shelter while waiting to attack. Therefore not as well built up.
They: "Fuck me they really have gone" Last German: "Runda vom meim Grundstügg ihr scheiß Haider!" They: "What youre the last one surrender!" German: "Traud euch, kommt zu mir, ich schmeiß euch die Brügel naus!" They: "Wait, your the guy from Altschauerberg 8, the Dragonlord?" German: "ICH HEIß HERR WINKLER!!!!!"
