The final half hour is simply transcendent. I feel like the ending took a year off my life. I was so tense my leg was bouncing like a jackhammer. But we're so steeped in the language of cinema we don't notice those tricks, and a single take can feel odd and un-cinematic. In theory, a single unbroken take should be unobtrusive because it's like standing there yourself, with no artificial cinema trickery such as editing. But the illusion is fragile, all too easily calling attention to itself when it should be disappearing into the background. When it works, it's thrillingly immersive. The one-shot thing is something of a double-edged sword, however. As the camera is unblinkingly funneled along the trench the feeling grows that they're on a preset path, following an inevitable and inescapable track with no say in their destiny. Men merging with mud, corpses sinking from sight in the filth. When they near the front lines, the soldiers lining the walls literally become part of the trenches. The camera drifts from the green fields beyond and follows the two boy soldiers as they descend into a trench and on through the dugouts and defenses of the Great War, beginning a journey that will take them deeper into the bowels of the earth and the depths of inhumanity.
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