It is a pretty film - signs of branding - in the way the trench shots show the soldiers with clean uniforms and lots of London lads having a bit of fun as extras. It is deliberately set up for young audiences who know nothing about history nor have any interest in seeing war for what it is. Compared to the realistic war films of the past like 'A Bridge Too Far' or 'A Deer Hunter', there is a shocking absence of realism, yet...

Sam Mendes is a serious film director - perhaps someone more suited to making films about intimate relationships. He is an Oscar winner and whatever that may mean 'American Beauty' is an abstruse study of masculine psychic obsessions. It disturbs me greatly because the drama portrays its characters as victims of some transcendental misunderstanding and self satisfaction as the only plausible human motivation. Indeed there is intimacy in reducing a world war down to the points of view of two individual foot soldiers. Although it is set in WWI, the film is not about war as such. But then again, if the film is not about war (just set in it), it isn't clear what else it might be about. Ostensibly the film is based on a war-time adventure story told by a relative of Mendes who survived the war. Whether the veracity of original tale can be substantiated is a moot point. Although these two guys are in constant mortal danger, Mendes cannot manage suspense, you know, the kind you get in abundant doses even in bad horror movie genres. He certainly has not studied Hitchcock!

The intent of the director is to render the impression that the whole film is a single continuous shot, even though it is achieved through technical tricks rather than the genuine single shot in Alexander Sokurov's 'The Russian Ark'. Unfortunately the discomforting feeling of production fakery is palpable throughout the film given the self imposed technical complications in the scene changes. Everything, lighting, sound, is so deliberately set up for good taste that the audience helplessly admires the imagery without ever being allowed to leap into the story. Naturalistic narration is completely compromised by the requirements of the seemingly continuous motion whereas a storyline, carried forth in conventional dialogue like this one, would be better structured with conventional cuts, dull though the script may be.

Am I supposed to think, sitting in the darkness of a small cinema, that I am enjoying all this cleverness and good taste? If anything, the viewing follows the production logic of enforced determinism which makes Video Games the banal and addictive kinetic experiences that they are. To think that cinema can learn something from this is complete folly.

I think this compulsion to be 'innovative' is a lamentable tendency in contemporary cinema. A glance through Youtube these days is all one needs to confirm the feeling that the B-Movie makers of the 1940's and the 1950's had a narrative skill now lost to the modern filmmaker. High definition digital imaging is certainly a regression in terms of picture quality, compared to the glory days of cinemascope, especially for showing big events like wars. It is a real pity that despite great technical progress, there would not be a single cinema in the whole world still equipped to show films like 'Gone With the Wind' or 'Lawrence of Arabia'.