Almost exactly three years ago, going through something of a bump one weekend on top of a pre-existing minor breakdown, I over-rated 1917 because it touched some more-than-usually exposed nerve there. Well guess what Sam Mendes, you’ve kind of done it again. Your timing is impeccable. It’s a bit of a mess of a film, and certainly not as good as I think it is, but yet it got to me. It benefits a lot from the set dressing - I mean this mostly metaphorically, in Roger Deakins being unable to shoot anything non-sumptiously and Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross doing predictably stellar work with the score, but equally the actual set dressing is also very good. The cast, and inevitably Olivia Colman standing out, sell a script which is lacking on both a dialogue and storytelling level. It tries to do too much and doesn’t really succeed in any of those points. I knew all this going in, having had to churn out the FilmBath film note for this in about an hour last November, but even with that, I can’t tell you it didn’t speak to me in some way. There’s something clever to be said about films being what you project onto them. The magic of cinema indeed!