Dunkirk

If you read through the swarm of negative reviews, you might notice a common theme: boring, dull, lack of characters. It's incredibly disappointing that they seemed the miss the entire point of the film.This is not a film about heroic soldiers triumphing against all odds while blowing up Nazis with transformer-esque explosions.

This is a movie about scenes, not characters. -and every scene is memorable, from the bombings to the torpedoes to the aerial dogfights. My co-worker, who is obsessed with WW2 planes, noted how incredibly perfect they got the British Supermarine Spitfire from the roar of the Rolls-Royce engine to the rattle of the components in the cabin. The accuracy and intensity of the dogfight was captured perfectly as well, mimicking the aerial maneuvers, firepower and damage in a realistic and dramatic fashion. The torpedoes noticed only moments before impact with it's slow monotonous movement sent chills of realization down my spine. Even in the beginning of the film, the way in which the Nazi leaflets were presented gave you some glimpse into the panic and anxiety felt by those soldiers.

I felt the "lack of characters" was realistic and served the film as well. War is not about larger-than-life personalities with specialized weapons being bad-asses. It's about nameless and faceless soldiers facing an existential crisis, the possibility of randomized death, and how they can either respond with despair or hope.

If you want characters you can root for and a happy ending where the bad guy in vanquished, then there are plenty of movies for you. But if you want a small glimpse into the despair, anxiety, hope, courage, and will of the British WW2 fighters then there is no better film ever made than this one.

Director Christopher Nolan offers the viewer a pretty straightforward re-telling of the evacuation of British soldiers from the French port of Dunkirk in May of 1940, as the Germans encircled the town. The story is told from a strictly British perspective. Although we see some German planes involved in battles with RAF fighters as far as I can recall there isn't a single glimpse of a German soldier anywhere. Nolan then tells the story from three perspectives within that British perspective: on the land, on the sea and in the air. The land focuses on the solders awaiting rescue, the sea focuses mostly on the small private boats that made such a huge contribution to the effort (focusing on one boat in particular) and the air focuses on the battle by a small number of RAF pilots to protect their compatriots beneath against German planes. That structure was a bit confusing at first (especially as it was captioned on screen) but the story makes sense and that odd narrative structure is only a brief distraction.

There's not really a main character involved in this. The point seems to have been to portray the breadth of the Dunkirk evacuation at the expense of character depth. There's also no one moment that seems truly central, which means that the movie strikes you in the end of not really having built up to anything (aside from the actual evacuation, which admittedly is the most important thing.) But in some respects that made this movie seem at times less of a drama and more of a docu-drama if that makes any sense. The story-telling was a little bit lacking. I did appreciate that while the heroism of the British soldiers was front and centre, there was no shying away from a few more negative portrayals - shell-shocked soldiers, soldiers who just didn't want to fight anymore, soldiers who wouldn't even help their French allies. In that sense, this had a somewhat gritty feel, as befits a war movie.

It's not a bad movie. To me, it just missed the mark a little bit in terms of what I was expecting. (6/10)

Before you decide to watch "Dunkirk" I have a bit of a warning. While you would expect death and blood in a war film, some of the scenes in the film are amazingly tough to watch. There's actually very little blood, but there are some drowning scenes which are intense and awful. Now I am not saying don't watch it...just be prepared.

The story is a retelling of the escape of the British* from the beaches of Dunkirk. The German army was coming and the combined British and French forces were trapped with little apparent chance to escape. And, as an army of over 300,000 Brits dug in and waited, the Luftwaffe began chipping away at them....and ultimately would have killed and/or captured them all if it wasn't for a rag-tag flotilla of private boats which hastily arrived and spirited away about 80-90% of the men.

By the way, early in the film you hear someone speaking to the pilot (Tom Hardy) over the radio. The voice is that of Michael Caine....an odd and brief cameo.

The story is gripping, well told and brilliant. I have only one complaint, and I am surprised it made it to the film considering how amazing a director Christopher Nolan is. At one point, the scene switches between some men in a boat being attacked and a private yacht rescuing downed pilots. The scenes kept switching back and forth....but one was clearly at night and the other clearly was in daylight. This really didn't make any sense. Still, otherwise an amazing spectacle...a truly amazing war film.

Dunkirk is, in my opinion, yet another masterpiece from mastermind Christopher Nolan. Since everything that is brilliant about the film has already been said I will briefly write what I think of the film and also touch on a topic that some people are criticizing the movie for.

The fantastically directed film is told from 3 perspectives non chronologically. It superbly tackles the narrative and the non linear story doesn't at all pull you away from the intensity of the events happening on screen that don't stop from 00:00 to the last scene. Hans Zimmer most likely gives one of the most fitting scores for a war film ever. Sometimes there is only one note playing followed by heartbeat sounds and a ticking clock while other times a massive orchestra is interpreting what is going on on screen. The movie brilliantly projects the feeling of each and every soldier on the beach to the audience. Confusion, turmoil and fear. The cinematography was breathtaking and I felt anxious throughout most of the run time. There is no lead in this film and I can't really say anyone stuck out as giving a brilliant performance because it wasn't needed and I'll explain why.

The biggest criticisms of Dunkirk that I've heard of so far are that the characters are lacking in depth and that we aren't given anything to be invested in them. I feel like Nolan was trying (successfully) to make the audience care for each and every one of the men on the beach. He needed to have some form of "main characters" to be in the story so that we can see the events unfold from the direct perspective of all of the soldiers. Usually in war films (I'll use saving private Ryan as an example) the plot revolves around certain soldiers (like Cpt. Miller and Ryan) being in a war and doing things in the war but its still about THEM not THE WAR as much. In my opinion Dunkirk is a telling the STORY OF DUNKIRK. Not of Harry Style's character or Tom Hardy's character but of Dunkirk. What any of the "main characters" felt, every other soldier felt. Nolan resorted more to film-making techniques to tell the story rather than dialogue and that is why some people might have had a problem with the lack of character depth but realistically this type of terrible event wouldn't be a place for someone to "develop" as a character but rather a event where MEN WANTED ONLY SURVIVAL, and Nolan showed that perfectly. As for what the top review of Dunkirk on IMDb says about 'lack of emotion' in the film, I believe this to be a completely incorrect statement. Maybe he was referring to the lack of 'brotherhood amongst men' or the feeling of moral or something epic like that. Again the longing for the 'Saving Private Ryan' format of war films. What the reviewer fails to see is that realistically there was NO emotion on that beach besides fear and confusion. And I can safely say that Nolan and Zimmer and the DP all successfully gave us those feelings.

9.5/10

I love Christofer Nolan. Great director. Great movies. No doubt about that. But unfortunately I think the movie was boring. It had awesome fight scenes, with different camera angles, music, costumes but it did not keep you at the edge of your seat like his other movies.

Almost no dialogue. You can say that it is realistic, because it is a war scene but the viewer needs to know something about the characters in order to identify with them. I felt like I was watching on youtube different war scenes in a 2 hours movie. It did not create the suspense I was hoping.