Dunkirk

This movie is so paper thin I really can't write much about it. So many missed opportunities in a film about one of the most spectacular and complex battles of WWII. I can see what Nolan tried to do here, a kind of British "Thin Red Line" (there's even wind in the grass, lol, i kid you not), but he failed spectacularly. There are no memorable characters to be found here, and one wonders even if there are any actual characters at all. Not one, not one of them has any semblance of a character arc. Not one. Again, I see how Nolan tried to convey the impersonality of war and insignificance of the individual but he did it with such a heavy, clumsy hand, providing us with no counterpoint with which to drive the point home. It's basic screen writing stuff really. I'd expect such ineptitude from a first year film student but not from a supposed "master of the craft".

But anyways, this could have been forgivable if the film was more about the event itself, but it fails at that too. After watching the film, you'd be given to believe that the Battle of Dunkirk was fought by three Spitfires (100 were lost over the beeches alone), 1 German heinkel, a couple of stukas, 2 destroyers or a dozen or so boats... Oh yes and maybe a few hundred men standing quietly on a beach, doing nothing except desperately trying to look morose and dejected in a faintly passive-aggressive way. It's ridiculous. We are talking about total and absolute chaos happening there, hundreds of thousands of rifles alone discarded on the beach, not to mention guns, artillery, trucks... Burning and sinking ships of all sizes all across the horizon, parts of beaches inaccessible from rotting corpses washing up with tides. This was actually way bigger than D-Day landings in terms of men and equipment stuffed in a very small patch of land. Half a million desperate men stuffed in a small town, bombarded incessantly and under constant attack from bombers. Where did all those people defecate, what did they eat ffs? I wanted to know that, really. That at least would have given some much needed humanity to the so-called-characters Nolan keeps yanking around like so much puppets. So many missed opportunities there...

If Nolan wanted to do a tight little film about isolation and desperation of being on the loosing side of the war, he had plenty of other places and battles to choose from. Just ask around. Or if he simply had to insist on Dunkirk, then we should have seen this total chaos all around our protagonists, in the background at least - that would have served as a really powerful, so desperately needed counterpoint to the individual suffering and heroism.

And this brings me to the final point. The movie is one tone only. A monotone repetition of sights and emotions we've seen and experienced before. No one cracks a joke. No one really breaks down. No one has an embarrassing moment. There are no ups and downs, it's just some morose faceless robots performing obvious actions leading towards a bleedingly obvious goal. One single emotional and narrative tone from the beginning to the end. The entire emotional and narrative content of the movie would have fit snugly into a 20 minute short, and that is pretty much how long it takes before you start yawning. The best thing that can be said about the movie is that individual scenes are well directed and worth experiencing. But that is the real problem here - the film is constructed as a series of impressive "experiences" rather than cohesive piece of drama (And this particular historical event is almost uniquely stuffed with dramatic opportunities. It's almost as if golden-age Hollywood writers wrote the script for the actual event.) In other words, it's a Dunkirk theme park rather than a movie. You take rides. And that's it. And even those become repetitive after a while.

...it isn't Nolan's worst film.

Where to begin? This was an all-star crew of filmmakers - cinematographer, vfx producer, sound designers and mixers, composer, producers, and yet somehow Nolan managed to undermine them all.

I think the intent was to show the human side of the event by giving us, I suppose, three vignettes of individual stories. And at that it (sort of) works. It's at least a good idea for a film, even if it's completely botched by cinematography that spends more time being artistic than serving the story.

Music is a powerful part of cinema and it's very apparent here because the score is literally the only thing that stirred any emotion in me at any point - when it wasn't making my entire body physically hurt. Maybe that was the point? To emulate the stress of actually being in combat? If so it's well executed.

The actors did their very best to make you care about them but they're fighting the script every step of the way. They're given nothing to work with: at no point is a first name revealed, nor are we given any solid reason to care about any of them, no relatable moments; unless I suppose you've had a head injury, been shot or bombed, or swam the English Channel.

The lack of dialog and overabundance of score combined with the lack of plot, almost non-linear narrative, and dependence on pretty cinematography make the whole thing feel more like an art film. Which is nice but if you want to make experimental cinema don't call it Dunkirk and sell it as a war film.

Nolan has in the past given us excellent sound design, brilliant mixing, a good score, great dialog, and cinematography that doesn't get in the way of the story - sometimes more than one at a time. This film fails on almost every point.

It could have been worse though. It could have been Interstellar - a film with its head so far up its own a#! that it's nearly unwatchable even once.

The most important lesson in the history of our humanity, surpassed in genre, religion among other moral aspects, is simply the survival of the species or a human being in question. Our most basic instinct is survival and when we unite, forgetting our differences (as a group of Individuals, not nations), for the sake of our survival and our well-being, the human race shines in the most intense sense possible. The cooperation between several elements, to come out alive from a complicated situation.

One scene, caught my attention when a group of Allied soldiers were surrounded in a ship and this same ship was being attacked on all sides by the German troops. One of the characters was being forced out of the ship to see if the tide sea was rising or not. Out of fear, this character did not want to leave the ship, it was when an English soldier replied: for the others to survive, one person has to die.

The theme of this film is survival, especially surviving in a difficult situation, is in itself a great victory

Nothing is better expressed in this film and executed in a way with as much talent as Nolan achieved in making with this film. Not only by itself, the message is passed to the audience in a clear and perfect way as is demonstrated in small scenes that help convey this message and build a fitting end to the film itself.

The film goes straight to the narrative and action of the movie without losing in passing with interesting monologues, unlike Inception, a film in which Nolan himself created a character with the sole purpose of explaining the rules of this universe for the audience, this is the apex of Nolan as a Film director and he performs his work in a simple and exemplary way. So Dunkirk is his smaller commercial movie, but with the bonus without unnecessary scenes that could crumble the experience of the film.

The performances are excellent and accompany the director's talents (the direction of the film itself) and the script in a cohesive, simple and direct way, highlighting Fionn Whitehead, Mark Rylance and of course the very competent Kenneth Branagh. These excellent actors help immerse the audience in the cinematographic aspect of the movie itself to make the experience as real and emotional as possible.

Again, congratulations to Nolan for choosing actors relatively unknown to the general public, but outstanding in their work of acting. Instead of trying to choose famous actors (whose private lives are always in the mouths of the people and the magazines), these people are celebrities and not actors. For this reason I never managed to pass the first act of Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg made a mistake filling his film with the most popular Hollywood All Star cast of famous actors at that time (their lives were so exposed that it was hard to see those people as soldiers or survivors of WWII). At this point, Nolan fared better than Spielberg.

By completing this great experience, special and sound effects are applied in an exemplary way and these same technologies make almost perfect use of the IMAX screen. The technical and aesthetic aspects are very good, as it comes this habit in this type of film with this type of budget (105 millions). The cinematography is very good (almost perfect, like in most of Nolan movies) and the camera movements are agile and very beautiful.

See the aerial combat of the characters of Tom Hardy (Farrier) and Jack Lowden (Collins) in aerial planes that looked with great and amazing beauty in fighting against the planes of the Germans. A technical amazing work of Nolan and his production team. Amazing, no doubt. Especially on the IMAX screen, where the film shows all its beauty, and if there is a movie that deserves to be seen in IMAX, it is one, this new work of Christopher Nolan, no doubt. The ambitious ideas of the filmmaker and the great sequences in parallel assembly that characterize his works. Making the storytelling move to viewers in three different locations (The Mole, The Sea and The Air). In a cohesive, precise and confusing way. This film shows a great talent of Nolan, and it reaches his talent to create sequences in parallel assembly the characters of the film in a brilliant way. The soundtrack composed by the veteran Hans Zimmer is amazing, Hans in turn creates a memorable theme for the theme of World War II. Fantastic and great.

The great and only problem I see that disturbs the experience of the film is limited by the PG-13 and thus limit the blood and violence, for God's sake, it is a film about a war blood and violence are common. At times it seemed like I was looking at some scenes and these same scenes seemed so artificial and displaced from the film itself, like the scene of the soldiers corpses coming to the beach, or the English troops being smashed by the sinking ship (two clear examples that PG-13 influenced negatively the movie).

One problem that some people go through seeing this movie is the lack of depth in some characters, however there are characters with depth, but not the kind of depth shown through dialogues or exposition. Nolan wanted to show something bigger. And I think Nolan did it. Nolan created in this movie to show the question of survival and its consequences in the lives of the people close to war and the soldiers who were fighting in that war. He wanted to show us how and survival define us, and I think he got the message very well across this movie. Even for this, he sacrificed some dramatic depth. Depth for certain characters, however Nolan passed a larger message, which surpasses any dramatically deep element. Nolan wanted to get something bigger. And in my opinion he did it.

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.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised how many people don't like this movie in an era of CGI, reboots, remakes, sequels, prequels, and generally easy to digest movies/tv shows. This is a real Christopher Nolan movie, not a Batman, but a real Christopher Nolan movie like Memento or Prestige. Watch it a few times. Pay attention to the details. Appreciate the sensory experience.

Most of these bad reviews are because the person watched it once and was upset they weren't spoon fed every aspect of the characters and story. There is a ton of characterization and a great story but you have to pay attention.