Dunkerque

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.

For a teenager today, Dunkirk must seem even more distant than the Boer War did to my generation growing up just after WW2. For some, Christopher Nolan's film may be the most they will know about the event.

But it's enough in some ways because even if it doesn't show everything that happened, maybe it goes as close as a film could to letting you know how it felt.

"Dunkirk" focuses on a number of characters who are inside the event, living it minute by minute.

Tommy, the soldier at the centre of the story, seems at first glance to be the antithesis of the Dunkirk legend. Maybe he fits a New Millennium sensibility rather than a 1940's one, more like a contestant on "Survivor". He does show initiative, but a soldier who throws away his weapon then "helps" wounded to the rear risked a court martial in every army from the Roman Legions on. The lines of stoic soldiers waiting patiently on the beach, the enduring image of the evacuation, seem almost like a backdrop as Tommy and his mate run through them.

The man who embodies the spirit to the full is Dawson, the civilian captain of the Moonstone. He is the sort of man who wins wars; the bloke who sticks to the task when others buckle under pressure; "There's no hiding from this thing son," he says to an officer whose nerve has cracked, all the while steering his little boat towards Dunkirk.

The scenes of aerial combat look so real it makes all other depictions pale in comparison. Peter Jackson once planned to do a remake of "The Dam Busters", but possibly Christopher Nolan would add another dimension to the retelling. The brilliant special effects serve the story. Much of the panorama of Dunkirk is glimpsed almost incidentally from the cockpit of fighter planes or by men struggling in the water.

There are surprises for anyone who thinks they know the story or have seen documentaries or other recreations of the event; it's very different to the crowded Dunkirk of "Atonement".

An unsettling score helps heighten the tension in a film that has you holding your breath in scene after scene.

This is a film that demands more than one viewing.

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)

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

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.