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Dunkirk - Chris Nolan's latest film (1 Viewer)

MattFancy said:
Saw it yesterday. Was really well done. Felt like I was actually there while all this was happening.
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Yes, that is clearly what he is going for. I can understand @shader point about a lack about a lack of plot. The plot is very simple: people try to get back to England alive, but the movie is about putting you in the the middle of the action and experiencing what it was like for people actually there. I thought it did a great job of portraying the doom of the situation from the very start. I was on the edge of my seat for the entire film. Nolan may have relied a bit too much on the score to sell the drama, but it did pay off. He studied a lot of silent films for this movie so he could better understand how to use the actors, the crowds and the scenery to create tension since he knew there was very little dialogue. 

 
Ilov80s said:
Yes, that is clearly what he is going for. I can understand @shader point about a lack about a lack of plot. The plot is very simple: people try to get back to England alive, but the movie is about putting you in the the middle of the action and experiencing what it was like for people actually there. I thought it did a great job of portraying the doom of the situation from the very start. I was on the edge of my seat for the entire film. Nolan may have relied a bit too much on the score to sell the drama, but it did pay off. He studied a lot of silent films for this movie so he could better understand how to use the actors, the crowds and the scenery to create tension since he knew there was very little dialogue. 
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I agree. The dialog wasn't much, but I can see why Nolan didn't put much effort into the dialog. That really wasn't what this movie was about. To me, it was more about showing how desperate things were at the time and what those soldiers had to do to survive and make their way out of Dunkirk.

 
shader said:
Pretty good movie.  I thought the plot was rather bland.  I didn't care about a single character except the old man w/the boat.  They did a pretty horrific job of explaining the point/timeline/significance of this evacuation for all the non-history folks out there...

But the score/effects were 100% top-notch.  Every event seemed 100% realistic, from the way the bombers hit the bridge, to the ships sinking, the men jumping off, etc

Still a bit annoyed though.  The Germans were  closing in and surrounding Dunkirk.  I think they did a really poor job of capturing that feeling of doom and catastrophe that led to the evacuation.  They overcame it quickly because of the amazing score..but overall I just thought the script was about a 5/10, but then that imperfect script was done about as perfectly as you possibly could...aside from the fact that you could only hear about 50% of the dialog.
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I pretty much agree with this. 

 
Was planning on going Friday but then I had a stupid customer service issue for one of my customers that was caused by someone else and I had to spend most of the day fixing it. The weekend was doing stuff with the kids. Today, I have to go do the rooftop thing for the Cubs vs Sox game. Maybe tomorrow. I really want to see this. 

 
flarkworms said:
Saw it last night.  Thought it was good but it didn't live up to the hype.  Battle scenes were very intense and well executed, but there was zero character development, the timeline/storyline was quite confusing and the (limited) dialogue was difficult to understand, mostly because it was overwhelmed by the (fantastic) musical score..  I'd like to see it again with closed captioning. 
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When you say zero character development, do you mean that we learn nothing about any of the characters by observing how they react to the situation they find themselves in?  Or do you mean we don't learn anything about them personally (where they are from, who they have back home, which guy is the jokester, etc.)?

 
bigbottom said:
When you say zero character development, do you mean that we learn nothing about any of the characters by observing how they react to the situation they find themselves in?  Or do you mean we don't learn anything about them personally (where they are from, who they have back home, which guy is the jokester, etc.)?
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You have no idea about their backstories or some of their names.

 
Great question BB,,  Id assume listeners have little care for whose dying..  But, I'm thankful for the part about dialogue..  So many saying its a great movie is fantastic..  But, talk about a mountain out of a mole hill..  It irks me to not know whats being said   Worse yet my eyes aint so youthful

 
shader said:
Pretty good movie.  I thought the plot was rather bland.  I didn't care about a single character except the old man w/the boat.  They did a pretty horrific job of explaining the point/timeline/significance of this evacuation for all the non-history folks out there...

But the score/effects were 100% top-notch.  Every event seemed 100% realistic, from the way the bombers hit the bridge, to the ships sinking, the men jumping off, etc

Still a bit annoyed though.  The Germans were  closing in and surrounding Dunkirk.  I think they did a really poor job of capturing that feeling of doom and catastrophe that led to the evacuation.  They overcame it quickly because of the amazing score..but overall I just thought the script was about a 5/10, but then that imperfect script was done about as perfectly as you possibly could...aside from the fact that you could only hear about 50% of the dialog.
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you didn't get a sense of this from the way it was visually presented? The images told the tale, imo.

 
It's always interesting to see folks react to a new angle in a well-established genre.

Guess which movie spawned these reviews:

This movie is quite simply one of the worst I have ever had the displeasure of enduring. With the possible exception of the cinematography, this film has no redeeming qualities. The arrogance of the director and cast that they might actually pass this movie off as "deep" is sickening. Basically, in the three LONG hours of this film, only about twenty minutes of dialogue are spoken: hardly enough to offer any hope of character development for the movie's endless cast leading men.
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Quite possibly the worst waste of three hours I have experienced. I rarely knew who I was looking at, as the soldiers all looked the same, and even more seldom was the feeling that I should care about them.
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This film is misguided and sporadic, having only a vague plot, obscure goals, little to no characterization, and a pace so slow there is time to formulate your own cliche ponderings on life.
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I agree with Shader.  It wasn't until I went home and read a review that I understood the significance of the one day, one hour bit.

 
MattFancy said:
You have no idea about their backstories or some of their names.
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So? I liked that it bucked the traditional war movie plot points: everyone sitting around safe at night talking about parents, showing pictures of their girlfriends and talking about what they are going to do after the war. 

 
flarkworms said:
I agree with Shader.  It wasn't until I went home and read a review that I understood the significance of the one day, one hour bit.
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I thought it was explained well enough in the movie. The French forces kept loosing ground while the rest of the troops were basically trapped against the ocean. The British forces only wanted to take 30-40 thousand solders off the beach while there were over 400 thousand there, thus the importance of the civilian fleet. It was obvious how important that was by the reaction of the soldiers when the fleet arrived. They knew they were ####ed on that beach otherwise. 

 
MattFancy said:
You have no idea about their backstories or some of their names.
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There was minimal exposition.  The Branagh character was given a bit of this to set the scenario but other than that, the characters were thrown into the action.  I liked that Nolan avoided the familiar war movie tropes--the way it was presented had greater immediacy and realism.  It wouldn't have mattered if one of the soldiers had a pregnant girlfriend back in England.

 
The Gator said:
I thought it was explained well enough in the movie. The French forces kept loosing ground while the rest of the troops were basically trapped against the ocean. The British forces only wanted to take 30-40 thousand solders off the beach while there were over 400 thousand there, thus the importance of the civilian fleet. It was obvious how important that was by the reaction of the soldiers when the fleet arrived. They knew they were ####ed on that beach otherwise. 
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Right, again the movie literally shows you a map showing the Allies backed into a corner by German forces and copy that basically says "You are surrounded, love Hitler" 

 
Ilov80s said:
So? I liked that it bucked the traditional war movie plot points: everyone sitting around safe at night talking about parents, showing pictures of their girlfriends and talking about what they are going to do after the war. 
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Oh, I'm not complaining. Was just answering the poster's question about how detailed the character development was. I don't care that I didn't get a 10 minute story of each character. Knowing their background wouldn't have added anything, IMO. It was still riveting without knowing much about each solider.

 
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Great intense movie that I don't think I'll ever watch again. 

I will add that I was a little confused on the timing of events and what was going on for the first half of the movie.  I could tell that it was 3 story lines that were not in sync, but the short titles on The Mole 1 day (or whatever) did more to confuse than clarify.  This didn't distract me - made my mind try to piece things together. 

 
Finding that there are people that don't know the significance of the events of Dunkirk makes me rekindle a bit the idea of writing a book like "WW2 for Dummies/Homeschoolers." My son is homeschooled and the history book he used had like three pages on all of WW2. 

The problem with WW2 is that there's SO MUCH information available - but not much that is in an easily digestible, condensed form.

It's my opinion that Hitler effectively let the British off the hook on purpose at Dunkirk. Sure he wanted to use the tanks in France and wanted to throw Goerring a bone by letting the Luftwaffe do it's thing - but I really think he expected the British to sue for peace. He didn't want to fight England as I think he viewed them as similar blood. German Kaiser Wilhelm II was the granson of the English queen Victoria, after all. He didn't want to waste time on England and wanted to go into Russia ASAP.

 
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Andy Dufresne said:
Finding that there are people that don't know the significance of the events of Dunkirk makes me rekindle a bit the idea of writing a book like "WW2 for Dummies/Homeschoolers." My son is homeschooled and the history book he used had like three pages on all of WW2. 

The problem with WW2 is that there's SO MUCH information available - but not much that is in an easily digestible, condensed form.
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3 pages? For what grade level? The US History book we use has 3 chapters (probably 25-30 pages per chapter): one on the build-up to war and the start of the war before America, one on the war after America has entered and a third on how the war impacted America at home/the creation of a post war world. Even with that many pages it barely even scratches the surface of things that are out there. We have an elective called "World War 2" and even the guy that teaches it complains about all the things he has to leave out. 

 
Ilov80s said:
3 pages? For what grade level? The US History book we use has 3 chapters (probably 25-30 pages per chapter): one on the build-up to war and the start of the war before America, one on the war after America has entered and a third on how the war impacted America at home/the creation of a post war world. Even with that many pages it barely even scratches the surface of things that are out there. We have an elective called "World War 2" and even the guy that teaches it complains about all the things he has to leave out. 
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It was a high school text book. Granted it was more geared toward world history so it was trying to cover a lot of ground for a year's curriculum. But it should have gone more in-depth the closer it got to more recent history.

The general outline I would have would be in two sections covering each of the War in Europe & The Pacific. Europe would be is something like this:

1. WW1's end (Treaty of Versailles)  through Hitler's rise to power.

2. Anschluss/Annexation/Military Buildup/Occupying the Rhineland

3. The Phony War/Poland/Norway & Finland

4. Barbarossa

5. North Africa/Italy

6. Normandy

7. Endgame

 
Andy Dufresne said:
It was a high school text book. Granted it was more geared toward world history so it was trying to cover a lot of ground for a year's curriculum. But it should have gone more in-depth the closer it got to more recent history.

The general outline I would have would be in two sections covering each of the War in Europe & The Pacific. Europe would be is something like this:

1. WW1's end (Treaty of Versailles)  through Hitler's rise to power.

2. Anschluss/Annexation/Military Buildup/Occupying the Rhineland

3. The Phony War/Poland/Norway & Finland

4. Barbarossa

5. North Africa/Italy

6. Normandy

7. Endgame
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When I teach it, the details of the battles are almost completely left out. It's more about why the war happened (rise of dictators throughout Europe, Spanish Civil War, Versailles, American isolationism), the ideas of communism, fascism, totalitarianism, how the country was shaped by this (men, women, minorities, industry, economy) how it shifted the role of America in the world, morality in war (should we have dropped the atomic bomb for example). The class isn't about memorizing details of the war, but finding lessons that can translate to the current times. Then I always tie into more modern times: Rwandan genocide, plight of Serbians,current totalitarian dictators, etc. Anyway, that is all pretty far off topic. 

 
Andy Dufresne said:
Finding that there are people that don't know the significance of the events of Dunkirk makes me rekindle a bit the idea of writing a book like "WW2 for Dummies/Homeschoolers." My son is homeschooled and the history book he used had like three pages on all of WW2. 

The problem with WW2 is that there's SO MUCH information available - but not much that is in an easily digestible, condensed form.

It's my opinion that Hitler effectively let the British off the hook on purpose at Dunkirk. Sure he wanted to use the tanks in France and wanted to throw Goerring a bone by letting the Luftwaffe do it's thing - but I really think he expected the British to sue for peace. He didn't want to fight England as I think he viewed them as similar blood. German Kaiser Wilhelm II was the granson of the English queen Victoria, after all. He didn't want to waste time on England and wanted to go into Russia ASAP.
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I saw this with my BIL who's from South Africa.  He was much more knowledgeable about the background of this event.  I explained that if America wasn't involved, it wasn't covered in my grade school and probably wasn't covered in high school either. 

 
flarkworms said:
I was making the same point.
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Okay, I get that you don't know their background or some of their names.  But character development can also encompass gaining an understanding about how a person reacts to their surroundings.  Given what I understand about the event itself and the focused timeline of the movie, it wouldn't really make sense for people to be introducing themselves to one another or discussing their backgrounds.  So I would think that including that kind of character development would feel forced in a movie focused on this particular event.

 
Ilov80s said:
When I teach it, the details of the battles are almost completely left out. It's more about why the war happened (rise of dictators throughout Europe, Spanish Civil War, Versailles, American isolationism), the ideas of communism, fascism, totalitarianism, how the country was shaped by this (men, women, minorities, industry, economy) how it shifted the role of America in the world, morality in war (should we have dropped the atomic bomb for example). The class isn't about memorizing details of the war, but finding lessons that can translate to the current times. Then I always tie into more modern times: Rwandan genocide, plight of Serbians,current totalitarian dictators, etc. Anyway, that is all pretty far off topic. 
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It's crazy how far back you can go when considering the seeds of WW2 - The Hapsburgs/Austro-Hungarian empire, Bismarck/German Empire/Franco-Prussian War & Alsace-Lorraine...etc.

 
Nugget said:
How violent is the movie?  My son is going into 4th grade and loves WWII.  I don't want him to be scarred for life, but I do think this would be a cool movie to see in a theater.  

He did pretty well at the WWII museum in New Orleans and we talked about the holocaust for a while after that visit.
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Don't know if you have taken him to the movie, but here is a review that details everything that could be questionable for children.

http://www.kids-in-mind.com/d/dunkirk.htm

 
Nugget said:
How violent is the movie?  My son is going into 4th grade and loves WWII.  I don't want him to be scarred for life, but I do think this would be a cool movie to see in a theater.  

He did pretty well at the WWII museum in New Orleans and we talked about the holocaust for a while after that visit.
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It's not grotesque at all. I don't think there is a single bit of blood even. However, it is very violent. People are being shot, shot at, almost drowning, being are on fire, things are blowing and in general everyone is panicking all the time. It's as intense as a move can get IMO. The violence he could probably do ok with but the level of intensity might be too much. Plus the plot is not linear so he might get a little confused (although that won't disrupt the enjoyment for him). 

 
Andy Dufresne said:
It's crazy how far back you can go when considering the seeds of WW2 - The Hapsburgs/Austro-Hungarian empire, Bismarck/German Empire/Franco-Prussian War & Alsace-Lorraine...etc.
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Dan Carlin does a masterful job of spending the first 30 minutes or so of his 20 hour epic podcast about WWI talking about how one person can effect the ripples of history, when he finally gets to that one person (spoiler alert: Gavrilo Princip) and you think about how he set in motion currents that are still being felt today, well, it's pretty amazing. Highly recommend listening to it if you get a chance.

[/endhijack]

 
beer 30 said:
Dan Carlin does a masterful job of spending the first 30 minutes or so of his 20 hour epic podcast about WWI talking about how one person can effect the ripples of history, when he finally gets to that one person (spoiler alert: Gavrilo Princip) and you think about how he set in motion currents that are still being felt today, well, it's pretty amazing. Highly recommend listening to it if you get a chance.

[/endhijack]
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Not just one person, but an otherwise nobody of a person.

I'll have to check out that podcast. :thumbup:

 
beer 30 said:
Dan Carlin does a masterful job of spending the first 30 minutes or so of his 20 hour epic podcast about WWI talking about how one person can effect the ripples of history, when he finally gets to that one person (spoiler alert: Gavrilo Princip) and you think about how he set in motion currents that are still being felt today, well, it's pretty amazing. Highly recommend listening to it if you get a chance.

[/endhijack]
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That's kind of taking the Butterfly Effect to extreme.  If FF's car didn't make a wrong turn that day in Sarajevo or Princip missed for some other reason, WWI would have eventually been triggered by some other event.  The Hapsburgs, Romanovs and Hohenzollerns were destined to fall and be replaced by chaos.   If the Germans had won at the Marne in 1914 or if Wonder Woman didn't prevent Ludendorff's 1918 counteroffensive, the 20th Century would have been very different too.

 
JerseyToughGuys said:
you didn't get a sense of this from the way it was visually presented? The images told the tale, imo.
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Well yes I got a sense of it....but I feel I could have gotten a much better sense of what was happening with just a bit of dialogue.

However, upon further review, that's one of the unique aspects of this movie.  It's almost as if it wasn't a movie but a videotape of different parts of the war. 

 
I figured some folks would also be irritated by the lack of German soldiers. I rather enjoyed the way time, rather than a German with a rifle, was presented as the faceless enemy. 

:nerd:

 
Andy Dufresne said:
Finding that there are people that don't know the significance of the events of Dunkirk makes me rekindle a bit the idea of writing a book like "WW2 for Dummies/Homeschoolers." My son is homeschooled and the history book he used had like three pages on all of WW2. 

The problem with WW2 is that there's SO MUCH information available - but not much that is in an easily digestible, condensed form.

It's my opinion that Hitler effectively let the British off the hook on purpose at Dunkirk. Sure he wanted to use the tanks in France and wanted to throw Goerring a bone by letting the Luftwaffe do it's thing - but I really think he expected the British to sue for peace. He didn't want to fight England as I think he viewed them as similar blood. German Kaiser Wilhelm II was the granson of the English queen Victoria, after all. He didn't want to waste time on England and wanted to go into Russia ASAP.
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I have an encyclopedia set that I need to pull out of storage...I bought them back when I was obsessed with WW2 games ( Panzer General, Steel Panthers, WWII Online) but haven't looked at them in years. I think it is about 20 encyclopedia's just on WW2. :eek:

As you said there is so much information available, but could see those turned into say one or two books of "Cliff Notes" that could touch on all the history.

ETA - Found the set( 24) on Ebay to give some reference to how much information they "crammed" into the set.

 
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Really intense movie... The Timeline switching wasn't as bad as I feared from previous posting before I went. Really enjoyed the "Jump back to see from another perspective".
I agree with many that directors/producers need to tone down the background music during some of the dialogue as it is getting annoying to watch movies lately and sit there wondering "WTF did he just say??"

The intensity of the situation was so well done.. Trapped on the beach hoping/praying the troops behind can hold back the Germans long enough to get off the beach was well done. Can't wait to see this again.. :thumbup:

 
Took me senile ol' Da a couple days ago cuz he was tuggin my sleeve like a 3yo.

I group it with flicks like Gravity and 12 Years a Slave that use the scale which modern moviemaking provides to help viewers internalize the experience of what they have to present - the wonder of space, the ultimate helplessness & hopelessness of slavery, the terror of being under siege. I like it. Story be damned.

 
My heart was racing for most of the movie, I do not remember another movie that did that for me.

Oh, the trailer for It gave me chills. 

Quite an interesting day at the movies.

 
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