Whilst waiting for this movie to start, there was a trailer for a Churchill biopic called Darkest Hour, during which one of the lines was something to the effect of "As Europe falls, one man took a stand...". As soon as Dunkirk was over, I wanted to rewind the cinema screen all the way back, just so I can tell that trailer to fuck off. "One man" indeed!
Dunkirk has a lot in common with the greats like Das Boot, in that it is less of a war movie and more of an exhausting survival horror. We don't see politicians debating at tables, or generals next to big maps, we don't even see the opposition themselves. They are simply referred to as the "enemy", and exist as a distant threat in the form of bullets, torpedoes, and screaming dive bombers. Worse enemies still are the shell shock, the bitter coldness and the claustrophobia. This is a movie where the war is at all times seen at a human eye level, and it is all the more compelling for it.
Dunkirk is a combination of three intertwining, non-chronological stories. The first is of a fleeing soldier trying to find a safe way across the channel over the course of a week. The next is of an old sailor and his boys, trying to mount the rescue, told in the space of one day. The final is that of a Spitfire pilot, trying to stop the Luftwaffe, with only an hour's worth of fuel. Very little is actually said throughout the movie, the characters are few, and we don't learn most of their names. Instead there is a tremendous amount of human drama, especially as politics still find a way to creep in, such as the arbitrary and inhumane decision to force the french soldiers to the back of the evacuation queues.
I'm struggling to find things that I don't like about the movie, and the only thing I can come up with is how Director Christopher Nolan continues to punish Tom Hardy by yet again requiring him to speak in an upper-class English accent, made incomprehensible by a clumsy oxygen mask. For most of the movie it is near impossible to tell what he and the other pilots are saying half the time.
Nolan is still the champion of making loud, thoughtful, powerful spectacle, and this is one you should absolutely go to the cinema to see. Just sit down and soak it all in.
Dun Well
Whilst waiting for this movie to start, there was a trailer for a Churchill biopic called Darkest Hour, during which one of the lines was something to the effect of "As Europe falls, one man took a stand...". As soon as Dunkirk was over, I wanted to rewind the cinema screen all the way back, just so I can tell that trailer to fuck off. "One man" indeed!
Dunkirk has a lot in common with the greats like Das Boot, in that it is less of a war movie and more of an exhausting survival horror. We don't see politicians debating at tables, or generals next to big maps, we don't even see the opposition themselves. They are simply referred to as the "enemy", and exist as a distant threat in the form of bullets, torpedoes, and screaming dive bombers. Worse enemies still are the shell shock, the bitter coldness and the claustrophobia. This is a movie where the war is at all times seen at a human eye level, and it is all the more compelling for it.
Dunkirk is a combination of three intertwining, non-chronological stories. The first is of a fleeing soldier trying to find a safe way across the channel over the course of a week. The next is of an old sailor and his boys, trying to mount the rescue, told in the space of one day. The final is that of a Spitfire pilot, trying to stop the Luftwaffe, with only an hour's worth of fuel. Very little is actually said throughout the movie, the characters are few, and we don't learn most of their names. Instead there is a tremendous amount of human drama, especially as politics still find a way to creep in, such as the arbitrary and inhumane decision to force the french soldiers to the back of the evacuation queues.
I'm struggling to find things that I don't like about the movie, and the only thing I can come up with is how Director Christopher Nolan continues to punish Tom Hardy by yet again requiring him to speak in an upper-class English accent, made incomprehensible by a clumsy oxygen mask. For most of the movie it is near impossible to tell what he and the other pilots are saying half the time.
Nolan is still the champion of making loud, thoughtful, powerful spectacle, and this is one you should absolutely go to the cinema to see. Just sit down and soak it all in.