Directed by:
Christopher NolanScreenplay:
Christopher NolanCinematography:
Hoyte van HoytemaComposer:
Hans ZimmerCast:
Fionn Whitehead, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Kenneth Branagh, Mark Rylance, Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard, Jack Lowden, Will Attenborough, James D'Arcy (more)VOD (3)
Plots(1)
Dunkirk opens as hundreds of thousands of British and Allied troops are surrounded by enemy forces. Trapped on the beach with their backs to the sea they face an impossible situation as the enemy closes in. (Warner Bros. US)
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Reviews (22)
A fascinating production background and a demonstration of the capabilities of a Hollywood blockbuster at its peak. However, there’s no emotion in there. It's like a war documentary but without the distinctive voiceover. I understand that this was the creative intent, but for the first time in my life I was missing Nolan and suddenly it felt like when a girl cheats on you after being in a happy relationship for years. I'll give it another chance in time, but I'm afraid that without the assistance of the IMAX format, my opinions will just be solidified.
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Yeah, it's awesome. It took me a while to figure out why, how and what for, but I'm excited. Initially, what bothered me about Dunkirk was a certain impersonality and the fact that we don't really know anything about the characters, but Christopher Nolan clearly didn't want that and pushes everything through extremely intense scenes that can be both action-packed and atmospherically depressing. The director's staging games keep you entertained for a full hour and three quarters, and the aerial battles and the destruction of giant ships look absolutely breathtaking in IMAX. And even though it's not Saving Private Ryan (and it doesn't want to be anything like it), the feeling of every one of the three hundred thousand soldiers fighting for their lives is awfully strong. An absolutely breathtaking experience on the big screen, and undoubtedly one of the best films of the year.
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Nolan cannot be denied that he did not just shoot another war film according to a proven scheme. In many ways, it is in line with old-school war films, which are no longer made today, just in the form in which they were never made. Following the example of Greengrass's United 93, in view of The Dunkirk evacuation, he got rid of all political background, expressed no opinion, did not mirror anything. He was not interested in other parties of the conflict, sidelined characters, dialogs and story, and focused on a single aspect; the feelings of those thousands people who were evacuated, those soldiers who where cut off from their homeland. The movie strictly follows (except for the elaborate structure of the narrative and the form, which can be fully enjoyed only during the subsequent screening) the concept of "beach/week-water/day-air/hour" with an unseen enemy and thus fully mediates the feelings of pilots enclosed in a cramped, deafening cockpit, while German fighters circling around, panicked drowning boys in the billowing night waves and soldiers on land who don't know if they'll get their turn during the evacuation or will be left at the mercy of the advancing German army. This is by far the greatest strength of the film. The cast couldn't have been better, because even if Branagh doesn't move from the pier, Hardy from the cockpit or Rylance from the helm, they are so convincing and charismatic that simply could not be any better. At the same time, they play everything purely with their eyes or imperceptible gestures (and in the case of Caine, using purely intonation). Thanks to the symbiosis of Nolan/Zimmer/Smith, the result is undeniably captivating, chilling, nerve-wracking as well as intense and earthy production (the difference from the best CGI is simply tangible, that´s for sure) and a technically refined masterpiece like no other far and wide. But… But at the same time, Zimmer's phenomenal addition of sound (not really a music background) is overused so that the whole footage rumbles and ticks. It´s non-stop. I repeat, non-stop. Do you get that? Non-stop! Neither a second of silence, nor a second without the highest possible intensity of pumping creaking, while the "calm" sequences on the ship would obviously call for quiet moments. However, it is still a "Dunkirk miracle", because everyone in the seventy-millimeter Imax took the bait and myself breathed exclusively in the rhythm given by Nolan.
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Pomo, you just didn't get it. This isn't "sloppily edited", this is the brilliant creative intent of Nolan. The way he works with time in this film, how he tells three storylines through different time spans and then glues them together with the surgical precision of a master watchmaker, letting them intersect at the end to achieve a cathartic effect is simply admirable. Brilliant screenwriting. And this film has such high production values that I wouldn't hesitate to compare it to David Lean's war epics. This film will be the subject of extensive essays in film schools in the future, and film theorists will discuss it until judgement day. And it’ll get Oscars for sure.
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Though Nolan’s previous films were more refined in terms of narrative and intellectually more ambitious, their ostentatious structure often overshadowed emotion. Dunkirk, which stays more grounded in a number of respects, is his most functional prototype of the epic movie that Hollywood currently needs, a major film that you will want to see not only in a technically well-equipped cinema (preferably IMAX), but also repeatedly. Thanks to Nolan’s focused direction, everything in the film is subordinated to the maximum sensory experience, the intensity of which rises with each viewing, as you become better oriented in the temporal relationships between the individual storylines and can experience more while working less on solving the narratological puzzle. Dunkirk is intoxicating, dizzying and unrelenting in its intensity from start to finish. (Viewed three times in the cinema, of which IMAX twice.) 90%
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