Thread: Dunkirk - Film Review

Being a bit of a keen war film watcher I am a bit wary about this film. To much these days where the true story is deemed too boring and replaced with special effects or a cheesy contrived love angle. The latest pearl harbor film and the one with the tank come to mind. That one with the tank was a real shocker. As posted saving private Ryan was pretty real for a film. Hill 6O is another great film. Has any one watched the 1958 Dunkirk film? That was true to the events and relied on story telling, not effects.
Cheers Hall

Originally Posted by Hall

Being a bit of a keen war film watcher I am a bit wary about this film. To much these days where the true story is deemed too boring and replaced with special effects or a cheesy contrived love angle. The latest pearl harbor film and the one with the tank come to mind. That one with the tank was a real shocker. As posted saving private Ryan was pretty real for a film. Hill 6O is another great film. Has any one watched the 1958 Dunkirk film? That was true to the events and relied on story telling, not effects.
Cheers Hall

Pretty good cast in that one.
Pickles.

There's quite a good review here:

Nocookies | The Australian

Probably paywalled though.

^^ yep

Review of Dunkirk, by Stephen Romei. Source: The Australian Weekend Magazine, 22/23 July 2017.

Five star cinematic epic[COLOR=rgb(15.294120%, 25.882350%, 49.411760%)]Stephen Romei [/COLOR]July 22nd, 2017
Dunkirk is a war film that is not a war film, yet will immediately enter theranks of the best war films made.


“You can practically see it from here,’’ says Commander Bolton, thehighest-ranking officer on the sparse white beaches of Dunkirk. “What?’’asks a soldier. “Home.”
Home. That is the anchor of Christopher Nolan’s remarkable Dunkirk, awar film that is not a war film and yet will immediately enter the ranks ofthe best war films made so far.
I walked out of the VMAX screening — and this is a movie that must beseen on a large screen — thinking it deserved 41⁄2 stars. The next morning Idecided on five. This score does not mean it’s perfect. What film is? But it is movie-makingat the highest level. The last film I thought on the cusp of five stars wasRichard Linklater’s Boyhood in 2014. Before that, Terrence Malick’s TheTree of Life in 2011, though I did not review it.



Dunkirk in northern France is 26 miles — as the British measure it (42kmfor us) — from England. It is 10km from the Belgian border.



As the Germans blitzed Europe in the opening months of World War II,about 400,000 soldiers, most of them British but including some French,Belgian and Canadian troops, were stranded at Dunkirk, “fish in a barrel”,as one puts it in this film, for the Luftwaffe.
The evacuation of Dunkirk took place from May 26 to June 4, 1940. Itinvolved more than 900 ships, including lots of small craft, some crewedonly by civilians. On June 4, Winston Churchill, prime minister for 16 dayswhen Operation Dynamo started, made his famous “we shall fight them onthe beaches” speech. The line that is less often quoted is his warning that“wars are not won by evacuations”.
London-born Nolan is a deliberate director. Everything that is in one of hismovies is there for a reason, as is everything that is not. Dunkirk excels onboth counts, but it is the second that I keep thinking about. The war is eight months old. Here are some of the people we never see orhear: Churchill, Adolf Hitler, politicians, war room generals. We do not seeGerman soldiers (until a brief final scene) or hear the word Nazi. They are“the enemy”. The valiant rearguard troops, mostly French, are not in themix. We do not see much blood, unlike say Mel Gibson’s fine World War IIdrama Hacksaw Ridge, and yet the building tension and constant fear isalmost unbearable.



There is little dialogue. There is no backstory for any of the characters; notone, which is something I don’t think I’ve seen in a war movie. We don’tknow where they come from, beyond their country (and that twists towardsthe end). Often we don’t know their names.
Character development is minimal to the point of non-existent. That’s not acomplaint. This is one almost unimaginable week in the lives of men we donot know, told in 106 minutes. When we do learn a tiny bit about a few ofthem near the end, particularly the civilian sailor Mr Dawson, it isrealistically simple and deeply moving. I haven’t mentioned the actors because this film is so immersive it’s almost as though they are not there. Itis the young soldiers who are there, unhardened boy-men who do not yetknow, as we do, the future enormity of this war. We care about them. Withthe exception of the outstanding Kenneth Branagh as Commander Bolton,the actors are hard to see.



The lead, if there is one, is a private named Tommy (20-year-old FionnWhitehead in his film debut). Star singer Harry Styles is another private,Alex. Cillian Murphy from Peaky Blinders is a near-mute shell-shockedsoldier with no name. The quietly commanding Mark Rylance is MrDawson, a tie under his jumper. That chameleon Tom Hardy is a Spitfirepilot, so we rarely see his face and when we do it’s masked. The onlywomen are nurses. This is a male-dominated film. This war is man-made.
All of these absences are there for Nolan’s reasons. He did not want tomake a sentimental movie, or one defined by heroism. He didn’t want tomake one about a victory. This is about the soldiers stranded on a beachand the civilians who helped rescue them.
The absences also counter one of the challenges in making a movie aboutsuch a well-known historical moment. Anyone who paid attention at schoolknows that Dunkirk is one of the largest military evacuations in history.But it’s not the result that matters here. It’s the days, hours, minutes on thesand, on the pier, in the water, in the sky. This time is precious andperilous. Quiet moments are harrowing, such as when Tommy and twomates sit on the beach and watch, without reaction, another soldier wadeinto the sea, seeking oblivion.
So are the action scenes, especially an extended one that parallels a groupof soldiers going underwater on a bullet-riddled small boat and a Spitfirepilot going underwater in his downed plane. Hans Zimmer’s heart-thumping score underpins every moment.
Nolan has a fascination for blurring time and memory, points of view and identity. As a cinematic technique this perhaps reaches its high point in hismind-boggling 2000 film Memento, starring Australia’s Guy Pearce. Hereit is more subtle but dramatic and poignant. Mr Dawson’s perception of theSpitfire hitting the water is not the same as the pilot’s, and the difference isamazing to watch.





Nolan tells the story from three perspectives: land, sea and air. There issome repetition and this, too, is quite deliberate. It underscores theendlessness of what the men are enduring, an endlessness that could endin a second. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot most of the movie,location Dunkirk, on IMAX 65mm film and the result is spellbinding.
The aerial battle scenes feel so real that viewers will check under theirarmrests for the cockpit release lever. Hardy’s pilot is calm, certain, doingwhat he knows he has to do. There is no bluster, no cheering, no jokes. Wesee how hard it was for a plane to shoot down another plane, the sort ofreality war films often avoid. Similarly, at sea, we see how quickly boats cansink when bombed or torpedoed. Nolan was able to put into the film 12 boats that were there at Dunkirk in 1940, historical vessels now. I suspectthese ones were not torpedoed.



The behaviour of the men on the beach is also unlike what we are used toseeing on the screen. They wait in queues, patiently, in Brodie helmets andcombat gear, for boats to take them home. When the Stukas drop bombsthe soldiers huddle on the sand or pier or, if on the sea, dive into the oilywater. What else can they do? There is nowhere to go. They are men whofollow orders, yet sometimes their raw humanness, their need to survive,comes out. One scene, where some soldiers decide one man must besacrificed so the rest can live, took me back to William Golding’s Lord ofthe Flies.
Nolan, 46, is the sixth highest-grossing film director. He has made the bestBatman movie, The Dark Knight, and sophisticated sci-fi films such asInception and Interstellar.
He might not be the first director who comes to mind for a war film. Nor isthe highest-grossing director, Steven Spielberg, yet he made one of thebest, Saving Private Ryan, as well as Schindler’s List. Nor is StanleyKubrick, who made two masterpieces 30 years apart, Paths of Glory (1957)and Full Metal Jacket. Like them, Nolan has used an outsider’s intuition tocreate something that will live inside viewers.
Dunkirk (M)
5 stars
National release

I really liked this film. But I wanted to love it, I was really looking forward to it too. It just doesn't really have a story. It just sort of carries on from the opening scene. And it's a bit confusing how it follows a thread from one view then how's it again from another point of view.
but he biggest let down is it a. Didn't show the shear carnidge and military hard wear left on the beach and b. The heroic actions of the hundreds of small craft owners that went back and forth for days to save the men on the beach.

Those who want a different perspective, try Mrs Miniver, (1942). Neat bit of propaganda that bolstered the British and regarded by some as being a help getting the Americans to help in Europe.

Watched it compliments of my son in law this afternoon.
Five stars from me.
I guess any film cannot be "ëverything to everyone", and IMHO this film did not attempt to do that, but what it did do, is demonstrate, & show, very graphically, what it was like for individual people who were at Dunkirk, some of whom survived, and some who didn't, to be at the hell that was Dunkirk.
Dunkirk is mostly looked at in a "glorious heroic" light, but the reality, for the people that were there, was so much more,....and I believe that this was demonstrated very well by this film.
Pickles