Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)

Quazzie

Falthyron wrote: »

Hyperbole does not benefit any discussion. Those men were hardly morons. As I said, they were kids, teenagers. I'd like you to find me a boy of similar age today who can explain buoyancy to me while under fire, frightened and perhaps has never set foot on a ship before. Keep in mind that a boy today of that age would have had a far greater education than some of these lads at Dunkirk.

It's hardly hyperbole to suggest that a person, with even no formal education would know that throwing a man off a boat that weighs well in excess of 10 tonne isn't going to have any noticeable effect on it's buoyancy.

Nolan concentrated too much on the effects (or lack thereof) and totally skipped putting any effort into a script. It was a terrible movie. Beautfully assembled, but terrible to watch and certainly not entertaining in the slightest.

Falthyron

Quazzie wrote: »

It's hardly hyperbole to suggest that a person, with even no formal education would know that throwing a man off a boat that weighs well in excess of 10 tonne isn't going to have any noticeable effect on it's buoyancy.

If someone is desperate to survive I think they would do anything under any circumstance. If someone said the boat was too heavy and we need to remove someone or we will all drown I don't think it would take long before a gang emerges looking to throw someone off. People act funny when they are put under pressure. Moreover, if they threw the French kid off and it didn't make a difference maybe they would have continued throwing people off until the correct weight had been achieved.

At least they didn't get down on their hands and knees and have an auld pray that the boat would float...

mossym

Nolan has announced the sequel, tying together the sci-fi angle he took with interstellar with his latest hit






i think a bit of merriment is needed

Tony EH

pumpkin4life wrote: »

It was 300,000 people over the period of eight days, not 300,000 people on the one day.

Date Beaches Harbour Total
27 May — 7,669 7,669
28 May 5,390 11,874 17,804
29 May 13,752 33,558 47,310
30 May 29,512 24,311 53,823
31 May 22,942 45,072 68,014
1 June 17,348 47,081 64,429
2 June 6,695 19,561 26,256
3 June 1,870 24,876 26,746
4 June 622 25,553 26,175
Totals 98,671 239,555 338,226
There were at most, around 30,000 on the beach at one time on one day, 10% of that amount.

There are youtube videos linking historical footage with that of the movie. It's almost a shot for shot comparison in fairness. Say what you will about the movie itself, but the accuracy and the scale is pretty damn impressive.

You don't have to try and tell me anything about the evacuation. I've studied it in depth.

I'm not the one making the case against Nolan's film. In fact, I've applauded it for its realism. Apart from the aerial combat that is, which is where it falls down.

I think he did a great job over all.

I do find kind of funny that this complaint of "not enough men" keeps coming up time and again, when a cursory glance at period photos bears out Nolan's production decisions.

J Mysterio

It's not even about 'not enough men' for me, though that's a factor. Dunkirk presents itself as this 'bare bones storytelling'... 'gritty realism'....'down to the facts'... but somehow doesn't manage it. The tone and feel of the film is off.

It doesnt feel right. This picture perfect coastal town at the start, nary a seagull to disturb the tranquility. Everything clean and bright and nice..

It's like Nolan just created a series of sets and forgot to use them to tell a story. It was a bland, damp affair that left me cold and flat.

Dunkirk was the French army annihilated and the BEF surrounded and on the brink. It was a humiliation of the Allies and a sudden shock as to the efficacy of the German war machine.

Yes, Dunkirk was also British stoicism and courage in the face of adversity - Keep Calm and Carry On - and this film goes for that angle - but it just doesnt have the heart, that emotion or those characters. The film does not capture it... or maybe it captures only that (in a lifeless way) and misses the rest entirely.

indioblack

J Mysterio wrote: »

It's not even about 'not enough men' for me, though that's a factor. Dunkirk presents itself as this 'bare bones storytelling'... 'gritty realism'....'down to the facts'... but somehow doesn't manage it. The tone and feel of the film is off.

It doesnt feel right. This picture perfect coastal town at the start, nary a seagull to disturb the tranquility. Everything clean and bright and nice..

It's like Nolan just created a series of sets and forgot to use them to tell a story. It was a bland, damp affair that left me cold and flat.

Dunkirk was the French army annihilated and the BEF surrounded and on the brink. It was a humiliation of the Allies and a sudden shock as to the efficacy of the German war machine.

Yes, Dunkirk was also British stoicism and courage in the face of adversity - Keep Calm and Carry On - and this film goes for that angle - but it just doesnt have the heart, that emotion or those characters. The film does not capture it... or maybe it captures only that (in a lifeless way) and misses the rest entirely.

I agree. The 1958 film gives an overview of Dunkirk, yet manages to introduce us to individuals characters - without having to watch one of them taking a dump in the sand dunes.
I just wish Nolan didn't have Branagh's character, [in the trailers and in the film itself], repeatedly telling the audience, "There are 400,000 men on this beach".

Guy:Incognito

Quazzie wrote: »

Nolan concentrated too much on the effects (or lack thereof) and totally skipped putting any effort into a script. It was a terrible movie. Beautfully assembled, but terrible to watch and certainly not entertaining in the slightest.

You forgot " in my opinion"

Because a huge number of people completely disagree

Quazzie

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

You forgot " in my opinion"

It's an online forum. Everything is just in the posters opinion.

I didn't think that had to be stated.

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

Because a huge number of people completely disagree

You forgot "in your opinion"

:rolleyes:

mossym

Quazzie wrote: »

You forgot "in your opinion"

:rolleyes:

facts aren't opinions.

it's a fact that lots of people on here are disagreeing.

that's doesn't make their opinion right, but its a fact, not an opinion, that they are disagreeing


in my opinion, you don't use rolleyes right.

Quazzie

mossym wrote: »

facts aren't opinions.

it's a fact that lots of people on here are disagreeing.

that's doesn't make their opinion right, but its a fact, not an opinion, that they are disagreeing


in my opinion, you don't use rolleyes right.

It's an opinion that the amount of people disagreeing is "huge".
Personally I know more people that disliked the film than liked it. This is a FACT. I don't use my relative experience with the movie to exclaim tho that the amount of people who dislike it is "huge" because that would be misrepresenting opinion with fact.

Tony EH

J Mysterio wrote: »

This picture perfect coastal town at the start, nary a seagull to disturb the tranquility. Everything clean and bright and nice..

The were parts of Dunkirk that were in fact, relatively, undamaged and remained so for the entire war. It's not beyond possibility that one of those parts is where the young British private emerges from. Also, a lot of the pictures of destruction of Dunkirk are from a period after the BEF left. The battle of Dunkirk went on for about a week after the events of the film take place, when much of the bombing and, especially, the shelling happened.

J Mysterio wrote: »

It's like Nolan just created a series of sets and forgot to use them to tell a story. It was a bland, damp affair that left me cold and flat.

The majority of war is a "bland, damp affair". Operation Dynamo, itself, was quite an orderly retreat. It wasn't Stalingrad. Both sides didn't want to commit. The "miracle" of Dunkirk is largely Churchillian mythmaking. The reality is that most men rendezvoused the beaches and waited until a transport arrived. They got on a transport and arrived back in England without a shot fired. Operation Cycle and Operation Aerial largely went off without too much hullabaloo as well, the loss of the Lancastria notwithstanding.

J Mysterio wrote: »

Dunkirk was the French army annihilated and the BEF surrounded and on the brink. It was a humiliation of the Allies and a sudden shock as to the efficacy of the German war machine.

The French Army was far from being "annihilated" and would fight on for most of June, after the BEF left. That's when the real battle of Dunkirk would take place and when most of the devastation of the town would happen. The British Army still had the majority of its men, too, and more were joining up every day. However, both nations weren't prepared for a war, when they declared it in 1939 and ended up retreating faster than the Germans could advance when Phoney War became real. The BEF got out, because the game was up and they knew it. They couldn't deal with German mobility, becasue the leaders of the French and British Armies expected a rerun of WWI and they also constantly underestimated the speed with which the German Army could advance, albeit with light corps elements. They thought the Meuse would hold them up for days. They crossed it in 24 hours. They believed the Maginot Line would keep them occupied for months. They bypassed it altogether. They thought the Ardennes was impenetrable to tanks. They proved it wasn't. Britain and France lost the Battle of France, not through attrition of forces, but because they failed properly plan for a war that they declared on a nation who's army was better trained, had better planning and was better led.

J Mysterio wrote: »

Yes, Dunkirk was also British stoicism and courage in the face of adversity - Keep Calm and Carry On - and this film goes for that angle - but it just doesnt have the heart, that emotion or those characters. The film does not capture it... or maybe it captures only that (in a lifeless way) and misses the rest entirely.

Neither did real life. The "Dunkirk spirit" was a propganda construct, designed after the event.

FrancieBrady

Had the same attraction as an Air Accident Investigation programme - great action sequences with zero character interest. Don't see what the buzz is about something that is cold and dead from a character point of view tbh.

Tony EH

To all of those folk going on about "character", you do do know that the film is an ensemble piece, containing different timelines, engaging quite a number of different scenarios/people, that runs for just over 100 minutes.

Exactly what "character" were you expecting to see, given the limitations involved, that wouldn't have been a EXTREMELY broad and lightly painted caricature or cinematic trope?

Put simply, there isn't enough time in 100 minutes for the vast majority of films to develop "character" in any meaningful way, even if there were only a couple of actors on the screen for the entire period.

'Dunkirk' isn't about "character", or "character arcs" or any other bogus filmschool dropout cliches that abound in ill considered internet criticism.

It's about the event.

Quazzie

Tony EH wrote: »

To all of those folk going on about "character", you do do know that the film is an ensemble piece, containing different timelines, engaging quite a number of different scenarios/people, that runs for just over 100 minutes.

Exactly what "character" were you expecting to see, given the limitations involved, that wouldn't have been a EXTREMELY broad and lightly painted caricature or cinematic trope?

Put simply, there isn't enough time in 100 minutes for the vast majority of films to develop "character" in any meaningful way, even if there were only a couple of actors on the screen for the entire period.

'Dunkirk' isn't about "character", or "character arcs" or any other bogus filmschool dropout cliches that abound in ill considered internet criticism.

It's about the event.

Absolute bullshittery of the highest order.

100 minutes isn't enough time to build character? Absolute Nonsense. It doesn't have to be a character driven piece for it be possible to make a connection with a character, there just has to be characters there to begin with.

Falthyron

Quazzie wrote: »

Absolute bullshittery of the highest order.

100 minutes isn't enough time to build character? Absolute Nonsense. It doesn't have to be a character driven piece for it be possible to make a connection with a character, there just has to be characters there to begin with.

Go watch 'The Longest Day'. Three hours on the D-Day landings with almost zero character development because its an ensemble cast and designed to span across numerous areas and times.

Liamalone

Watched this tonight. What a disappointment. Load of crap.

Tony EH

Quazzie wrote: »

Absolute bullshittery of the highest order.

100 minutes isn't enough time to build character? Absolute Nonsense. It doesn't have to be a character driven piece for it be possible to make a connection with a character, there just has to be characters there to begin with.

In a film like 'Dunkirk'?

No.

Unless simplistic, broad, tropes are your idea of "character".

Quazzie

Tony EH wrote: »

In a film like 'Dunkirk'?

No.

Unless simplistic, broad, tropes are your idea of "character".

If you don't think it's possible to be historically accurate and sensitive and portray the event sympathetically whilst also having a plot and characters then it's you who is being simplistic

Tony EH

There's probably never more than 15 minutes spent with the majority of the actors in the film.

What kind of "character development" are you expecting.

And AGAIN...'Dunkirk' is about the event, not "characters".

Quazzie

Tony EH wrote: »

There's probably never more than 15 minutes spent with the majority of the actors in the film.

What kind of "character development" are you expecting.

A character that is relatable, that when they died or were in peril, you actually gave a fuck about their fate. If every single character in the movie died I honestly didn't care because there was no connection to them.

Tony EH wrote: »

And AGAIN...'Dunkirk' is about the event, not "characters".

That's the point. It should've been about the characters. If I wanted to learn about the event I can watch one of the hundreds of documentaries about it, that show real footage and show the real event. Dunkirk had a unique opportunity to tell the story of the people of the event, and it failed miserably in that respect.

johnny_ultimate

Not all films require robust, complex characterisation. Cinema can take many forms, and Dunkirk clearly favours an experiential portrayal of the evacuation over a heavily character focused one. If the film is maximalist in some respects (not least Zimmer's score), its approach to character is minimalist: we know just enough about the people involved to invite us in, and ultimately it's clear that the film's core goal is to pull us into the moment-to-moment experience (the ceaseless ticking clock is a constant reminder of that). The intimacy, scale and visual approach is unique to a dramatic film rather than a documentary one.

It is an intense film, loaded with long stretches of panic, anticipation, dread and life-or-death decisions - that's what Nolan wanted to capture in often discomforting detail. In a modern blockbuster environment where tedious, uninteresting plotting is more often than not the core focus, it's refreshing to see a big blockbuster focus so sharply on aesthetic & mood - it's not exactly arthouse, but definitely a refreshingly uncommon approach for a mainstream film of this sort. I'm not saying a good film about Dunkirk couldn't be made with more traditional or thorough characterisation, but the 'just enough' approach here is what the film needs.

Quazzie

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

It is an intense film, loaded with long stretches of panic, anticipation, dread and life-or-death decisions - that's what Nolan wanted to capture in often discomforting detail.

Wrong. There was one scene where we as the viewer was supposed to be worried about the plane and wonder what happened to it, but due to the irregular timeline we already knew it crashed. Besides that, even if it did crash, we didn't care, because there was no connection to the protagonist.

Tony EH

Quazzie wrote: »

A character that is relatable, that when they died or were in peril, you actually gave a fuck about their fate. If every single character in the movie died I honestly didn't care because there was no connection to them.

What could they have done in 15 minutes that would have made you "relate" to them?

What "character" were you expecting?

Quazzie wrote: »

That's the point. It should've been about the characters. If I wanted to learn about the event I can watch one of the hundreds of documentaries about it, that show real footage and show the real event. Dunkirk had a unique opportunity to tell the story of the people of the event, and it failed miserably in that respect.

In order for that to happen the film would have to be much longer and spend vastly increased amount of time with every person that appeared on the screen.

What you're talking about is an abundance of cliche. Which 'Dunkirk' is refeashingly free of, for the most part anyway.

Quazzie

Quazzie wrote: »

Wrong. There was one scene where we as the viewer was supposed to be worried about the plane and wonder what happened to it, but due to the irregular timeline we already knew it crashed. Besides that, even if it did crash, we didn't care, because there was no connection to the protagonist.

Maybe if they had a photo of the pilot's wife back home tapped to his cockpit that he touches from time to time then we could care more about him.

There is this ridiculous idea that some people have that characters need to be relatable. It really doesn't and one of Dunkirk's strongest elements is that it doesn't care if we relate or connect with the characters. The characters in Dunkirk are cliches, they're cutouts that we've seen a hundred times before and as the film is not about them but rather the events of Dunkirk it works. The film is less concerned with telling a story than it is in recreating the sheer panic of evacuation, it's about the small moments in which all hell broke loose and how people reacted.

Quazzie

Deleted User wrote: »

Maybe if they had a photo of the pilot's wife back home tapped to his cockpit that he touches from time to time then we could care more about him.

There is this ridiculous idea that some people have that characters need to be relatable. It really doesn't and one of Dunkirk's strongest elements is that it doesn't care if we relate or connect with the characters. The characters in Dunkirk are cliches, they're cutouts that we've seen a hundred times before and as the film is not about them but rather the events of Dunkirk it works. The film is less concerned with telling a story than it is in recreating the sheer panic of evacuation, it's about the small moments in which all hell broke loose and how people reacted.

If I want to see the events of Dunkirk, I will watch a documentary on it. It'd be a lot more accurate. I spend my hard earned money to go to the cinema to be entertained, and this movie definitely failed to do that.

artvanderlay

I like to give a damn about the characters in the movies I watch, even if they are ****s, otherwise what's the point? God, who gives a crap about the events at Dunkirk being depicted so accurately! Read a history book, or watch a documentary if that's what you want. No excuse for such non-characters/non-story in this movie. There are always individual stories in any situation...just lazy writing in this film, and it was a bore-fest from beginning to end. But I would expect that from Christopher Nolan. There are people on this thread defending the movie like they they saw WW2 action and were actually on the beach when these events went down! It was just another bland God bless old England experience....see The Crown, Paddington, Sherlock Holmes....zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I also think there are people on this thread that would watch Christopher Nolan taking a dump on screen and would argue about how it's so great, and how others don't get it

FrancieBrady

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Not all films require robust, complex characterisation. Cinema can take many forms, and Dunkirk clearly favours an experiential portrayal of the evacuation over a heavily character focused one. If the film is maximalist in some respects (not least Zimmer's score), its approach to character is minimalist: we know just enough about the people involved to invite us in, and ultimately it's clear that the film's core goal is to pull us into the moment-to-moment experience (the ceaseless ticking clock is a constant reminder of that). The intimacy, scale and visual approach is unique to a dramatic film rather than a documentary one.

It is an intense film, loaded with long stretches of panic, anticipation, dread and life-or-death decisions - that's what Nolan wanted to capture in often discomforting detail. In a modern blockbuster environment where tedious, uninteresting plotting is more often than not the core focus, it's refreshing to see a big blockbuster focus so sharply on aesthetic & mood - it's not exactly arthouse, but definitely a refreshingly uncommon approach for a mainstream film of this sort. I'm not saying a good film about Dunkirk couldn't be made with more traditional or thorough characterisation, but the 'just enough' approach here is what the film needs.

No they don't require robust characterisation but when you ask me to 'engage' with the characters, as we were at the end, then you have to have first given me a 'character'.
The film failed miserably here.
It was a very well made action film though if the air sequences were a bit gung ho unbelievable at times. As was the boat getting out of the way of the plane.

one armed dwarf

I would like to give this film another chance but in the screening I saw when it came out almost all of the dialogue was inaudible (Genesis in Whitechapel).

Does anyone know if this was a general issue with the sound mix or did other people find the sound in their cinemas fine? It's just I remember similar issues with Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises.

Tony EH

Might have been where you saw it. The sound was fine for me.

There's some muffling going on in Hardy's spitfire, but that's to be a little expected since he's talking through his oxygen mask. Also, he's speaking pilot jargon, like "Angels 15". etc. So some folk will be "what did he say?"

El Duda

artvanderlay wrote: »

I like to give a damn about the characters in the movies I watch, even if they are ****s, otherwise what's the point? God, who gives a crap about the events at Dunkirk being depicted so accurately! Read a history book, or watch a documentary if that's what you want. No excuse for such non-characters/non-story in this movie. There are always individual stories in any situation...just lazy writing in this film, and it was a bore-fest from beginning to end. But I would expect that from Christopher Nolan. There are people on this thread defending the movie like they they saw WW2 action and were actually on the beach when these events went down! It was just another bland God bless old England experience....see The Crown, Paddington, Sherlock Holmes....zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I also think there are people on this thread that would watch Christopher Nolan taking a dump on screen and would argue about how it's so great, and how others don't get it

You're pretty much the first person I've ever seen slate Paddington. What films do you actually like?

I've talked up Dunkirk a fair bit in this thread. I've debunked a lot of invalid criticism etc... But to just label anyone who likes Dunkirk as a 'Nolan fanboy' is just wrong. I don't like Interstellar at all for example.
I don't know any people who follow Nolan like some kind of cult leader.