Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)

Pero_Bueno wrote: »

I´m just speechless right now, Nolan has to be the greatest film maker of all time - easily.

With all due respect to Nolan, and as someone who appreciates the vast majority of his films (and I am very much looking forward to seeing this today): Jesus god no.

Dunkirk does an awful lot of things right, but a few things let it down a little. Overall: a return to form after Interstellar.

(I've avoided referencing specific plot points here - and ****ing history can't be spoiled anyway :pac: - but I do talk about some of the overarching, general structures so, erm, "spoiler" warning I guess if you really want to go in blind)

Utmost praise to Nolan for making a film so focused on the experience of war. It is a film of intimacy and relentless peril, the moments the core focus of the filmmaking. A few grand shots of Dunkirk beach aside, it is admirably resistant to indulging in the clichof modern 'epic' filmmaking - while obviously dictated by the actual history, it's impressive to see aerial warfare in particular boiled down to a handful of planes and the moment-to-moment struggles of the pilot, not over-egged with kinetic angles or huge CGI squadrons. For a blockbuster with combat taking place over a large battlefield, it is, by its genre standards, actually kinda restrained! It is pretty much bloodless, but that matters not a jot - many other war films have shown the viscera, this focuses on the visceral.

A few moments aside, it also never gets bogged down by its plot. There's a few scenes in the second half where things get a bit more emotionally-heavy, but generally speaking it's a lean, efficient picture. For a film that is so visually striking (especially in glorious 70mm - water never looks better than when captured on film!) one of the shots that has stuck with me is one where the camera pulls back on Branagh's character as he helplessly watches a ship sink. It's a simple camera move that IMO articulates all the characterisation and drama it needs to, and the film can move ahead with the more pressing matters. Similarly, an earlier shot through two poles where it 'traps' a large group of soldiers on the beach: simple but visual storytelling. The first 15 minutes are almost dialogue-free, and it has the effect of pulling the viewer immediately into the situation. It's almost a shame when the film gets a bit chattier - this is a primal tale of survival and instinct in many respects, and Nolan and co. capably capture that through an actor's glance here, or a striking angle there.

Where the film lost me a tad - and I reckon others won't agree with this - is with its 'temporal quirkiness', especially in its second half (I'm tempted to make an Incepting Private Ryan joke here). I think it's an ambitious move, and when it works I reckon it makes an asset out of Nolan's characteristic twitchiness when it comes to editing. He's a filmmaker who always feels eager to get to the next scene, and at its strongest Dunkirk seems formally equipped to embrace a quirk that has weighed some of his earlier work down. Zimmer's score also seems purpose-built - whereas long stretches of a few Nolan films have felt like long montages due to relentless Zimmer-compositions, the constant ticking clock and complex sound design (and holy hell it's delightfully LOUD in the IFI) have a structure to work with. There is a certain coherency to the individual elements here, so they don't overwhelm or underwhelm each other as has happened in some other Nolan's films (the score just completely knocks off the pacing in some parts of TDKR, for example).

But as the chronology and temporal planes began to align here, it felt sometimes as if we were retreading ground or complicating matters without necessarily getting a whole lot more out of the situations. I almost feel bad criticising it for this, as it's extremely refreshing to see a major blockbuster experiment and depart from straightforward linear storytelling - especially in a way that makes sense for the drama and situation. But the overlap proved a weird mix of satisfying and disjointed, and just felt it was lacking that special something to really sell it.

Generally, I felt it was a film with an extremely strong opening 50 minutes, and a subsequent 50 minutes that weren't quite as fluent. But there's no shortage of poetic delivery and structural curiosity here, and while it doesn't threaten to dethrone some of the great war films of cinema history, it also (with the aid of a nine-figure budget) captures a moment in history with unconventional clarity and intensity.