Dunkirk - Christopher Nolan's next film

NinjaZombie said:
Yeah, if I didn't know my history lesson, I'd have wondered what all the fuss is about. Sure, that leaflet painted an idea of how bleak the situation was, but you don't really see the horrors of what awaited the Allies if the Germans had pushed through.
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It's war. You don't need exposition to know what happen when you're on the retreat and the enemy gets to you. Total annihilation.

People forget that dunkirk while a loss means alot more in the grand scheme of things, it enables britain to fight for another day, anything less that an evacuation britain would probably surrender the next days as the physical resources and psychological blows would be catastrophical.

400k is a lot of soldiers and losing that would simply means the war is lost. I wouldn't want to be on Churchill shoes when he made that decision without a hindsight, if the evacuation backfires britain would certainly fall.
 
Sky1981 said:
People complains about lack of characters, i find it refreshing compared to.. Say pearl harbour where you follow 2 buddies staying alive at all cost.

Dunkirk is a disaster, it's a near miss for the british, there's no bravado there. There's bodies everywhere, people dies by the thousands, and nolan portrays it very well imho. At times like that there are no gun toting heroes, just people doing anything to go home.

If any most of the characters are very relatable, it's war against an army of german, you either run, or left behind and probably ended up dead.

Although the scale looks like a cheap b-movie, 300thousand? We barely see a hundred let alone 300 thousand.
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i'd find spooning out my eyeballs refreshing compared to watching Pearl Harbour.
 
I won't talk about the plot, but visually, it was hands down one of the best films I have seen, with especially the aerial shots being beautifully shot. I was fully immersed in the movie, and it looks like Nolan utilised those IMAX cameras to their full potential, which I certainly appreciated during the film.
 
I think some of the complaints in here are fair, the scale was really off and I don't think they adequately summed up the threat – I would have liked to see a bit of the French holding the permitter, perhaps focusing on the lad that ended up in the boat – but I do think the movie was immeasurably improved by the decision not to over invest in its characters. Firstly, the film wasn't about it's characters and, secondly, it created a genuine sense of peril for those that it did focus on.
 
Amazing film. Not bothering to read this thread because I'm sure the Caf will nit pick the shit out of it.

Solid 9/10 for me.
 
Would partners like it? I'm sure they will since it's Nolan but just making sure?
 
Just seen it

As a "film film" it's not great. As a brief recreation of a terrible war, it's fantastic.

NinjaFletch said:
I think some of the complaints in here are fair, the scale was really off and I don't think they adequately summed up the threat – I would have liked to see a bit of the French holding the permitter, perhaps focusing on the lad that ended up in the boat – but I do think the movie was immeasurably improved by the decision not to over invest in its characters. Firstly, the film wasn't about it's characters and, secondly, it created a genuine sense of peril for those that it did focus on.
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Yes to all of that
 
It's a refreshing change to the tired, recycled film template. It portrayed the chaos experienced by the poor sods in Dunkirk beach extremely well, and also displayed the heroic moments in an accurate and not over the top way. Quite moving seeing as they kept it all down to earth.

Films like that don't need a strong character based storyline when they're so brilliantly and simply demonstrating the events of that period in the war. The only thing that I didn't think was necessary was the weird time frames, but I'm sure if I watch it again it'll make more sense.

Small issues like the RAF pilots watching their fuel, the coldness of the sea, the jamming of guns etc. just made it all seem extremely real and immersive.

9/10 for me. Just lacked a little bit of something to be an all time great but it was one of my favourites in a while.
 
I went to see this in 70mm in London and man was it an experience!!! The use of sound was just stunning, the screach of when a plane was coming in was almost painful, but put you right in to the position of the soldiers

In terms of the lack of character, I think this was the point....we see in the news every day about terrorist attacks and we sympathise with the victims, not because we knew who they were but because we are empathetic beings. We sympathise because we know people really were in this hell hole of a situation. The point I got was, apart from senior figures, was how young everyone looked. This was what caught me how young everyone was, knowing how young many soldiers were at the time.

I must admit I'm going to see this again but it's joint my rotation of Dunkirk, Inception, The Prestige and Dark Knight as my favourite of his films.
 
Green_Red said:
Every character is two characters at once. He could have used back story to show that, like he did with Murphy's character. Show something more than just bloke sat on a beach. I felt literally no connection to the characters because they were pointless. I couldn't have cared less if they survived or not. The directors job is to engage the audience in the story. I wasn't engaged because the characters had zero dimension. Whether they're Hero's or cowards was completely irrelevant. Maybe if the director had shown what they were retreating from, created a sense of urgency I would have been more engaged. But looking at lines of troops on a beach did nothing for me.
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That's not really true. That's what you want the director and the film to give you. They're very different things. Art doesn't fit into such a small box. There are obviously loads of definitions of art because of the broad nature, but here's one of them:
Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts (artworks), expressing the author's imaginative or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power.
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Nolan evidently much prefers the former, and that's ok. He's obviously technically gifted and he places priority on showing that off in all its beauty. Each to their own. It's also ok that many people dislike that style. It's not a real criticism though. Much of the stuff being portrayed as criticism in here isn't actually criticism, it's just an expression of people's prefences. It's pointless to criticise an artist for not giving you what you want - the criticism should be based around whether they achieved what they set out to. So in this case any criticism should take into account his style and his aims.

I didn't love the film myself, in large part for the same reason. We've mostly got ourselves to blame for that though - that's just his style. Kubrick was the same and so were many others. I do think Nolan played a role in that too, though - that's fair criticism. He's called it "one of the great human stories of all time", but I'd be surprised if many people came out of the film feeling that way.

I'm totally ignorant of the story so I was fascinated to see it brought to life, and I felt a little cheated on that front. It obviously wasn't a character-driven story, which is entirely his choice, but I do agree with a lot of people here that it somehow didn't manage to communicate the scale of terror either. It was a series of vignettes that lacked any kind of depth.

It was weird. It looked beautiful but there's very little beyond that I can remember...and I watched it just a few hours ago. Paths of Glory took the same birds eye, impersonal approach but it was far more involving and engaging in all sorts of ways...and for anyone talking about really feeling the terror of the soldiers, being immersed in the experience, it's absolutely lightyears away from something like Das Boot. If you compare either of those two war films to this, I really can't see anything it offers beyond better visuals...
 
Brwned said:
That's not really true. That's what you want the director and the film to give you. They're very different things. Art doesn't fit into such a small box. There are obviously loads of definitions of art because of the broad nature, but here's one of them:

Nolan evidently much prefers the former, and that's ok. He's obviously technically gifted and he places priority on showing that off in all its beauty. Each to their own. It's also ok that many people dislike that style. It's not a real criticism though. Much of the stuff being portrayed as criticism in here isn't actually criticism, it's just an expression of people's prefences. It's pointless to criticise an artist for not giving you what you want - the criticism should be based around whether they achieved what they set out to. So in this case any criticism should take into account his style and his aims.

I didn't love the film myself, in large part for the same reason. We've mostly got ourselves to blame for that though - that's just his style. Kubrick was the same and so were many others. I do think Nolan played a role in that too, though - that's fair criticism. He's called it "one of the great human stories of all time", but I'd be surprised if many people came out of the film feeling that way.

I'm totally ignorant of the story so I was fascinated to see it brought to life, and I felt a little cheated on that front. It obviously wasn't a character-driven story, which is entirely his choice, but I do agree with a lot of people here that it somehow didn't manage to communicate the scale of terror either. It was a series of vignettes that lacked any kind of depth.

It was weird. It looked beautiful but there's very little beyond that I can remember...and I watched it just a few hours ago. Paths of Glory took the same birds eye, impersonal approach but it was far more involving and engaging in all sorts of ways...and for anyone talking about really feeling the terror of the soldiers, being immersed in the experience, it's absolutely lightyears away from something like Das Boot. If you compare either of those two war films to this, I really can't see anything it offers beyond better visuals...
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Therein lies the problem imo. A vast majority of stories that movie audiences are exposed to are in some way character driven for a specific reason - it allows the audience to gain a degree of emotional access to the story.
 
I haven't logged in here in a long time, but came back to discuss this movie.

I thought that this was truly a masterpiece and it really shook me. I had not known about this story until I saw the preview to the movie and did a little research.

But seeing it I honestly was so engrossed that I felt like I was there... I couldn't breath. And this is no disrespect to the true heroes and veterans that were there throughout the war. But the way the movie was shot, the sounds of the mortars, the spitfires, etc. and the score (Hans Zimmer nails it again) honestly made the movie a true experience - I felt nothing but dread, fear and desperation throughout the movie.

It was also the first time that I can remember where I did not hear a single whisper or chatter in the cinema. That's never happened before in my time of going to the movies. Everyone was too absorbed (and probably holding on to their chairs for dear life).

I imagine a few people on here have (or had) relatives that were part of this operation, or at least affected by it, which makes it seem so real to me.
 
I also loved that this movie wasn't centered around characters or character development.

Who gives a shit about that? It was completely irrelevant to the point of the movie. The movie was meant to portray the experience of the poor people involved in the operation - the sheer desperation, the fear and the constant sense of impending doom.
 
cesc's_mullet said:
I haven't logged in here in a long time, but came back to discuss this movie.

I thought that this was truly a masterpiece and it really shook me. I had not known about this story until I saw the preview to the movie and did a little research.

But seeing it I honestly was so engrossed that I felt like I was there... I couldn't breath. And this is no disrespect to the true heroes and veterans that were there throughout the war. But the way the movie was shot, the sounds of the mortars, the spitfires, etc. and the score (Hans Zimmer nails it again) honestly made the movie a true experience - I felt nothing but dread, fear and desperation throughout the movie.

It was also the first time that I can remember where I did not hear a single whisper or chatter in the cinema. That's never happened before in my time of going to the movies. Everyone was too absorbed (and probably holding on to their chairs for dear life).

I imagine a few people on here have (or had) relatives that were part of this operation, or at least affected by it, which makes it seem so real to me.
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Good cinematography, editing, and score as is usually the case with Nolan films. The story was a bit underwhelming due to the lack of cohesive characters which leaves the audience a bit ambivalent as to what they should care about, especially since it was a historical event where we knew the end result before walking into the theater.
 
Brwned said:
That's not really true. That's what you want the director and the film to give you. They're very different things. Art doesn't fit into such a small box. There are obviously loads of definitions of art because of the broad nature, but here's one of them:

Nolan evidently much prefers the former, and that's ok. He's obviously technically gifted and he places priority on showing that off in all its beauty. Each to their own. It's also ok that many people dislike that style. It's not a real criticism though. Much of the stuff being portrayed as criticism in here isn't actually criticism, it's just an expression of people's prefences. It's pointless to criticise an artist for not giving you what you want - the criticism should be based around whether they achieved what they set out to. So in this case any criticism should take into account his style and his aims.

I didn't love the film myself, in large part for the same reason. We've mostly got ourselves to blame for that though - that's just his style. Kubrick was the same and so were many others. I do think Nolan played a role in that too, though - that's fair criticism. He's called it "one of the great human stories of all time", but I'd be surprised if many people came out of the film feeling that way.

I'm totally ignorant of the story so I was fascinated to see it brought to life, and I felt a little cheated on that front. It obviously wasn't a character-driven story, which is entirely his choice, but I do agree with a lot of people here that it somehow didn't manage to communicate the scale of terror either. It was a series of vignettes that lacked any kind of depth.

It was weird. It looked beautiful but there's very little beyond that I can remember...and I watched it just a few hours ago. Paths of Glory took the same birds eye, impersonal approach but it was far more involving and engaging in all sorts of ways...and for anyone talking about really feeling the terror of the soldiers, being immersed in the experience, it's absolutely lightyears away from something like Das Boot. If you compare either of those two war films to this, I really can't see anything it offers beyond better visuals...
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I agree with what you're saying about Art. Valid point but...

When I go to look at a van Gogh, or listen to Nirvana, or Beathoven, or whatever I know what type of art I can expect. Art can't be boxed but Artists certainly can, and are. Into groups, impressionists, futurists, rock and roll, heavy metal, classical, baroque, etc.

  • Momento
  • The Batman Dark Knight Trilogy
  • Inception
  • Interstellar
  • Man of Steel

None of those movies indicate that this director is an 'art-house' type of director. The list says big budget action blockbuster movie director. Dunkirk doesn't fit anywhere in that list.

I agree with nearly everything else you said.
 
I don't agree that the movie leaves you ambivalent as to what you should care about. It certainly didn't with me.

I wanted to see as many people get rescued as possible.

@Raoul
 
I am bit shocked about the number of posters who are saying they were ignorant of the story before this film.
Is our education really so limited?
 
LennonNL said:
It's a refreshing change to the tired, recycled film template. It portrayed the chaos experienced by the poor sods in Dunkirk beach extremely well, and also displayed the heroic moments in an accurate and not over the top way. Quite moving seeing as they kept it all down to earth.

Films like that don't need a strong character based storyline when they're so brilliantly and simply demonstrating the events of that period in the war. The only thing that I didn't think was necessary was the weird time frames, but I'm sure if I watch it again it'll make more sense.

Small issues like the RAF pilots watching their fuel, the coldness of the sea, the jamming of guns etc. just made it all seem extremely real and immersive.

9/10 for me. Just lacked a little bit of something to be an all time great but it was one of my favourites in a while.
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I agree with the bolded part, although not having anything to do with war myself my bet is that taking down one - two enemy plane is something that is considered very good in real war, it's not like in superhero movies where the good guys can suddenly man a plane and shoot down 6-7 enemy planes.
 
manc exile said:
I am bit shocked about the number of posters who are saying they were ignorant of the story before this film.
Is our education really so limited?
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I'm Irish so British history and European history to that extent isn't really something I was that interested in at school. Ireland wasn't involved in WWII. How much do you know about say the Irish war of Independence, or the American Civil War?

I'm shocked!!!
 
manc exile said:
I am bit shocked about the number of posters who are saying they were ignorant of the story before this film.
Is our education really so limited?
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I'm an Aussie, so we learned about D-Day/Gallipoli in school.
 
cesc's_mullet said:
I thought that this was truly a masterpiece and it really shook me.
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Yep. Was absolutely encapsulated by the entire depiction of the event and what the people went through during it for ages after I had done watching it. As you said, a true masterpiece.

Few critics have gone on to call it Nolan's greatest and I wouldn't even disagree. He has wanted to make this movie since 25 years ago, it's something that will be remembered as a milestone in terms of war-based cinema for decades to come.
 
Watched this last night. Incredible. 8.5/10

It was a very difficult watch, in a sense that it doesn't glamorise war, there is no good triumphing evil. It is very real and intense. Fantastically shot, the sound is amazing.

There are no "characters" I don't think I remember/know a single of the Soldiers names, which is obviously done on purpose because everyone single person on that beach had a different harrowing story. I get the feeling the film was just following 4-5 people involved in Dunkirk and it literally could be any one of the 400,000 on that beach.

I think personally I would have like an extra 20-30 minutes at the start of the film, bulking out the 4-5 main characters but I can completely understand why it wasn't done.
 
Saw it on Imax yesterday evening and thought it was incredible. A friend asked me what I thought of it this morning, and I said: "You know how the docking scene in Interstellar shook your body to the core? Well, Dunkirk is a two-hour docking scene."
 
Raoul said:
Therein lies the problem imo. A vast majority of stories that movie audiences are exposed to are in some way character driven for a specific reason - it allows the audience to gain a degree of emotional access to the story.
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Can't you think of films that weren't character-driven that you were engrossed by regardless?

cesc's_mullet said:
I also loved that this movie wasn't centered around characters or character development.

Who gives a shit about that? It was completely irrelevant to the point of the movie. The movie was meant to portray the experience of the poor people involved in the operation - the sheer desperation, the fear and the constant sense of impending doom.
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You should really watch Das Boot if you want to really experience the desperation of war - this comes nowhere near it!
 
Brwned said:
You should really watch Das Boot if you want to really experience the desperation of war - this comes nowhere near it!
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Agreed.

And Speilberg's D-Day landing is still sensational in the most harrowing way, he made you appreciate the scale of it all, something I think Nolan didn't manage to convey in Dunkirk.

Lovely looking movie, and a very good movie at that, if he'd managed to convey the scale of 300,000 soldiers being evacuated I'd have put it up there with the very best war films but all that just seemed rushed.
 
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manc exile said:
I am bit shocked about the number of posters who are saying they were ignorant of the story before this film.
Is our education really so limited?
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I'm surprised that UK-based posters don't know about it considering how much your history lessons appear to only focus on the nation's successes and tends to airbrush everything else out (Ireland etc).
 
Zebs said:
I'm surprised that UK-based posters don't know about it considering how much your history lessons appear to only focus on the nation's successes and tends to airbrush everything else out (Ireland etc).
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It's not really a success though. It merely marks the successful end to a pretty bruising defeat in the Battle of France so whilst it might get mentioned, as far as I can remember most of the story of WW2 starts at D-Day in British schools.

Although saying that, most of the WW2 teaching is about the Nazis and the holocaust.
 
NinjaFletch said:
It's not really a success though. It merely marks the successful end to a pretty bruising defeat in the Battle of France so whilst it might get mentioned, as far as I can remember most of the story of WW2 starts at D-Day in British schools.

Although saying that, most of the WW2 teaching is about the Nazis and the holocaust.
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Really? They skip the Blitz & the Battle of Britain?
 
John_Jensen said:
Really? They skip the Blitz & the Battle of Britain?
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It's mentioned, of course, but I really feel like most of the war with Britain on the defensive is covered very quickly to allow more time to focus on British triumphant victories (and of course you ignore the Russians role entirely in school).

Although tbh, I really can't remember being taught much history well in school at all.
 
NinjaFletch said:
It's mentioned, of course, but I really feel like most of the war with Britain on the defensive is covered very quickly to allow more time to focus on British triumphant victories (and of course you ignore the Russians role entirely in school).

Although tbh, I really can't remember being taught much history well in school at all.
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I would have thought Dunkirk would have been universally known in Britain and well known outside, especially in Europe. Showing my age i guess!
 
Green_Red said:
I'm Irish so British history and European history to that extent isn't really something I was that interested in at school. Ireland wasn't involved in WWII. How much do you know about say the Irish war of Independence, or the American Civil War?

I'm shocked!!!
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There were thousands of Irish men involved in the war even if Ireland the country remained neutral
 
John_Jensen said:
I would have thought Dunkirk would have been universally known in Britain and well known outside, especially in Europe. Showing my age i guess!
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Apparently not judging by some of the reactions in this thread!

But peoples experiences are different I guess, and a lot of it will come down to when people stopped doing history at school. I don't think we were really taught anything 'properly' (i.e. by an actual history teacher) until Year 7 and by Year 10 most schools give you the option of dropping history and not taking it to GCSE level, and by A Level you're lucky if a quarter of people are taking history in a given year group.

So a lot of people only get three years actually being taught history by a history teacher.
 
NinjaFletch said:
Apparently not judging by some of the reactions in this thread!

But peoples experiences are different I guess, and a lot of it will come down to when people stopped doing history at school. I don't think we were really taught anything 'properly' (i.e. by an actual history teacher) until Year 7 and by Year 10 most schools give you the option of dropping history and not taking it to GCSE level, and by A Level you're lucky if a quarter of people are taking history in a given year group.

So a lot of people only get three years actually being taught history by a history teacher.
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This.
 
golden_blunder said:
There were thousands of Irish men involved in the war even if Ireland the country remained neutral
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not nearly as many as in The Great War, to be fair, and I remember being taught a lot more about that in school than WWII.

Ultimately we as a country weren't involved, and let's face it, Ireland has had enough of it's own problems over the years to cover.
 
Sky1981 said:
I agree with the bolded part, although not having anything to do with war myself my bet is that taking down one - two enemy plane is something that is considered very good in real war, it's not like in superhero movies where the good guys can suddenly man a plane and shoot down 6-7 enemy planes.
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I'm not sure, the dogfights over Dunkirk were the main battles following Hitler's halt order on the ground. The German planes were trying to take out the Allied ground troops and the RAF pilots sole job was the take out the German planes to protect their soldiers. So it was probably quite common for them.

During the course of the war, yeah, I reckon it would be considered very good to take out 2/3 opposition planes in one sitting.
 
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