Forgetting to add any depth to the characters whatsoever. It had to have been deliberate.
Dunkirk - Christopher Nolan's next film
- Thread starter Nikhil
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Forgetting to add any depth to the characters whatsoever. It had to have been deliberate.
Absolutely.
Well that's my point isn't it? It never tried to make develop its characters, that was a conscious and deliberate decision. It wasn't a 'mistake' and Nolan didn't 'forget'.
It might not have done anything for you but it was a clear decision made by Nolan which for others did work (hence its ridiculous metacritic score and generally positive reception). Doesn't mean you have to like it, but understanding what he was trying to achieve makes it easier to understand why people did.
That said. feck George, now he was a pointless character.
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Yeah I never said it was a mistake. Quite the opposite in fact, I suspected it had to have been deliberate and upon looking it up found this was the case. All I said about this omission was that it kept me from enjoying the film. Deliberate or otherwise I thought it was a poor choice.
I don't really need to understand why others like it, it doesn't help me enjoy it anymore. I watched it and that was my opinion. What he was trying to achieve is pretty irrelevant, to me anyway because it didn't grab me.
Yep, it was one of the best things about the movie for me and what set it apart from being a run of the mill war-film.
I'm glad he did what he did because the film was never about a few sets of individuals, this wasn't a saving private ryan or a full metal jacket, this was a story about one character and one character alone and that was Great Britain. Great Britain was the main character who got all the development, showing during those times with our backs against the wall, that no matter the cost we would bring as many of those soldiers, sailors, airmen back home to re-group and re-think how we approach this war. It was about the U.K standing tall and saying no to fascism and saying if you want us Hitler you have to come and get us, that's what I understood about this film and who the main character was. Now in reading that you would think I am a patriot, I kind of am, I have served and still serving my country in battles that in the grand scheme of things don't matter, well WW2 did and a in a huge way and I believe Nolan has portrayed the British grit and determination brilliantly.
Exactly same for me
I want to know how much Tom hardy got paid for that 
I liked it but I do agree with some of the comments about how they felt no connection to the characters. It just felt like a sequence of events with very little background. I wonder how I would've viewed it with no prior knowledge of the historical event.
Also wasn't a fan of it being PG. I think I saw one bit of blood on a guy's face. Not asking for loads of gore but some realism at least, every main-ish character seemed to have plot armour.
Also wasn't a fan of it being PG. I think I saw one bit of blood on a guy's face. Not asking for loads of gore but some realism at least, every main-ish character seemed to have plot armour.
Beautiful looking film. Great score. Incredibly tense. However....
What a ridiculously improbable and sentimental ending that was. A Spitfire could glide for a period but there's zero chance that he's going to be able to miraculously shoot down an enemy aircraft. I doubt there was an instance of that in the entire war. What's disappointing about this sort of stuff is that there would have been countless factual and documented episodes of heroism involved in the evacuation and there is no need to start making fantastical stuff up.
It's the above that generally puts me off films about real life events and instead reach for a good documentary/drama. The 2004 BBC 3 parter Dunkirk was superior but if anybody wants to get an in depth understanding of the magnitude of Dunkirk amid the wider context of the war just get ITV's 1970s series The World at War on boxset. It's probably the greatest documentary ever made.
It's the above that generally puts me off films about real life events and instead reach for a good documentary/drama. The 2004 BBC 3 parter Dunkirk was superior but if anybody wants to get an in depth understanding of the magnitude of Dunkirk amid the wider context of the war just get ITV's 1970s series The World at War on boxset. It's probably the greatest documentary ever made.
Not sure playing Battlefield counts as serving your country, my friend.
Really looking forward to seeing this - going to watch it on the IMAX on Friday 
If they had used one of these 'real' events, people would only come on here to complain about how unbelievable and ridiculous it was.
It should be noted that there was a spitfire plane that landed/crashed on the sands of Dunkirk/Calais during that period. And the pilot was captured.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ater-auctioned-2-5million-fully-restored.html
Of course that's not to say it took down an enemy aircraft whilst stalled.
Non DM source here http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/sale-raf-spitfire-buried-beneath-6036999
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/.../Spitfire-back-in-the-air-after-71-years.html
https://www.rafbf.org/news-and-blogs/tell-mother-ill-be-home-tea–-incredible-story-spitfire-going-under-hammer
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ater-auctioned-2-5million-fully-restored.html
(May-June 1940 was evacuation of Dunkirk)
Of course that's not to say it took down an enemy aircraft whilst stalled.
Non DM source here http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/sale-raf-spitfire-buried-beneath-6036999
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/.../Spitfire-back-in-the-air-after-71-years.html
https://www.rafbf.org/news-and-blogs/tell-mother-ill-be-home-tea–-incredible-story-spitfire-going-under-hammer
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Maybe spoiler that mate in case?
Quiet old man, mind you you're so old you fought at the battle of Waterloo.
Ah, was a glorious day...
The last 10 pages have been people discussing the film.
If anyone get's spoiled by opening this thread and turning to this page... more fool them
Just being considerate that's all. Worth the effort.
But in ref to your post I repeat that what happens in the film is highly unlikely, bar the landing of course, and probably never occurred in the whole six years of war.
Highly unlikely is fine, though. Movie-makers are allowed a bit of poetic license.
My take on it is that he's gliding in towards the beach when the German fighter flies through his cross-hairs and he nails them with a lucky shot. Unlikely, yes but not completely beyond the realms of possibility.
I guess that's my issue with films such as this that are made primarily to entertain rather than inform ie the portraying of something pretty ludicrous, to get a sentimental and "feelgood" ending, when there are countless real and extraordinary acts and events that could have been depicted but aren't. Integrity and believability get sacrificed for the feelgood factor and it cheapens the actual events. I also like to see historical accuracy and think it's important when it's been shown that many people take what they see in films such as this as being faithful depictions of events.
call me a miserable bastard but...
it would've been far more hard hitting, and likely, that the guy who ditched in the sea drowned in his cockpit and not been miraculously saved
I've probably read 30+ personal accounts of men who flew in the war (my old man was ex RAF flight crew) so have a keen interest
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Fair enough, I can see why some wouldn't like it. It didn't have characters, dialogue etc. It didn't fit the script for a WW2 film.
I've seen a dozen WW2 films with great characters, witty dialogue, action and I still liked every one of them. Personally I was quite glad to see a WW2 film that wasn't like that. Tom Hardy wasn't a wise cracking, top gun who left his little lady at home to fight the Germans. Just a pilot. The kid on the beach hadn't just finished school and left his mum and dads house. Just a soldier. The captain of the boat who rescues dozens, we get a glimpse of who he used to be, but in the end he was just someone with a boat who could help.
Don't get me wrong, I liked this about the film too. Not every film has to have some muscly Arnie type guy with insane plot armour, that's not realistic.
My quibble with the film wasn't that it was missing this, but a little bit of character development is all I wanted. Have them be ordinary men, and show us some depth to make us care about them. That's what I was getting at, not that I felt we needed another overblown American war film with the same old witty lines.
As it was the characters never felt real, and therefore you didn't care about their fate.
Tbh I can't argue with that. Maybe that was the directors intention? Or I am giving the Nolan too much credit.
There are different ways of looking at it , the characters in the film don't really have anything memorable about them. They are just survivors and I believe Nolan had stated before the film it was a survival story. Possibly the reason they are portrayed as they are, is because for everyone that made it, 10 others didn't who would have been just as deserving to survive.
I do think the lack of memorable characters stops this being a *great* film.
It felt more like a tv episode - albeit one with a budget equal to that of the United squad.
It felt more like a tv episode - albeit one with a budget equal to that of the United squad.
I'm sure it was his intention, I just felt it made for a dull story is all. I get that he wanted to convey these men were ordinary soldiers caught up in the tragedy of war, but part of the job of a story is to make you care.
Ordinary people still have interesting things, layers to them that can be delved into a bit to make you feel some attachment to them as people. You could have picked any of the other 400,000 men on the beach and done this. I felt this should have been explored as the impact of the story would have been even greater. Instead it just came across as like when you read a story by a primary school kid. This happened, then this happened, then this happened. The end.
Exactly, like a documentary told through re-enactments or something. It was more a dramatisation of events than an actual story with a protagonist you're supposed to root for.
That was the whole point, though. By not giving any backstory this could have been any one of the other 40,000 men on the beach. Or you, the viewer. Which made it all hit home that little bit harder. To me, anyway.
The ordinary man vibe could still have been conveyed with some backstory though. Everybody has a backstory, it wouldn't make them any less ordinary.
I still feel like it's the story's job to make us care though. By Nolan leaving that out he might've told us these men were ordinary but in my opinion he did so at the expense of real storytelling.
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Yeah. It's the middle of a war and all organised in no time at all so can't imagine anyone had time to record the numbers accurately. At best you'll get a researched estimate. Same with casualties etc...they're always different depending on which source or side you believe.
It's still not even clear why the Germans stopped advancing is it? I've read one thing about them wanting to conserve their vehicles/troops, another about Hitler being close to the Luftwaffe commander so trusting them to do the job (though that sounds quite dumb). There's also the theory Hitler still wanted to negotiate with Churchill in the hope we'd be allies or that we'd at least withdraw from the conflict, though I'm not even sure what that's based on as I've only read things discrediting it.
I find it difficult to believe that they just weren't aware that Britain was organising an evacuation via small boats, or that doing so would actually be effective. It happened over a number of days which again the film didn't really demonstrate, so it's not like suddenly we were doing this and it was too late to react. We even had time to go back after and rescues some of the French.
Down is the post in this thread which tries to explain it and which I found interesting. I think the main problem is that the Germans didn't occupy the whole France and they were afraid that an army of still 400,000 people could hurt them massively. If they had the whole France in that moment and could focus only on Dunkirk it's quite certain that there would be a different outcome. IMO part about Hitler wanted to negotiate with Churchill and in that regard doing "favor" is the least believable.
Apparently it's quite marshy around Dunkirk and Hitler felt his panzers might get bogged down and at risk of losing them. He made the decision to finish it from the air instead. That decision quite possibly cost him the war
We're exceptionally good at categorising things because it's more economical in terms of brain power to do so - it's just the way our brain works - but there is an absolute boatload of exceptions to what you're saying. We regularly invent new categories for modern and classic art to get around that, so if I was to throw out a few examples of artists who never fit into a box it would only lead to a pointless circular discussion.
An easier example we should both be able to agree upon is the kind of artist that moved from box to box at different stages in their career. David Bowie is an obvious one. Prince. The Beatles. They're the popular ones which will always draw debate...but step outside the mainstream and you have much more obvious examples.
If we can't agree on that, there's a more obvious point here...they aren't Nolan's only films. His first feature film, Following, was completely unlike anything he's made since and would fit most people's description of "art-house". Of course he didn't have the financial backing to create a blockbuster film at that point but that's really neither here nor there - it shows that if you look at someone throughout their career, they don't fit into these neat boxes anywhere near as well as we like to think.
That's simply not true. That's what you want from a story. That's just your preference. It isn't a requirement of any art form and you don't need to look far to see that. There's popular art in every artform that is popular in large part because it makes you feel nothing. There's lots more brilliant pieces of art that excel in spite of it making you feel nothing.
It certainly didn't help. Underestimating the Russians is probably what cost him the war though...well that and being fecking bonkers. They lost millions on the Eastern Front and ended up getting themselves cut off. German casualties in Russia were 10-20 times what we feared we'd lose at Dunkirk.
Also it could have gone so mmuch worse. Imagine if we were in the same situation as the second world war now with the feckwits we have running the country at the moment. We'd probably have ended up fighting with the Nazis because they offered us a better mutual arms deal and a free Volkswagen for Boris or something...and I don't even think I'm joking.
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I thought it was really poor.
Hated the editing. Having to watch every event from 3 different perspectives all showing the exact same thing over and over and over was just so redundant.
The characters and dialogue were completely incidental, nothing noteworthy is said at any point in the film.
There wasn't even much spectacle to the whole thing,
I finished watching it an hour ago and i've mostly forgotten it, filed it away in the 'pointless shit i can forget now' part of my brain.
Hated the editing. Having to watch every event from 3 different perspectives all showing the exact same thing over and over and over was just so redundant.
The characters and dialogue were completely incidental, nothing noteworthy is said at any point in the film.
There wasn't even much spectacle to the whole thing,
I finished watching it an hour ago and i've mostly forgotten it, filed it away in the 'pointless shit i can forget now' part of my brain.
Missed the beginning but overall enjoyed it. It's not a Great movie, but it was brilliantly shot and had some brilliant scenes in it.
For me the way he captured absolute hopelessness of a man in any modern war, this claustrophobic (sometimes literally) feeling that you get from watching this movie makes it one of the best examples of a genre. A joyful patriotic ending with the completely different mood was a bit off.
For me the way he captured absolute hopelessness of a man in any modern war, this claustrophobic (sometimes literally) feeling that you get from watching this movie makes it one of the best examples of a genre. A joyful patriotic ending with the completely different mood was a bit off.
The more I think about it the more I don't like it. I just can't forgive the bit with the Spitfire at the end. That's where it turned from being somwhere between a Nolan vanity project and a decent perspective based war film, to being entirely the later.
I hate those arguments and I actually had to argue for Dunkirk here in this pointless endless argument, but no, there weren't few more crucial and deciding moments in this war. It is a fantastic story and arguably the biggest British story from the WW2, and Britain's annoying appearance just near his borders always kept him rightfully concerned, but no, this was not a war-costing decision.
Well yeah, otherwise what am I doing sitting there? I may as well get up and go and do something else.
Surely every story is better if they can somehow make you want to know what happens next? That's lesson number one of storytelling.
The Russian is here and he wants credit.