DUNKIRK (Christopher Nolan 2017)
CHRISTOPHER NOLAN: DUNKIRK (2017)
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HARRY STYLES, ANEURIN BARNARD AND FIONN WHITHEAD IN DUNKIRK
The helplessness of war: Nolan's radical, succinct epic
Here is a great and classic war movie that's radically different - not even about "war" in the usual sense. Because it's a great "escape," not a battle, the evacuation called "Operation Dynamo," between 26 May and 4 June 1940, of 300,000 Allied soldiers from the northern French beach at Dunkerque where they were trapped by the Germans. Volunteers, with small English working and recreational boats, came from Dover, only 26 miles away, to rescue the troops, necessary because only they could get into the shallow shore and dodge the attacking Germans. Dynamo was a miraculous achievement (without it some say the Germans would have won the war) and we don't really see how it was carried out. Instead Nolan provides intense glimpses of everything that was going on, on land, at sea, and in the air - and above all he shows us the terror and helplessness of the common soldier (not to mention the ranking officer - because they are at the mercy of tight circumstance here too). Not a war movie? This is nonetheless one of the greatest of them.
And controversial, and destined to be long debated. For some it's a chaotic mashup of time that makes no sense. For others - including me, since I was enthralled, if confused - it is a "Hitchcockian" triumph of brilliant editing. I hadn't read any reviews in advance to prepare and didn't quite grasp the importance of the opening outline chapters. They are typically telegraphic - words are kept at a minimum here: "1. The Mole: one week. 2. The Sea: one day. 3. The Air: one hour." These three time-schemes are intercut together, an hour of fighter plane battling with a week of activity on the beach and in containers, battleships, a day of coming and going of the small rescue boats. So there you are: I have to go back and watch it all again, if I dare. Nonetheless the intercut three levels are as deeply visceral as you could imagine.
This is war like Tolstoy's description of the Battle of Waterloo in War and Peace: chaotic, incomprehensible and terrifying. And that's how you feel it, as you watch. There is no safe place, not on land, at sea, or in the air. A new level of accuracy is achieved. You've never been in a ship that was torpedoed like this, or flown inside the cockpit of a Spitfire like this (and seen what it's like to try to hit a German plane struggling with the controls), or been in the water with soldiers when a plane falls into the water nearby and explodes in flames and you dive to escape the fire. However these different experiences are recreated in the film, there is never the demoralizing sense so common today that they're "just CGI." The cinematography of of Hoyte van Hoytema achieves beauty, terror, and completeness. All is forged together, even Hanz Zimmer's bombastic music (though it's too loud at times). This is a great director at the top of his game.
This is, by the way, a low point for Britain, but a moment when Churchill turned defeat into victory with his "We shall fight on the beaches....we shall never surrender" speech - neatly provided us not in the famous stentorian tones but read by a young soldier, in a train car, from a newspaper, at film's end - and it is a moment without Americans. And without stars, though, strictly speaking, there are lots of them, from newcomers like Fionn Whitehead ("Tommy" in the credits, but nameless, but the first pale young soldier we follow), Aneurin Barnard, Barry Keoghan (the tragic young George), Jack Lowden, and many other young actors with small but key roles, including One Direction's Harry Styles - to big names like Tom Hardy (in a "mask" once again as the key fighter pilot); Kenneth Branagh as the ranking naval officer; Mark Rylance as Mr Dawson, who stands for all the captains of small rescue boats. Rylance's performance is typically perfect and invisible. This is an English movie in the old sense - no stars, everyone a star.
Dunkirk is in contrast with Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, without bloody awful horribleness. There are plenty of people dying, from the oft-described opening behind the line in town when we follow three young English soldiers and only one, "Tommy," gets through alive, but there's no gore or running blood or severed limbs. The horror is desperately struggling to get onto a ship that then is blown up, or being in the hold of one and seeing it shot full of holes, or landing your plane on the water and being trapped in it as it sinks. Or rescuing a shell-shocked man (Cillian Murphy) who then creates mayhem and tragedy on your little boat, but later shows how in a war villains can turn into heroes. Dunkirk has a lot to say amid the confusion and chaos that are its troubling default setting, but gore is not its message.
Dunkirk is an unusually intense mix of the epic and the intimate. It was shot in 70% with iMax cameras - bolted on the little planes, in the water, and hand held (though they weigh 50 pounds) on board ships and containers, to be viewed in iMax theaters (or those few cinemas projecting in 70mm) in square intimate academy ratio, with many closeups so you can see Kenneth Branagh's sickly pallor, the mask over Tom Hardy's face, the gloss of Fionn Whitehead's black hair, and witness the color of the flames when Farrier sets fire to his plane after he lands on the Dunkirk beach (where Nolan actually filmed), so the Germans who are coming for him - who we never hear or see, and experience only as the soldiers do, through their bullets, bombs, and torpedoes - can't get it. It's very bright, and very orange, and it's burned into my memory.
Dunkirk opened in France 19 July, US and UK, 21 July 2017.
It's a chaotic mashup of time that makes no sense.
Count me in the minority who feel this is a disappointing movie with only "glimpses" of a war escape that doesn't permit the audience sufficient expanded, connected experiences to capture the totality of the sustained horror and human tragedy of military conflict. The opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan (1998) is much superior that Dunkirk pales by comparison. There are too many small frustrating plot devices and sequences to mention. I began to have a strong desire to look at my watch and almost walked out of the movie half way through.
The movie seemed to be more of an director's fancy attempt to pitch a three virtual reality experiences about war like one might develop for a Disney theme park experience where you go into a darkened theater. Yet it's like especially with the aerial combat scenes that there are many real life video takes that one could attempt to locate if one wanted such vicarious technical experience rides. The intercutting only made this movie more a visual audio entertainment pack ride than a epic war movie drama. But the connection to the human drama and characters, unlike what seemed to be a manufactured boat sequence, was really missing for me. I didn't care about most of these characters.
If one wanted the "chaotic, incomprehensible and terrifying" as Kniff appears to, then one would be wise to use the cinematography of Aleksey German who directed Hard To Be A God (2013) instead of Christopher Nolan. Peter Rainer of the Christian Science Monitor describes it as:
Quote:
“Dunkirk,” with its scaled-to-be-a-masterpiece visual grandiosity, aims to be an epic of the spirit, but there is something weirdly underpowered about it. It’s a series of riveting tableaux, but the human center is lacking. When “Dunkirk” was over, I felt as if I had been through something, but it wasn’t a war, exactly. For all its painstaking realism, the movie resembles a great big impressionist abstraction. Maybe it’s not so different from Nolan’s other movies after all. Grade: B-
Concentrating on a Movie Dilemma
I saw this movie unfortunately in a Cinemark theater in somewhat uncomfortable lounge chair with the screen almost in my face. I had to turn my head in order to read the subtitles I was so close to the screen (the miniature reserved seating chart that renovated theaters are opting for nowadays doesn't show where the seats are in scale to the big screen when choosing which seat to select, yech!).
When it comes to war movies, the experiential approach to me is more like a Disneyland ride where one can become immersed in the experience, like virtual reality or perhaps a videogame. There are movie theaters where there are seats that actually vibrate and move to stimulate the experience. I've heard of even odors being introduced into a theater. Interestingly, what Chris is describing can also be transferred to such a visual experience as with the new movie Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) that is playing at the same time as Dunkirk, except its a visually stunning sci fi version of Dunkirk.
For me a dramatic full feature film is more than an experience. If one has to contend with concentrating on an experiential movie I would think it would defeat the purpose of such a movie which is to just be able to sit back and let the movie's sensory output just wash over one and transport one into the movie without having to mentally contemplate on various cognitive reflections during the movie. It is with video games, one becomes the character in the video game experience. A feature film on the other hand is the experience plus story, plus character, plus connection to emotional meaning within the context of the movie, not as an audience member becoming part of the movie itself. As with Last Action Hero (1993), where a film characters enters into a movie, there is a separation from the audience. The movie experience is about an audience member experiencing through a character's experience and context, not an audience member themselves who are not deliberately scripted into the movie.
Chris proposes the You are There Theory of Film Excellence
I suggest that Chris may have read the opposite of what I have intended. I believe that Chris has proposed a new way of experiencing a film consisting of substituting one's self for the lead characters in the film and from which perspective to experience the film which I propose calling an "experiential film" experience or as Chris might label "You are There" approach If so, I don't know how one can concentrate on a film in which one is actually there in the film without also having to mentally separate one's self from the film, unless one proposes an ability to read thoughts and emotions of another film character.
For me the best experience of a film is to concentrate on the movie's character's experience not from a "you are there" experience. The closest that I have come to the "You are There" perspective that comes to mind is Douglas Trumbull's Brainstorm (1983) and Natalie Wood's last film where there is a scientific instrument that allows one to experience the same experiences of another person. In this movie it was designed for the audience to really experience what another character was experiencing as this was a fundamental plot device of the movie. What Chris proposes, however, is for films to be experienced in such a way that currently defies the scientific capabilities of current technology as well as to mostly ignore in part the actual storyline and the inner essences of the characters themselves.
To experience real war, perhaps other movies might be better
Instead of declaring Dunkirk, the greatest war movie of all time,
perhaps to really experience in intimate nature of the horror of war it
would of value to experience the following movies first: The Railway
Man (2013), The Great War Diary (2014, television mini-series),
Excaliber (1981), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Dances with Wolves (1990),
Full Metal Jacket (1987), We Were Soldiers (2002), Schindler's List
(1993), Schindler's List (1993), Jarhead (2005), How The West Was Won
(1962), Apocalypto (2006), Alexander (2004), Apocalypse Now (1979),
United 93 (2006), Cold Mountain (2003), Fail-Safe (1964), The Great
Escape (1963), Black Hawk Down (2001), The Revenant (2015), Enemy at
the Gates (2001), Platoon (1986), and Gettysburg (1993).
Opening Scene Similarity Flaws
The opening scene of Dunkirk of British soldiers foolishly running down a town street only to get shot down reminds me of a scene from the updated War of the Worlds (2005) directed by Steven Spielberg as people are running away from gigantic Martian contraptions that just ray gun them into dust. Unlike We Were Soldiers (2002) which opens with Vietcong attacking a French platoon on a dirt road from both sides of the road, the British soldiers in Dunkirk seem to foolishly forget to use the apparently the abandoned buildings all along with entire length of the street to use for cover and even worse as they continue to attempt to reach a fence while being shot at directly even though there appears to be a cross street where they could easily have escaped the bullets by just going around a simple corner. While civilians might have fled in terror, I don't think that trained British soldiers would have simply forgotten basic training of evasion tactics, especially if one is going to die. Too bad actors with a military background in this movie didn't complain to the director of this huge oversight. I guess being you are there experience doesn't include authentic realism.
The Your Are There Approach Flaw
Knipp's insistence that Dunkirk's primary strength lies not so much on story or characters (which is apparently very diminished in this film) but on the apparently real vicarious experience of being in an actual war scene that individual audience members are allowed to experience has a fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is that film technology isn't yet sufficient to offer what Knipp is really seeking. I'm reminded of, by now outdated, scene from Francois Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 (1966) where Linda Montag played by Julie Christie, the wife of the main character, is enraptured by a stylized soap opera broadcast on a full wall screen which supposedly allows individual audience members to directly participate as if they, and only they, are part of the soap opera. This fascinating participant technique is supposedly made possible through the advanced technology of spy cameras in every home and the ability of the actors to ask generalized questions of the individual audience members where an obvious gap in the dialogue appears and the name of the audience member is inserted making it appear that the audience member is being personally talked to which is apparently not the case.
The problem of the audience member as the primary character in Dunkirk approach is that unlike actual characters in the movie, such characters have a comprehensive historical context from which to experience their surroundings and circumstances in the movie whereas as in the case of Linda Montag they remain starkly disconnected from the events being presented to them. Most audience members do not have the military basic training, the prolonged periods of waiting around, of the apparent associations and friendships seemingly developed in the movie, the same motivations and persona as being depicted. Instead of the brilliant use of first person, found footage approach that made The Blair Witch Project (1999) so effective, Christopher Nolan still distances the audience using perspectives that a real character could never obtain if they had actually been at Dunkirk. Dunkirk falls starkly short of Knipp's criteria for you are here experience. We may have to wait at least ten more years for quantum computers to be able to tap in our individual brains to create individualistic movie scenarios in which audience members are likely to stay home and connect themselves up into a Matrix (1999) like virtual world instead.
The Impossible Flying Machine of The Ending Sequence
A real problem about the ending scene was the improbable, fantasy of a single engine fighter prop plane that continues to glide and glide without fuel forever and forever and even able to shoot down an enemy aircraft, one that still could outmaneuver with its own fueled engine. That whole unbelievable sequence really made Christopher Nolan look overly dramatic and manipulative in trying to come up with some fantastic ending that really should have crashed and which in some ways it did. I'm also reminded of the much more impressive battle scene from Oliver Stone's Alexander (2004) which unlike Dunkirk truly portrayed the epic nature of the thousands and thousands of soldiers involved in each respective scene. Alexander making a sweeping turn with his cavalry around what appeared to be a sea of soldiers. Others have complained about how puny Christopher Nolan's ending scene is regarding the supposedly 300,000 soldiers that were supposed almost stranded near Dunkirk. When comparing these two movies, it is fairly obvious how understated and diminished the magnitude of Dunkirk's underwhelming magnitude of the actual heroic efforts and the immensity of the potential loss to Britain this escape would have resulted in.
The Brilliant Mind of Chris Helps Again
Chris nicely handles the ending scene time jumps with his commentary. Personally, I'd rather watch sci fi time jumps than its use in war dramas. For me, there's enough going on that a simple linear, not fancy director stuff is needed to really offer up a great war movie. But Chris makes a good point on how to experience the continuously flying fighter plane and its pretty hard to comment reasonably without watching the ending again. I think Christopher Nolan has Inception (2010) on the brain when it comes to time jumps or compressions. At least in that movie, the whole approach to watching the movie was explained prior to having to experience the movie in its entirety.
I'm with Chris regarding whether or not to see this movie. It's probably better to see this movie and make your own decision along with his idea of making sure you see it in IMAX. Having watched it with the screen almost in my face isn't the best way of experiencing any movie, even Tootsie (1982) where I ended up in the front row on the corner of one of the largest theaters in Utah at the time. That was the time when people packed the large theaters on the 70 mm wide screens.
Chris is brilliant not the movie
I don't believe Dunkirk made you brilliant. You already were.
Positive Time's Review Re-Examined
Stephanie Zacharek, a Time’s film critic, July 31, 2017, appears to critically rave about Dunkirk for its elaborate and impressive visual and sound effects, its emotional details, and the trust in the faces of the movie. She’s especially impressed by Mark Rylance’s performance as an aging seaman and owner of a small boat coming to the rescue of British soldiers at risk in Dunkirk during World War II, 1940. Even though she quotes the director, Christopher Nolan, calling this movie a “ride” perhaps for marketing purposes, she expands on the movie’s strengths as containing the fears of claustrophobia and drowning as well as how this movie sustains its dramatic tension using “small strokes” and “bits of history” including an aerial battle and one of supposedly frightening proportions of a ship being suddenly sunk by a torpedo.
All in all, Zacharek’s description of Dunkirk might be adequate in themselves, but in the context of other movies, Dunkirk has plenty of competition and in many cases, specific examples where other directors have excelled in their visual and sound effects, emotional details, and even in the faces that the audience members are to trust. The “ride” of Dunkirk, seems to be exactly that, a ride of glimpses and bits of war time experiences as if one is being transported along in a number of sequential and concurrent expensive theme park rides at Disneyland or Universal Studios.
What seems to be missing is the elaborate and impressive visual and sound effects from a movie like Russia’s Aleksey Germany’s elaborate and impressive visual and sound effect masterpiece of Hard to be a God (2013) about a scientist who is sent to help a local Medieval society on the planet Arkanar. What is even more impressive is that even seen and heard on a Lenovo 16” laptop, the images and the audio effects are superior to that of Dunkirk as experienced on the big screen.
Even though Mark Rylance’s performance appears adequate he seems to be stuck in a fictionalized, melodramatic, and sensationalize plot where one of his boy is the accidental victim of a rescued soldier’s clumsy attempts to have the small boat captained by Rylance’s character turn around. Because of the myriad of interruptions and time jumps used by Nolan, the sustained faces we are to trust in become a disjointed discontinuous riot of the feelings and emotions cut short and interrupted by the two other plots being offered up by Nolan. As such, the sustained dramatic tension that Zacharek seems to enjoy seems rather to become an intrusive annoyance when compared to the sustained intensity as experienced in Wolfgang Peterson’s The Perfect Storm (2000) where George Clooney’s character as a commercial fisherman is caught up in the storm of the century. As for a sinking ship, it was pretty predictable that something bad was about to happen in Dunkirk and for it to occur with the coincidence of having the main character survive to go onto further extraordinary experiences turns this movie more into a mainstream survival movie, even more so than the more plausible Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in The Revenant (2015) or the riveting experience of the classic sinking ship where Leonardo gets to suffer perhaps even more in Titanic (1997) even though everyone knows what happens to the ship.
The many of the faces we are to trust in Dunkirk, appear to be two dimensional characters without backstories, without emotional depth, apparently seemingly just reacting, reacting to some written script and on location in Dunkirk and elsewhere. It’s hard to identify or feel emotionally attached to characters who seemingly come and go in bits and glimpses on the screen. As two British soldiers make their way toward a rescue boat with an injured man in a stretcher, even as the tension mounts and the stirring string musical accompaniment, reminiscent of the eerie music of Mica Levi from Jonathan Glazer’s horror movie Under the Skin (2013) , there is a corresponding odd conflicting tension of hope that they will not succeed in their apparent covert and seemingly unfair attempt to save themselves.
The fear of claustrophobia and drowning as well as the stunning aerial combat scenes are arguably decent, but in competition with the intense emotional, sometimes breath stopping rush surrounding similar suffocating experiences found in such movies as the underrated Alien: Resurrection (1997) or the more popular suspense action movies with emotionally riveting water scenes from Bourne Supremacy (2004) or Casino Royale (2006), Dunkirk appears to sink as an pinnacle of achievement. Finally, for aerial combat scenes, the broken and disjointed intercutting as well as both the use first and second person photography seems to be unable to sustain the smoothly execution of the continuing tension, anxiety, worry, and even strategy employed in a literal battle to the death used perhaps more effectively in such other movies as Star Wars (1977) or The Fifth Element (1997) even considering that these were sci fi movies.
As for epic and big as well as small and intimate scale, one of the most intriguing and immersive, compelling war movies might be Enemy At The Gates (2001) set during the much less familiar Battle of Leningrad.
