Dunkirk Reviews

Allied soldiers from Belgium, Britain and France are surrounded by the German army and evacuated during a fierce battle in World War II.

First, let me make it clear: I did enjoy this movie. I just can't sing its praises quite as enthusiastically as everyone else is. I'm a sucker for anything Christopher Nolan directs, but this is the first of his movies not to really blow my mind. I get that this is an important movie, given its subject matter, but war movies just aren't my thing.

Hardly any of the characters have clearly defined personalities, which sadly kept me from forming any emotional attachment to them.

That said, the film itself is masterfully shot and edited, which, in conjunction with the overall sound design, makes you feel like you're truly in the situation yourself, so it still manages to be hard-hitting in that regard.

Plus, being a Christopher Nolan movie, it's still a cool brain-teaser. I was warned in advance about the three different timespans, so I had fun trying to keep up with the overall timeline and piece it together.

To recap, it's definitely a good movie, but for me, its lack of characterisation made it less potent than it should have been.

My rating: 75%

In a way, Dunkirk's lack of emotion feels like a conscious effort on Nolan's part to challenge his critics after Interstellar, which was drenched in forced sentiment that the helmer ostensibly struggled with. Aside from a few moments in Dawson's story and a touching closing scene, there's very little in the way of humanity here, and there’s no central character to latch onto. Characters are thinly-defined, with no backstories or personalities – hell, most aren't even given names! Again, you can understand that Nolan was aiming for an experience with minimal dialogue, but you need something more in a movie to make it feel more dramatically cohesive. With the cast mostly comprised of unknown performers, the film basically belongs to the recognisable veterans. Branagh is particularly exceptional, not to mention superbly naturalistic as a smart, dedicated officer, while Rylance again shows his terrific acting chops with an understated but flawlessly essayed portrayal of a kind-hearted civilian trying to do his bit. Poor Hardy, meanwhile, is stuck wearing a mask for most of his screen-time, making him tough to understand and severely limiting his expressivity. James D'Arcy (Agent Carter) is also on hand as a colonel who serves Commander Bolton, and he brings sufficient gravitas to the role. As for the casting of One Direction pop singer Harry Styles? The low-ranking soldiers are so generic and undefined that I couldn't even figure out where he was, and the casting decision does seem like a cheap way to boost ticket sales for the tween audience.

Dunkirk is a visual masterpiece of storytelling, unlike anything you've ever seen in recent years. We've gotten countless of films centered around World War II throughout the years, but what Christopher Nolan have achieved with Dunkirk is outstanding. He's taken a genre that have become rather formulaic over the years and shattered it completely. He breaks the formula and creates a film that should aspire other directors to follow his example. 

I see the word "immersive" being tossed around in regards to several other films every now and then, but Dunkirk is one of the few film that I truly believes deserves to be called immersive. It's fully tense experience that doesn't let hold of you until it explodes in an emotionally satisfying climax. This is all achieved with stunning visuals, perfect use of practical effects and a ticking score by Hans Zimmer that seamlessly blends in with the sound design. Dunkirk is so intense that you feel exhausted when it's over. It's a film that truly captures just how horrible and pointless war is, particularly for the people involved and that feeling translates well to the audience.

Dunkirk have opened to critical acclaim from critics, which is well-deserved. Though the film has received some criticism for its lack of character development. This is true. The film doesn't have any character development, nor does it have any stand-out characters. Usually I would agree that this is a flaw, but due to nature of how Dunkirk is and what it essentially is about, I attribute this as one of the film's strengths instead. It's a film that doesn't require characters to sit down and talk about their back stories, motivations and goals for us to be emotionally invested in them. This time around, we get emotionally invested in them because of the situation their in. We care about them simply as humans stuck in a horrible war with death all around them. The tense nature of the film wouldn't have worked if the film were to take its time and properly introduce us to each character. We do follow some characters throughout the film, but they're more like framework in this case, to base the film around them. As of such, there's very little dialogue in this film. There's very little exposition. It's a film about the event itself and the way that Nolan deconstructed the traditional formula to tell this story in a clean and visual way is something that ought to be celebrated.

One important thing to mention is the gorgeous cinematography by Hoyte Van Hoytema. The film is beautiful to look at and it deserves to be seen on the largest screen possible in order to fully get the scale and spectacle of it, but also the intimacy and claustrophobic feel the film has. Dunkirk is a masterpiece. It's a cleverly structured film that with the help of the highest level of technical craftsmanship goes beyond what you would normally expect from a war film. It's not a film for those who want character driven pieces, but for those of us who want the filmmaking itself to lure us in to an intense and emotionally rich film.