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I'm not surprised that some people haven't really gone for it - it's very much Nolan's vision of what it must have felt like to be part of this moment in history, rather than a traditional, contextualised attempt to recount the story of Dunkirk. And it doesn't have the chest-thumping heroism of something like Saving Private Ryan with its soaring score and protagonists you can cheer and cry for - I don't think Mark Rylance or Cillian Murphy's characters even have names, for instance. Instead it tries to show ordinary, unremarkable people: the extras in the background of other films, not the heroes, the people just trying to get home.
Personally I found the interlocking narratives device and non-linear structure ingenious, providing a constant drip-feed of jeopardy rather than SET PIECE / talking / SET PIECE (as you usually get) - this eschews traditional three-act structure, instead wrapping the film around itself and meaning you never knew how far you were along in the plot, or if you could ever relax ('oh we're two hours in and they're gearing up, here comes the big showdown, false loss before eventual victory, somebody important will die and possibly there'll be a sweet coda to wrap things up'). Performances were solid and I think deliberately quite restrained. It's shot beautifully, I saw it on a massive screen and he stretches the picture to convey scale, rather than someone like George Lucas who thinks 'epic' means packing every frame full of as much stuff as you can think of, or Michael Bay who seems to think you make things exciting by cutting between shots every half-second.
Also, it's been written about a lot but Hans Zimmer's score is a total triumph, an anxious, rumbling background presence that serves the mood of the piece without demanding the attention. I thought the organ-heavy Interstellar compositions fit that film, and again he nails it here - it's cool that Nolan is throwing different challenges at Zimmer and seeing what he can come up with.
An industry analyst in an article about its prospects in the Chinese market called it a 'tone poem', and I think that's a pretty good description. It's not really a war movie because it isn't interested in the wider war - it's more a survival film, I think. I thought of Gravity when I watched it, the refusal to give in and that sense that sometimes just surviving counts as winning (I know some people really didn't like that film either, so maybe this is just my kinda thing.)
It's the second film in a row that wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be - the other one was War for the Planet of the Apes - but I think I like it more for that. Smarter and more ambitious than I expected it to be, he's confident in the film he wanted to make and delivered it with style.
Possibly Nolan's best film so far, for me. I look forward to seeing it again at some point.
Seen this a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was really good, even tho it's different. I think I have never seen a movie with so little dialogue before. The score is amazing and makes the atmosphere even more intense. There is one scene towards the end of the film where the music suddenly stops. Until this moment I didn't even realize that it was playing the whole damn time. That ticking clock...
Not Nolan's best film (that's still Inception IMO), but another pretty damn good one.
I am going to get bashed for saying this but I hated the movie. It's getting rave reviews.
I'm not a history fan so maybe that had something to do with it. I watched it...had no clue who the main character was... didn't care about any of them really ... and there was way too much blood and guts and killing for me.
I wanted to get up and leave but we were in the expensive cushy seat recliner theater so I stayed. :*( not for me.