Menu

Dunkirk (2017) Review

5/25/2017

Acclaimed auteur Christopher Nolan directs this World War II thriller about the evacuation of Allied troops from the French city of Dunkirk before Nazi forces can. Divx Ipod Il Boom (2017) here.

Dunkirk - In May 1940, Germany advanced into France, trapping Allied troops on the beaches of Dunkirk. Under air and ground cover from British and French. Dunkirk is a 2017 war film written, co-produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan. It features an ensemble cast starring Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack. Dunkirk dramatizes the complexity of war—both its horrors and heroism—while admirably not straying beyond the boundaries of a PG-13 rating.

Dunkirk Review . II film opening July 2. I kept trying to come up with terms to classify it. It was a dance piece, then a music video, then a poem, then a prayer. The film is many things. Something it’s not is a conventional war film in any way I thought it would be. Nolan, a technician with luxe taste and a seriousness in his heart, has made his most artful, impressionistic film to date. Though no less precise than his other elegant contraptions, Dunkirk is a true departure for Nolan, perhaps an exciting indication that he is moving into more pensive, experimental territory, just as another blockbuster king did 2.

W. W. II film, Schindler’s List. Dunkirk plays like a dance piece when it first introduces us to the British and French soldiers stranded on a windswept beach. Following a harrowing street scene, Nolan follows a young soldier (haunted, vulpine Fionn Whitehead) out to this lonely stretch of sand strewn with seafoam. Enemy planes buzz overhead, laden with bombs, and the soldiers—all waiting to board ships that could rescue them from this bleak limbo—duck for cover in unison. They move in ordered groups, stiff murmurations that huddle and collapse and right themselves again. In showing us all this eerily mannered pandemonium, Nolan informs us of the film’s surreal stakes without doling out any wooden exposition. These early scenes of Dunkirk breathe with a bracing, rhythmic clarity.

The film becomes a music video as Hans Zimmer’s whining, clock- ticking score kicks into high gear. There is a narrative to follow (and to piece together—it is still a Nolan film, after all) in Dunkirk, but the film is far less concerned with plot than it is with experience, with creating an enveloping mood of tension and awe that shows a terrifying moment in time for what it was, or may have been. The film’s sparse dialogue was a bit swallowed up by the music at my screening, perhaps a problem of the theater’s audio, or perhaps an intentionally disorienting stylistic device. Either way, it didn’t much matter that I couldn’t really follow what the actors were saying, as Nolan’s striking and somber compositions, and Zimmer’s keening, crescendoing soundscape, told me all I needed to know. As a poem, Dunkirk has some hushed and sorrowful things to say about the randomness and suddenness of death, about heroism’s unassuming forms, about the world’s natural beauty being a such a cruelly discordant setting for man- made horror. Working with his Interstellar cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, Nolan presents a ceaseless stream of arresting images. As the film cuts and glides between land, sea, and sky, it captures a wealth of aesthetic poetry: skeins of sand snaking ominously over the beach; the tragically quaint comfort of jam on toast; a plane, out of fuel, its propeller still, silently coursing through the air like a mournful bird, nobly and gracefully nearing the end of its flight.

As a poem, Dunkirk has some hushed and sorrowful things to say about the randomness and suddenness of death, about heroism’s unassuming forms, about the world’s. Dunkirk movie reviews & Metacritic score: Dunkirk opens as hundreds of thousands of British and Allied troops are surrounded by enemy forces. Trapped on the.

It’s all rather staggering. But there is nothing showy about Dunkirk’s visual language, no ain’t- it- cool trickery. It’s too solemn and elemental a film for that. Of course, some sentiment is required for this agonizing true- life tale of death and deliverance. The end of the film has both the hush and uplift of a prayer, as the lucky soldiers somehow, rather impossibly, make their way to safety. The emotional components of Nolan’s films can sometimes feel shoehorned in—oh, right, this stately and marvelous space- survival film is actually about dads and daughters, this nesting doll dream- adventure is really about a dead wife. But in Dunkirk, Nolan locates a crucial humanity quite naturally.

The film is sparing in its character development. There’s no real speechifying, no rousing moral victories. Initially, that withholding approach seems cold. But by the end, a quiet abundance of feeling has been conjured up. Nolan reverently honors the lives saved and lost by simply telling their story, without much Hollywood embellishment.

But such is his nature, I suppose.) They’re just another part of the texture of this richly and intricately crafted film, never getting in the way of Nolan’s grand, sober vision. Some might be disappointed that we don’t get a lovable band of brothers to root for. But I think that’s what makes the film so frightening, so taut, so ultimately moving. The randomness, the anonymity of its heroes gives the film a dual sense of scope, both vast and intimate. These men are, in these fraught moments, of course only themselves. And yet they could be anyone. It’s hard to predict what a film like Dunkirk will do at the box office, or whether it will be a major awards contender.

Most intriguingly, it frees Nolan’s unique skills from the bounds of the intelligent popcorn fare he’s been making for years. What might that signal for his career going forward? Maybe nothing. Maybe this was simply one humbly patriotic, historical story—without any real clever twists or turns—that Nolan had to tell, on stunning 7. IMAX if you can), and now he’ll return to the billion- dollar stuff. What I do know is that Dunkirk is a gripping and fascinating piece of work, an epic that, in its largeness, manages to depict the horrifying smallness and everydayness of war. Chaos convincingly ebbs and flows in this rattling film, a baneful tide lapping at some of history’s most troubled shores.