Dunkirk (Summer 2017) directed by Christopher Nolan


I'm sorry but that scene is worth almost 1/3rd of Dunkirk. (Rest of the film is hideous :p)

I really think Nolan's beach's were sterile, boring places with very little sense of threat or choatic dissorder and hopelessness.

The good parts of his films are always amazing but the worse parts are always worse....
 
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Yes, I thought it added to the tension considerably and turned things on its head as I said from my review.

Seeing the downed pilot 'waving' to Tom Hardy that he is ok from the pilots POV, then seeing it from the little boats point of view and realising he was actually trying to unjam the canopy as he faces drowning.
 
Efour said:
I really think Nolan's beach's were sterile, boring places with very little sense of threat or choatic dissorder and hopelessness.
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You had the expectation of a beach from Normandy so found the Dunkirk beach boring. Dunkirk beach was not a constant war zone hailed in gunfire. The Germans were not present on foot.

The beach actually WAS a dire places as it was just a mass of hundreds of thousands waiting around on rescue. They were there for a week simply waiting. They weren't under heavy fire or barrage constantly so what do you expect to be happening to give you these constant chaotic scenes? They literally had to wait around whilst Stukas pounded them every now and again which is true to what actually happened. What did you want Nolan to do with this to make it better in his quest to remain as true to reality as possible?

I absolutely got a sense of hopelessness every time they heard a plane overhead all they could do was lay on the ground and hope they didn't die. They were sitting ducks on that beach and that was portrayed very well. The 2 lads doing everything they could to try and get off and the massive desire shown constantly of guys wanting nothing more than to get on a boat shows how vulnerable and defenceless they were. The only thing they had to cling on to was getting off that beach as the only other option was defenceless death (and the long drawn out wait for it to come).
 
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I thought this was brilliant the tension the different speeds of the story progression to the same ending. The acting was understated and Nolan didn't fill every minute with exposition. This was the work of a master film maker at the peak of their skill.
 
VincentHanna said:
Yes, I thought it added to the tension considerably and turned things on its head as I said from my review.

Seeing the downed pilot 'waving' to Tom Hardy that he is ok from the pilots POV, then seeing it from the little boats point of view and realising he was actually trying to unjam the canopy as he faces drowning.
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Fair enough man. I dug how it all slotted together, but little more then that if I'm being honest. I'd have felt infinitely more fulfilled had it been told in a linear fashion, but that's just me.
 
xdcx said:
You had the expectation of a beach from Normandy so found the Dunkirk beach boring. Dunkirk beach was not a constant war zone hailed in gunfire. The Germans were not present on foot.

The beach actually WAS a dire places as it was just a mass of hundreds of thousands waiting around on rescue. They were there for a week simply waiting. They weren't under heavy fire or barrage constantly so what do you expect to be happening to give you these constant chaotic scenes? They literally had to wait around whilst Stukas pounded them every now and again which is true to what actually happened. What did you want Nolan to do with this to make it better in his quest to remain as true to reality as possible?

I absolutely got a sense of hopelessness every time they heard a plane overhead all they could do was lay on the ground and hope they didn't die. They were sitting ducks on that beach and that was portrayed very well. The 2 lads doing everything they could to try and get off and the massive desire shown constantly of guys wanting nothing more than to get on a boat shows how vulnerable and defenceless they were. The only thing they had to cling on to was getting off that beach as the only other option was defenceless death (and the long drawn out wait for it to come).
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Agree 100%

I think some people were expecting a 'British Saving Private Ryan', but thats not how Dunkirk went down.

It might make a good mini-series, showing the French rearguard fending off Germans, but the Brits were only involved in a few battles in late May and the evacuation wasn't a bloodbath like the D-day Landings as no Germans were shooting at them.
 
No, I wasn't... I really wasn't. Please don't label me into the "Saving Private Ryan crowd" (well whatever, not that it matters.)
The beach was almost lifeless. No signs of Humanity except a few 100 extras queued up. How do 400,000 people eat, use the toilet, sleep, wash or just live? (400k of desperate, moral broken men in an encircled position is pretty bloody "chaotic" even for a once disciplined army.) 1000 dead civilian casualties caused by German heavy artillery which reigned on the town and surrounding area after they drew them up into position.

I truly appreciate he wasn't going to get a scale for 3/400000 people without CGI so to me I felt ripped off or at least short changed. It's like watching Sharpe's Waterloo or any other "little" scale thing trying to do something big. It's comical.

All I am going to say is that he missed, for me, on remotely trying to capture the sheer human logistics and scale of it all.

It had no background context to anyone that isn't familiar with history it would have looked like 400 or so blokes on an empty beach queuing up for a hospital ship.

I simply don't like that....
 
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xdcx said:
You had the expectation of a beach from Normandy so found the Dunkirk beach boring. Dunkirk beach was not a constant war zone hailed in gunfire. The Germans were not present on foot.
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It's YOUR FAULT @Efour for not enjoying this film. YOURS!!
gettothechopper said:
"Six thousand extras were used amidst the filming in France"
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Well perhaps that's where he went wrong (again). If you're gonna avoid using CGI to represent 400,000 soldiers then you might want to hire more than 6000 to do the job.
 
TriedandTested said:
Well perhaps that's where he went wrong (again). If you're gonna avoid using CGI to represent 400,000 soldiers then you might want to hire more than 6000 to do the job.
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Yes obviously he got completely everything about the $50 million opening weekend, widely and critically acclaimed film, which even soldiers who were there have approved of, completely wrong

Even Waterloo only had 16,000 extras (regarded as having a crazy amount the likes of which we will never see again!)

Funny how people moan all the time about too much CGI ruining films, so someone doesn't use much and gets slated for that instead

Anyway, at no time were 400,000 soldiers on the beach, that was over 10 days, with people coming and going throughout
 
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Took the mah to see it tonight.

I enjoyed it a hell of a lot the first time round and I questioned as to whether a second viewing would provide anything more. It did.

The sheer scope and weight of the the thing REALLY made itself evident to me this time.

@VincentHanna It took this second viewing for me to 'get' the time mechanic. I think I was so swept away by the spectacle the first time round, I completely missed the subtle nods.

It's pure, deliberate film making at it's best in my opinion and I can confidently say that I believe it to be Nolans best alongside 'The Prestige'.
 
gettothechopper said:
"Six thousand extras were used amidst the filming in France"
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The Mrs and I saw this tonight 8/10. Great film IMOHO.

So maybe she and I have a different perspective as she is born and raised in Dunkerque. Her grandparents lived through that and would point out the places where houses were bombed etc.

The beaches - one is the beach front at dunkerque, the other is harbour wall in front of the port that I go fishing with the father-in-law. Infact the scene where the spitfire is burning my father-in-law was fishing next to them at the time lol.

Do the beaches look at little pristine - yes but then this is the first day of a week evacuation. It didn't really have much in the way of bomb craters because it's a flat beach that the tide travels a decent distance and so it could re-fill.. but a little more 'damage' would have made it more believable.

Most of Dunkerque ended up playing extras. I was in Dunkerque last weekend in the restaurant across from the war memorial and they have lots of things about operation dynamo going on there at the moment including bike tours.
 
NickK said:
The Mrs and I saw this tonight 8/10. Great film IMOHO.

So maybe she and I have a different perspective as she is born and raised in Dunkerque. Her grandparents lived through that and would point out the places where houses were bombed etc.

The beaches - one is the beach front at dunkerque, the other is harbour wall in front of the port that I go fishing with the father-in-law. Infact the scene where the spitfire is burning my father-in-law was fishing next to them at the time lol.

Do the beaches look at little pristine - yes but then this is the first day of a week evacuation. It didn't really have much in the way of bomb craters because it's a flat beach that the tide travels a decent distance and so it could re-fill.. but a little more 'damage' would have made it more believable.

Most of Dunkerque ended up playing extras. I was in Dunkerque last weekend in the restaurant across from the war memorial and they have lots of things about operation dynamo going on there at the moment including bike tours.
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Ha amazing, must be odd to see it being made from the locals POV, great that they included locals in the film as extras
 
I enjoyed this, but I didn't see the point to the convoluted timeline, it was just confusing, this and the lack of 'numbers' soldier-wise were the only real negatives for me as even if CGI had to have been used in places, I think it would have added to, rather than subtracted from the experience.
 
Given the hype this movie got, what a waste of money watching it in Imax.

Every aspect artificially made a "race against the clock".

The RAF consists of the same 3 planes?

Missing half a century of actual warships in the sea.

Hans zimmer, as great as he is, being rammed down your ears to make up for the lack of actual things on screen and decent story line gets boring after the first hour.

Had they actually told the story, using CGI to show the scale of the evacuation and shown the tactics on why they stopped where they did etc from the german side would have been much more interesting.

Watching the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan in reverse would be a better movie.
 
It's a good stab at recreating the events of Dunkirk. No doubts. Like I said what it does well it does well but I will never forgive it for the lack of Scale I felt it missed. THe flight story is 8/10 quite beautifully made, the edge of the seat stuff. The little ships 7/10 it missed scale but it was well acted. The beach and Harbour 5/10 It killed it for me it felt empty/clean/sterile.
 
Absolutely loved it, I think people are possibly missing the whole point of the lack of scale - you only ever really see a wider shot of the beach once the RAF/small boats arrive - up till then there is an sense of foreboding, entrapment and claustrophobia by the use of tight camera angles and sound.
 
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