Dunkirk (Summer 2017) directed by Christopher Nolan

Ahhh you mean because they didnt make up "tug at heart strings" back stories for them to talk to each other about on the beech?
Because its clear from the outset...like many,....they where in retreat..the POSSIBLE people one of the characters knew you see him loose in the opening scenes, from that point on..everyone is kinda a stranger to each other.

And those low score reviews so to be VERY few and far between..and even fewer on viewers scores.
 
cu3ed said:
Ahhh you mean because they didnt make up "tug at heart strings" back stories for them to talk to each other about on the beech?
Because its clear from the outset...like many,....they where in retreat..the POSSIBLE people one of the characters knew you see him loose in the opening scenes, from that point on..everyone is kinda a stranger to each other.

And those low score reviews so to be VERY few and far between..and even fewer on viewers scores.
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They shouldnt have to 'make up' backstories, but maybe they should have so i could invest in the characters, care what they were going through and actually have a story rather than an event up there on the big screen. Films are nothing without story and character and this had neither. Stuff just happened.
 
TriedandTested said:
  • Script NO
  • Character NO
  • Acting NO
  • Timing NO
  • Sound YES
  • Visuals YES
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Script...obviously there is one, Nolan even talked about how when talking to survivors...no one was saying much...he purposely made what was a 76 page script and kept it that way. Story..you....you cant be serious with this....you really need them to have a whole backstory?..for..a movie....about Dunkirk?...that you know is set in the events of the evacuation. DId you alos nee to be told that it was "ze Germamns" coming after them?
Plenty of character if you are willing to look for it..and not be treated as too stupid to see it for yourself, the characters where shown a lot more in there actions, not what they said.
You really needed a "backstory" to these men to understand what they where going through, use a tiny bit of imagination and even picture yourself there. Would you be the hero in the skies, the man on the beech just wanting to go home ( at the age of 18), of the one who breaks and becomes "scared" on the boat. You have to be held by the hand that much in cinema? This sounds more like a you problem..than anything to do with the film to be honest.
Timing...REALLY?.....the timing was pretty much perfect for taking into several accounts of what went on in different time scales, the editing was top notch as the cross overs where done perfectly.
 
ttaskmaster said:
It does fall short in terms of delivering what audiences were expecting and, in many cases, what the average audience needs in order to connect with the narrative... an assertion echoed by a number of those critics that gave it rather low ratings, of which there were a fair few.
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Yeah look at all those scathing reviews....

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dunkirk_2017/reviews/

93% fresh.

I honestly think that anyone who complains about the timing in the film didn't understand the three different stories taking place at different times and only intersecting very rarely.
 
VincentHanna said:
In the middle, preferably row G or higher.

You don't want to be on the first few rows or right at the side....
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Thanks :)

I managed to get the seat bang in the middle of Row L, which is the first row of premier seats. It was only £2 more than a normal seat so thought it worth it. I imagine going in the afternoon on a weekday helped a lot with the seat availability.
 
VincentHanna said:
Yeah look at all those scathing reviews....
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From one site?
Yeah, they're all gushing Nolanoids. Doesn't prove anything and there are still a number of equally eminent critics who scored the film lower than "OMG this is awesome"...

Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave three-and-a-half out of four stars despite not liking the film, stating that he "loathed parts of it and found other parts repetitious or half-baked.

Kevin Maher in The Times gave it two out five, saying "[Dunkirk] is 106 clamorous minutes of big-screen bombast that's so concerned with its own spectacle and scale that it neglects to deliver the most crucial element—drama". Maher also stated that in comparison to other war films, Dunkirk felt like a Call of Duty video game.

David Cox of The Guardian criticised the historical inaccuracies, the paucity of female characters, its small scale, and over-dramatisation, thinly characterised cast and lack of suspense.

http://www.vulture.com/2017/07/dunkirk-movie-review-a-great-war-movie-except.html

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/dunkirk

VincentHanna said:
I honestly think that anyone who complains about the timing in the film didn't understand the three different stories taking place at different times and only intersecting very rarely.
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The complaints aren't generally about the timing, so much as how Nolan's approach to giving us indistinct characters that no-one cares about also makes it unclear that we're merging narratives. That and the flipping around between night and day, along with all his other tricks actually hindering the film.
As a technical exercise, it's stunning... but as a film it falls flat.
 
ttaskmaster said:
From one site?
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Do you not know how Rotten Tomotoes works? They take every review (327 in this case) and average the overall score.

93% fresh means that most critics love it.


That and the flipping around between night and day, along with all his other tricks actually hindering the film.
As a technical exercise, it's stunning... but as a film it falls flat.
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It's not 'flipping' about night and day

That's a sequencial sequence in the 'Land' portion of the story as it happens over a week.

The sea (1 day) and air (1 hour) sequences take course during daylight because it never gets to nightime.
 
VincentHanna said:
Do you not know how Rotten Tomotoes works?
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I don't care how it works. I prefer to read what the reviews actually say, rather than assume they all scored it using the same measures.
As is, it looks like a lot scored it more on the technical aspects than anything else.
Then again, one stunningly telling review simply said, "It was OK..."

VincentHanna said:
93% fresh means that most critics love it.
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Most.... so my assertion that a number of them did hate it, often for the reasons already given, does actually stand, then?
Shame the audiences didn't like it as much.

VincentHanna said:
It's not 'flipping' about night and day
That's a sequencial sequence in the 'Land' portion of the story as it happens over a week.
The sea (1 day) and air (1 hour) sequences take course during daylight because it never gets to nightime.
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One complaint, from more than one reviewer, was how this was actually made more unclear by the very use of the narrative technique than if he'd just run them sequentially and/or given us more characterisation to latch onto.
So again, technically brilliant, but sacrifices the story in order to achieve it.
 
I can see why people might find lack of characterisation as issue, as it is often one of the biggest problems in movies.

However, as this was a historical event I didn't need a back story to feel their plight. I know the characters are 'made up' but you can still imagine the horror of being in that position without knowing if they had family waiting for them back home or the usual tropes.
 
VincentHanna said:
However, as this was a historical event I didn't need a back story to feel their plight.
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Having done living history and re-enactment for a few years, we found audiences were always more interested in who peope were, what their lives were like and why they did things, rather than political events, equipment, clothing, numbers, or any of the usual stuff.

Audiences generally need something to identify with in films. They need a hero to root for, a villain to hate, or just some engaging dialogue. If there's nothing like that, even in abstract form, then they won't care what happens. It's about as entertaining as a game of Risk.
 
stickyjamfinger said:
Das Boot etc just for starters.
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Das boot had the benefit of being able to have a beginning, middle and an end with back story (bar+drunk) then the slow pace of the tv version added to the face there were spaces of tedium between action.
Couple that with the main characters were sealed into a metal coffin for most of the film was genius as it reinforced the characters and their interactions without adding more characters to dilute it.

Dunkirk did have three independent leads, the space and people on the beach will never allow the same execution. It's a different beast. The film is shot from the beach's perspective as the lead and the mains interact with the beach..
 
Having watched it at the cinema when it came out I'll be watching at home on blu-ray for certain. I do believe that realising the implication of the three different time-frames is paramount to a lot of the enjoyment of the film.

I figured it out quite quickly and stayed with the story, chatting to a girl in work who seen it the same time, she didnt get it and was confused throughout the whole movie when it was changing between day and night, Spitfires dog-fighting forever etc.
 
I think the argument surrounding 'characterisation' is an entirely subjective one that shouldn't really be counted as a valid piece of critical analysis.
 
The thing I also wonder about the "family at home" thing as some people want. Would the relatives actually know that their sons/brothers/husbands are at Dunkirk? I mean, there is not likely that the soldiers would been able to send letters from there to say "I'm going towards Dunkirk, hope to see you soon" so would that actually be useful in the movie?
 
ttaskmaster said:
Same for visual effects, music composition, staging, shot framing and... well... all of it, really.
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Aha this is very true! I meant purely in terms of whether you know the story of Dunkirk as a whole, as well as knowing that Nolan was more interested in the event then any particular person in it.

You can have objectively great cinematography, acting, staging etc. all within the confines of what the 'art' of cinema demands. But I agree that even then, it's largely subjective and ultimately, a movie is a slave to it's tone and peoples perception of it.
 
DrToffnar said:
Aha this is very true! I meant purely in terms of whether you know the story of Dunkirk as a whole, as well as knowing that Nolan was more interested in the event then any particular person in it.
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Then why did he bother tagging main characters for each of the sequences?
I suspect the answer will be to serve as narrators, anchors or some such, for the audience to relate... but then the very idea falls apart because he failed to expand on the characters enough that the audience could really relate to them anyway, rendering the technique useless again.
He even presented the stories in a style that suggests they were based on real people, even though they were complete fiction.
In short - What the hell is he playing at?
 
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