Anyone planning to see the movie "Dunkirk"?

Weststander said:

We finally got round to watching this today.

It's fairly unique in style and it took some time to get used to the flitting back and forth in time. It's certainly not for those looking for unabated happiness!

But IMO this is a fantastic movie. Contains some goosebumps scenes, such as the first time three Spitfires appear and the finale of the famous Churchill speech against a backdrop of Elgar's Nimrod Variation. Great cinematography of dogfights.

Most people in the cinema sat quietly for ages after it had finished, something Mark Kermode just mentioned on his BBCNews film review.

If you haven't watched it yet, see it soon whilst it's still available on the big screen.

Click to expand...

Brightonfan1983 said:

Nice try, but who's not up for a bit of clever story-telling? Using 3 timelines for Dunkirk was a clever way of telling that story; Inception has dreams within dreams within dreams; Memento was backwards; Insomnia was always in daylight. That's not the issue for me - it's me not being allowed to *care* about the characters. His films have become more and more about how 'cleverly' they're told - and this guy from the Guardian puts it better than I ever could...

Barry Izbak said:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/fi...-empty-christopher-nolan-dunkirk-left-me-cold

"Is it just me? Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk has bowled over critics and taken $100m (£77m) at the global box office in barely a week, but it left me cold.

The subject sounds enticing: the legend of Dunkirk tells of an array of unprepared civilians assembling an armada of fishing boats, pleasure craft, yachts, motor launches, paddle steamers, barges and lifeboats to rescue an army from a battle-swept beach. What might cinema reveal of the logistical skills, resourcefulness, courage, doubts, arguments and fears of the citizenry involved?

Yet Nolan’s film chooses to ignore tales such as that of the Medway Queen, a paddle steamer that brought home 7,000 troops in seven round trips and shot down three German planes, or the Royal Daffodil, which returned 9,500 soldiers after blocking a hole below the waterline with a mattress. Instead, we encounter just one boat, skippered by a saintly Mark Rylance, comically attired in his Sunday best. The travails such a figure might have endured were apparently not dramatic enough. Instead, Rylance’s character is subjected to a bizarre set of events garnished with grating sentimentality.

For it is not the dynamics of the people’s armada that interest Nolan. He is more concerned with what is happening on and above Dunkirk’s beaches. What’s mainly happening, however, is that lots of soldiers are waiting around. Escapades, not altogether convincing, are therefore contrived for a few of them. Some bombs fall, some ships are sunk. Commanders mutter briefly but sagely to each other. In the skies, fighter pilots conduct what seems like an endlessly repeated dogfight. One plane runs out of fuel, although not as quickly as audiences might have hoped. And that’s sort of it.

Film-makers usually instil interest in their protagonists by giving them backstories and meaningful dialogue, thereby creating characters who can be engaged in drama. In Dunkirk, these things don’t happen.

The film also denies filmgoers any context. We’re told little about how the army has come to be beached or the threat it faces. We never see a German soldier, let alone the generals and politicians of either side who are masterminding events. We don’t even get the customary three sentences of text at the end, explaining the outcome. This is deliberate: Nolan has said he didn’t want to get “bogged down” in politics.

Another flaunted absence is CGI. Scale is the essence of the Dunkirk myth. There were more than 330,000 soldiers on the beach, and 933 British vessels, naval and private, plying the waves. It is for this kind of situation that computers were invented, but according to Nolan CGI counts as giving up.

So, in spite of his film’s $150m budget, the Royal Air Force seems to consist of three Spitfires, although real-life pilots flew 3,500 sorties at Dunkirk. The Luftwaffe, which Hitler made solely responsible for wiping out the beached Brits, seems able to summon up little more than a couple of Messerschmitts, three Stukas and one bomber. The Royal Navy appears to comprise just two destroyers; in fact, it deployed 39 destroyers and 309 other craft.

Women are excluded from the action by being confined to stereotypical roles, such as providing tea for the homecoming menfolk. In real life, female Auxiliary Territorial Service telephonists – who received two-thirds of a male soldier’s pay – were some of the last military personnel to leave the beach. The evacuees also included female civilians, including girls, caught up in the turmoil.

The restrictions Nolan places on himself have been cited to demonstrate his brilliance as a director. Not for him the humdrum apparatus of lesser directors. His film must be pared back so it can home in on its true subject. Which is what, exactly? Don’t be silly, the reviewers groan: it is the horror of war as never before. OK, got that, another stab at war-is-hell. Except that Dunkirk is no such thing. It is a 12A effort that avoids blood and guts as thoroughly as it avoids so much else. In the film, people hit by bombs die discreetly, with no unseemly dismemberment. Even abandoning a torpedoed ship doesn’t seem too unpleasant. So the movie doesn’t, as claimed, make you feel the terror of those it depicts. Why not?

Well, Dunkirk isn’t actually a war film at all – Nolan tells us so. That is why it doesn’t concern itself with “the bloody aspects of combat”. Instead, it is “a survival story, and first and foremost a suspense film”, according to the director.

A survival story, like Gravity, perhaps? But Dunkirk’s soldiers are denied the means of effecting their own survival, and it is in this that their pathos resides. Their unheroic fate is to mill around on a beach and get ferried home by non-combatants. Signaller Alfred Baldwin, who was at Dunkirk in 1940, recalled: “You had the impression of people standing waiting for a bus. There was no pushing or shoving.”

Or is it a suspense film, like Rear Window? We all know the outcome of the event, and know that nothing terribly bad was ever going to happen to Harry Styles, Captain Rylance or our plucky pilots. Even Hans Zimmer’s manipulative score can’t make that brick out of this straw.

But at least I now understand why I didn’t get it: there was nothing to get. Nolan trades on a mystique fuelled by affectations such as mangled timeframes and Imax cameras. In the film, the complications of chronology seem silly, and the naturalistic environment exposes this. I trekked to Leicester Square in London to get the full benefit of the 70mm picture, but I didn’t notice any. Indeed, I thought the subject would have been better suited to the cold, TV-news glare of digital than the lushness of film.

Still, Warner Brothers and the world seem happy to indulge Nolan. Good luck to him, not that he seems to need it."

Click to expand...

This

Click to expand...

vegster said:

Saw it Wednesday, was a bit confusing the way the same ship was sunk about 6 times from different angles and perspectives.It's strange in the way you drop straight in to the action without much in the way of narrative. Have to say it was very gripping although lots of the film did not add up. Kenneth Branaghs character stood on the end of the Mole for days on end ? ridiculous ! he would be on board a ship near to the action surrounded by a phalanx of staff providing intelligence. The trawler, seemingly abandoned and taken over by the unit on the beach was ridiculous, as the tide came in it would have been pushed up the beach, not suddenly moved a mile offshore

. The Spitfire scene at the end was equally ridiculous, Tom Hardy's Spitfire glided for lord knows how many minutes up and down the beach before he landed. I could add that the French rearguard in the film was dug in just
200 yards from the beach when in reality it was several miles inland.It also seems that most British warships either possessed no anti aircraft defence or were utterly inept.
7.5/10

Click to expand...

vegster said:

The Spitfire scene at the end was equally ridiculous, Tom Hardy's Spitfire glided for lord knows how many minutes up and down the beach before he landed.

Click to expand...

Brighton Mod said:

Well, I've read the post and forgive me if I am unable to recount some of the points that are highlighted. Having seen the film last week I would like to point out that it was a film and not a history lesson. Despite the infinite detail that is apparently craved the story personified for me the struggles which beset young British soldiers and showed me certain aspects of how it would have been in Dunkirk. Has the author of the article ever been to war, struggled to out of a location other than missing a bus and ever had to make decisions on his personal survival. Has the author considered how the film has brought the attention of a middle generation to what actually happened. Three of my daughters asked what Dunkirk was about, where was it and why was it so important. We,ve all seen it and their understanding on the subject has been awakened and their awareness of events in general has been heightened. So the aspects of the film and the storylines it followed resonate with me as it unwound on the screen and I suspect the Guardian Film Critic had never considered these minor but very important facets of the film, because he's never been to war.

1. The opening of the film follows a section of young random British soldiers from various Battalions making their way through Dunkirk and
highlights their hunger and thirst as they raided kitchens in empty houses.
2. Confusion on the streets of the evacuated Dunkirk as these soldiers came under fire from French troops manning a road block.
3. As some of the section were hit by French fire it became every man for himself.
4. Arrival on the beach of one young detached British soldier showed how he was disowned by different Battalions and Regiments as he was
not one of them.
5. Overseas soldiers were seen as not welcome on the evacuating ships, the RAF were portrayed as having let the Army down, in the eyes of
the Army.
6. The RAF pilots were depicted as young men, which a great majority were, middle aged John Mills or kenneth Moore playing the roles of
teenagers and young twenty year olds.
7. Fear panic was evident, turning on a weaker member of the group and making irrational decisions, great signs of massive stress.
8. The civilian boat captain portrayed as a man of the time who knew a lot about the planes in the sky had lost his own son early in the war,
had a real connection with those he was rescuing. His actions at the end of the film demonstrate why he acted as he did and what it meant
to him.
9. There was no easy escape from the beaches, time and time again young soldiers were thwarted in their attempts to escapethe horrors.
10. Tiredness, hunger, ptsd, confusion and personal tragedy were all highlighted.

Sorry to disagree with the film critic, stay in your make believe world inside a cinema, try going to war, be held against your will, be hungry, tired, thirsty and stop criticing for the sake of it. I have personal experience of many of the emotions displayed within the film, all but in a micro scale and a personal connection with Dunkirk.

It is a good film and highlights the age of those who were involved. No story line, no star and no explanation needed, this film has brought the events of Dunkirk back to the consciousness of a new generation.

Click to expand...

Bulldog said:

I watched it at the Marina a couple of days ago and I was very disappointed.

Click to expand...

Brightonfan1983 said:

I'm wasn't criticising for the sake of it. I certainly wasn't trying to score points or big myself up - it was my opinion. I did say I wasn't a great fan of his anyway and it's boringly preposterous to trot out the old line about "try going to war" - I'm glad you liked it, found a personal connection to it, that it moved you: for that to happen to people sitting in a dark room full of strangers, to be transported for a moment, is pretty magical I'm sure you agree.

That it's a blockbusting record-breaking film, doesn't make it immune from genuine comments from the little people like me. 'Titanic' is one of the highest grossing films of all time and I think it's appalling. Trying to belittle someone for saying so just isn't cricket.

Click to expand...

Brighton Mod said:

Brightonfan1983 said:

Nice try, but who's not up for a bit of clever story-telling? Using 3 timelines for Dunkirk was a clever way of telling that story; Inception has dreams within dreams within dreams; Memento was backwards; Insomnia was always in daylight. That's not the issue for me - it's me not being allowed to *care* about the characters. His films have become more and more about how 'cleverly' they're told - and this guy from the Guardian puts it better than I ever could...



Well, I've read the post and forgive me if I am unable to recount some of the points that are highlighted. Having seen the film last week I would like to point out that it was a film and not a history lesson. Despite the infinite detail that is apparently craved the story personified for me the struggles which beset young British soldiers and showed me certain aspects of how it would have been in Dunkirk. Has the author of the article ever been to war, struggled to out of a location other than missing a bus and ever had to make decisions on his personal survival. Has the author considered how the film has brought the attention of a middle generation to what actually happened. Three of my daughters asked what Dunkirk was about, where was it and why was it so important. We,ve all seen it and their understanding on the subject has been awakened and their awareness of events in general has been heightened. So the aspects of the film and the storylines it followed resonate with me as it unwound on the screen and I suspect the Guardian Film Critic had never considered these minor but very important facets of the film, because he's never been to war.

1. The opening of the film follows a section of young random British soldiers from various Battalions making their way through Dunkirk and
highlights their hunger and thirst as they raided kitchens in empty houses.
2. Confusion on the streets of the evacuated Dunkirk as these soldiers came under fire from French troops manning a road block.
3. As some of the section were hit by French fire it became every man for himself.
4. Arrival on the beach of one young detached British soldier showed how he was disowned by different Battalions and Regiments as he was
not one of them.
5. Overseas soldiers were seen as not welcome on the evacuating ships, the RAF were portrayed as having let the Army down, in the eyes of
the Army.
6. The RAF pilots were depicted as young men, which a great majority were, middle aged John Mills or kenneth Moore playing the roles of
teenagers and young twenty year olds.
7. Fear panic was evident, turning on a weaker member of the group and making irrational decisions, great signs of massive stress.
8. The civilian boat captain portrayed as a man of the time who knew a lot about the planes in the sky had lost his own son early in the war,
had a real connection with those he was rescuing. His actions at the end of the film demonstrate why he acted as he did and what it meant
to him.
9. There was no easy escape from the beaches, time and time again young soldiers were thwarted in their attempts to escapethe horrors.
10. Tiredness, hunger, ptsd, confusion and personal tragedy were all highlighted.

Sorry to disagree with the film critic, stay in your make believe world inside a cinema, try going to war, be held against your will, be hungry, tired, thirsty and stop criticing for the sake of it. I have personal experience of many of the emotions displayed within the film, all but in a micro scale and a personal connection with Dunkirk.

It is a good film and highlights the age of those who were involved. No story line, no star and no explanation needed, this film has brought the events of Dunkirk back to the consciousness of a new generation.

Click to expand...

Well the "new" generation have been completely and utterly let down in that case.

Click to expand...

essbee1 said:

Brighton Mod said:

Well the "new" generation have been completely and utterly let down in that case.

Click to expand...

Thats a fail, how have they been let down? Have your children seen the film, have you discussed Dunkirk with your sons in law and daughters over a Sunday lunch and referred to details on the internet regarding the Dunkirk evacuation and why the troops were there. Have you discussed as to where your childrens great, great uncle in commemorated, who he served with and how came to be soldier
Let down, I don't think so, perhaps no film on the subject should have been made, that truly would be a let down.
Its just a film and as such would be totally unable to cover all the detail, backstory, future story or general scenario.

Click to expand...

Weststander said:

At least some positives which you didn't mention, got it a 7.5

The frustrations I felt, were on the strategic, tactical and momentary, mistakes and incompetence of the real events, which the film deliberately touched on. Wars and battles aren't neat and tidy episodes. The UK, Belgium and France were out thought by a machine that had been secretly planning expansion for 7 years.

Which included being in a turkey shoot vulnerable to Nazi planes, dispite having prior knowledge from the Spanish Civil War and from Poland of Nazi tactics, their planes and Blitzkreig;,also from both world wars the threat of U-Boats. Lessons and forewarnings weren't heeded.

Unpleasant viewing to watch the chaos of it all, the incompetence, the avoidability of many deaths.

Click to expand...

AmexRuislip said:

Went to watch this, this evening.
Very poignant film, giving different aspects of the events leading up to and after the evacuation.
Without being patronising, it makes you think how lucky we are today.

Click to expand...

Justice said:

Any good streams of this yet?

Click to expand...