Caught a preview showing of the new Christopher Nolan WW2 movie Dunkirk. This will certainly be an unpopular opinion among amateur and pro reviewers, but I did not love this movie. It’s not a terrible movie and I can offer a reserved recommendation… but, to my surprise, I thought the movie had more fails than wins.
This is the story of the Dunkirk sea rescue during WW2. The English army has suffered a defeat and are backed up against the English Channel. They need ships to get them home and time is running out. The Germans have u-boats in the channel, soldiers at their backs, and the airforce dropping bombs and strafing the beach.
This is based on the actual event that I’m a little familiar with. The thing is, I’m not sure how familiar most other Americans are. I’d like to give us more credit but I certainly didn’t learn about this in school and comments I’ve seen online suggest people aren’t familiar. The trailers did a poor job of explaining the situation and that’s because the movie also does a terrible job. It has an opening text crawl that barely explains anything… it doesn’t mention a year, it doesn’t mention why the army is retreating, it doesn’t even really mention the geography (as in, where Dunkirk is, that the body of water is the English Channel, etc.). I worry that many in the audience won’t “get” what’s going on beyond the basics. It’s certainly a movie made by a Brit that will get a British audience excited… I’m sure they know their history and this even well.
Th film makes a very deliberate choice to offer limited dialog and characterization. This could have worked – just being a movie about the facts and the event, avoiding a lot of the war movie cliches could have worked. But they decided to do this but also follow a couple of soldiers as they run around the beach trying to survive. They are supposed to humanize the movie but they barely ever talk so you are following some random guys who keep surviving improbable coincidences. Since we don’t know their names and they are devoid of personalities, it hardly matters if they live or die any more or less than the thousands of other people. Yet we follow them like we are supposed to care. I did not.
I also have a problem with some of the visual storytelling which is unfortunate since the movie is relying on it so much. For example, we follow a civilian boat as it leaves England to rescue the soldiers… the film makes it look like they are the only civilian craft to do so… until suddenly they are surrounding by about a dozen other boats. This is the very core of the story (the civilian boats that crossed and recrossed the channel to rescue the soldiers) but the film fails to show the scope of it. There’s also an air war that looks like the Germans sent three fighters and two bombers to wipe everyone out (maybe they did… seems unlikely).
On a technical level, the movie is amazing. Someone with real talent and skill made this movie look great. It’s probably very historically accurate based on some of the details they show (though whether or not the specific individual actions occurred, I’m doubtful). They used a lot of real extras, ships, and planes, by the look of it. No argument they didn’t put their money on the screen and focus on the visual reality.
The music and sound in this movie are… impressive. But also abusive. The movie is loud to the point of sadism… the kind of deep bass rumble that scramble your innards while its pummeling you with noise and that patented Christopher Nolan wall-of-noise music. Just an unrelenting battery of deep, ponderous, and tense music. I can’t say any of this sound mixing and audio is bad, but it’s oppressive. There’s only so long TENSION music can play before the effect begins to wear off.
All the technical achievements and accurate depictions are just not enough for me. I need more that just a fictionalized attempt at a documentary… or i need more of a documentary. Either would be fine, but not this attempt at both. I also respect the sound mix and music but, on a practical level, it approaches unbearable.
I’m supposed to like this prestige film and it looks like most reviewers do. I was turned off by it though – I was vaguely bored despite the scope, scale, and dramatic tension. I’m damning the movie by saying it has a little of the Transformers problem – all this money, all this technical craft, all this NOISE, and I can barely lift my finger to care. It’s a lot better than any Transformers movie to be fair, but the DNA of the problem persists.
If you disagree, I won’t argue. This may just be a movie that didn’t work for me in total. I’s a mild recommendation with strong caveats. It’s an important story we should know about so having seen it, we can appreciate WW2 more. It’s ultimately a movie with problems I perceive that others, apparently, will not.
Score: 76