Don't think you'll be giving away the plot Ninesy - let us know what you thought.
Probably because there is no plot mate. Where to begin?
From what I understood Dunkirk was a massive operation involving the huge evacuation of over 300,000 soldiers. They even mention this in the film but you only see a few hand fulls of troops on the near empty beach. I thought there was a huge flotilla of personal boats and naval vessels that went to rescue the troops, but this film depicts a dozen at best. Then there's the squadrons of spitfires, well just the three aircraft to take on the Luftwaffe according to this film.
What the director Nolan has done is turned it into a sixth form student's attempt at a minimalist arthouse movie. It's devoid of plot, dialogue or character and after twenty minutes your left yawning and couldn't care less for the people in the film. It's a big waste to have this budget to spend on a film with a whole raft of British talented actors who don't get to show off their skills. What's the point of getting Kenneth Branagh in to just stroll up and down the pier? The cinematography is good though.
The attempt at three focus points, the cowardly soldier, the spitfire pilot and the tug boat is both confusing and unnatural. The timeline of these doesn't move along in a linear fashion. One minute it's calm and sunny, the next it's night time followed by day light and choppy seas and jumping around the three perspectives. It doesn't work and is a shocking mess.
The behaviour of all three when reacting to the circumstances around them them doesn't display normal behaviour. I get what the director is trying to do but he's treating us like fools if he thinks that we don't realise that war is not nice and can be dehumanising. To reduce every person involved in this debacle to what is effectively an automaton does everyone a disservice. Trying to do something different doesn't always equate it to being good or great.
A few other niggly bits are ... although we're told that the troops are suffering heavy bombardment the town is picture postcard perfect. No damage whatsoever.
When you see the Tommies on the beach none of them are talking to each other, they're just staring out to sea. Every single one of them.
When the young lad dies on the tug boat there's no reaction at all from the old boy.
Despite having to enter my pin number you don't see anyone maimed or seriously injured despite a bomb falling on them.
The spitfire pilot, despite being obsessed with his fuel gauge reading every few moments he still manages to ( surprise surprise ) run out of fuel. He then defies the laws of physics and gravity by gliding around for another half hour flying up and down the beach a few times and even managing to save the day by shooting a Stukka out of the sky. He could've returned to blighty in that time.
No mention of the enemy. It's only at the end where you see a silhouette of a few Germans, otherwise it's as if they don't exist. ( Don't mention the German's! )
The film score - I usually like Hans Zimmer ( Ironically German ) and was surprised when I looked up who did it that it was him. There are points in the film that when the little dialogue that does take place is spoken, it's drowned out by this horrendous cacophony of noise. A cat being ironed alive would make for a more pleasant listen. What he'd done here is stumbled upon this effect called the shephard tone. This is where you layer the soundtrack on a loop between two octaves to give an audio illusion that the pitch is always increasing to ratchet up the tension. Which is fine, but not at every given opportunity throughout the film!
As you can probably tell, I wasn't impressed and was left completely unsatisfied.
