Came back from the IMAX.
Like many have said, this is less of a war movie as much as it is a movie about war. However, it's still a war movie. It's ambitious and something different from Nolan but I would say this is one of those times where I think this would have been a more authentic film if this Nolan script would have been co-directed by Mel Gibson, Denis Villeneuve, Peter Berg or Steven Spielberg. For me Nolan's stubbornness of not using CGI and his PG13 allegiance needs to stop in the future. I really want him to do something completely different. Even if it's smaller.
Overall a
great fucking experience nonetheless. But nothing close to the likes of Saving Private Ryan or Apocalypse Now. I don't however understand the criticism regarding the non-linear structure. Just as I don't understand the criticism regarding the lack of character development. Characters are not really pivotal to the story here.
Positives:
- almost perfect writing (the structure, while not conventional is nothing hard to follow and the film is carried by it's writing)
- situational realism (loved how several scenes spoke so much about survival at any cost, desperation and fear)
- great sense of tension, probably Nolan's most tense film
- the hidden enemy is a great choice to be honest and I liked this particular approach of not showing the Germans as that was clearly not the point
- the haunting hans zimmer
- fantastic sound editing/mixing
- great cinematography
Negatives:
- lacking in scale and scope which leads to certain scenes breaking the immersion
- the lack of blood/gore is bothersome in certain scenes, once again, breaking the immersion
- both negatives build up to a severed authenticity cord
- underwhelming ending. I think the burning plane shot would have been much better, but the entire sequence felt like it came a bit out of nowhere and was anticlimactic.
- minor but still... dogfighting scenes for the most part got old fast and were pretty lame at points. i feel the entire sequence overall dragged a bit.
I am also a firm believer however that there are plenty of other war films that talk about war and say a lot more than Dunkirk does. I don't have a final rating yet as I have to watch it again this weekend to really finalize my thoughts but so far it's an
8+/10.