Its mostly worth the praise it has gotten but as an experience it didn't blow me away like half of Nolan's other work has. Its great feat is that it seems, from what I can imagine, extremely realistic which is the best way to honor the event. You can't really top the way the aerial scenes were shot. From the ground those dive bombers were extremely effective at eliciting terror as well as establishing the technological advantages the other side had. The spatially and temporally converging plot lines worked pretty well since they highlighted the gravity of the subtle decisions made in the three storylines. Kafka's "A Little Fable" seems to best represent the mole, which Nolan has described as a Kafaesque nightmare (https://www.google.com/amp/amp.usatoday ... 490854001/). Also, the shivering soldier, who told the young soldiers to just deal with hanging around in the water after getting torpedoed in that night scene, resembles all of the pathetic authority figures in Kafka's stories who undergo role reversals.
The amount of characterization/dialogue wasn't a problem but in spite of the standing ovation I sat through, and the critical reaction in general, I don't think the climax was strong enough as a balancing force for me to say that this is in the running to be Nolan's best work. For now it seems like Paths of Glory remains my favorite war movie but hopefully this'll grow on me some more.
9/10
The amount of characterization/dialogue wasn't a problem but in spite of the standing ovation I sat through, and the critical reaction in general, I don't think the climax was strong enough as a balancing force for me to say that this is in the running to be Nolan's best work. For now it seems like Paths of Glory remains my favorite war movie but hopefully this'll grow on me some more.
9/10
Last edited by dafox on July 27th, 2017, 6:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.