Dunkirk (forthcoming in 2017)

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by townsend, Aug 6, 2016.

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  1. Purple Jim

    Purple Jim Senior Member

    Location:
    Bretagne
    Agreed but this issupposed to be movie-making, not a documentary.
     
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  2. dance_hall_keeper

    dance_hall_keeper Forum Resident

  3. htom

    htom Senior Member

    Location:
    Montreal, Canada
    Even the 1958 film Dunkirk incorporated newsreel footage in a way that reviewers described as 'documentary-like," so the strategy isn't new. This film's strategy of using close-up and POV shots almost exclusively while at the same time withholding (or obscuring) most expository dialogue or even showing the enemy is just another approach to dramatizing the event.
     
  4. Mr. Fernando

    Mr. Fernando Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    This! 1000 times this! This quote needs to be said to everyone who criticizes a film based off true events but include fictional characters or storylines within it (like Titanic).
     
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  5. Purple Jim

    Purple Jim Senior Member

    Location:
    Bretagne
    The 1958 film was very fresh in the collective memory and many people had lived through the war watching newsreel footage in their local cinema. So the use of newsreel footage would have made the 1958 film seem all the more real.
    Nolan's film didn't feel real at all to me. As I said earlier, the troops on the beach looked like extra queuing up for lunch (for example)

    Well his appraoch was just plain wrong because what Dunkirk needed was expansive, epic film-making.
     
    alexpop likes this.
  6. Gary7704

    Gary7704 Chasing that sound….

    Location:
    New Jersey
    Went to see it last night at an IMAX theater.
    Story line wasnt bad. Cinematography was very well done, the dog fight footage was really astounding. Sound was way too loud, no reason AT ALL to have it that loud. All I kept thinking was I cant beleive the speaker system can handle this. For the battle scenes, it became just noise and I can take very loud sounds.
    Agree that they could have done so mich more with CG. Even if you are not a student of history and know the real numbers, I think the movie portayed the dyer situation they were in quite effectivly.

    I think it will win a oscar for the cinimatography. Maybe, considering what else has ir will come out, best picture.

    All in all enjoyable.
     
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  7. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Nolan ...
    Troops on beach: I felt why didn't all those men return to the town and fight like the cluster of Belgian troops.
     
  8. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Maybe if Nolan attempts another war film perhaps a new version of The Battle Of Britain ?
     
  9. Purple Jim

    Purple Jim Senior Member

    Location:
    Bretagne
    Nooooo!
     
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  10. Purple Jim

    Purple Jim Senior Member

    Location:
    Bretagne
    Just looking through Nolan's filmography and I realise that I'm not a fan of much of what he has done. I wasn't mad on the Batman films, I didn't like "Inception" or "Interstellar"",... however I did enjoy "Insomnia" and "The Prestige". So I'm not writing him off completely.
     
  11. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Rate The Prestige & Inception and that's it.
     
  12. Imho Momento is his best film and one of my very favorites ever.
     
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  13. lschwart

    lschwart Senior Member

    Location:
    Richmond, VA
    It was moving-making rather than documentary. It was just moving making different from the kind you like (or at least that you like for this sort of subject matter). I was completely swept up in the film and moved by it. Its approach brought things to my mind that I'd never had to take-in before about that event and about others like it. A lot of the effect had to do with the swinging back and forth between small scale and big. It's hard to hold both of those poles in mind, and the film gave me a way to do that. Something only a film could do, I think, and it required an unconventional approach to telling the story and an unconventional approach to the representation of things usually presented as spectacle. I'm glad he thought to do that. I've taken in war stories told in the more conventional cinematic ways before, and I'd be happy to see lots of other films that do that again. I'm glad to have seen a film that did this rather stranger, but just as fictional, just as cinematic thing instead.

    I'm not saying you should like it, too, or like it the way I did, but I don't think it should be dismissed either.

    L.
     
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  14. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    How come you didn't see the enemies faces?

    And were the German planes ✈️ authentic?
     
  15. Purple Jim

    Purple Jim Senior Member

    Location:
    Bretagne
    I understand all that and I have nothing against unconventional approaches to film making but I just think it was clumsily executed (just like Inception and Interstellar).
     
  16. lschwart

    lschwart Senior Member

    Location:
    Richmond, VA
    Didn't feel at all clumsy to me. Interstellar, either, but I did think that the emotional pay-off of Inception wasn't really dependent on the intricate contraption of the dreams within dreams and the different time durations. A more straightforward bit of storytelling in that case at least might have had more force. Entertaining enough, though. Dunkirk felt all of a piece for me, thought, nothing wasted, and it pushed my buttons in a big way.

    L.
     
  17. Matt Richardson

    Matt Richardson Forum Resident

    Location:
    Suburban Chicago
    The only thing I don't care for in Nolan's craft is the over use of the close-up. It was really absurd in Memento and too much in Dunkirk. Why you need close-ups of pilots with flying-masks on is beyond me.
     
  18. htom

    htom Senior Member

    Location:
    Montreal, Canada
    Isn't this a question about the event and not the film?
     
  19. GlamorProfession

    GlamorProfession Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tejas
    i saw this last night. overall i thought it was ok. definitely could've waited to watch it on bluray but a friend wanted to see it in the theatre so i went along. i found the sound effects (used to build tension) to be irritating - just like in Interstellar. i guess that's Nolan's thing.
     
  20. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    Ha - you most like the two Nolans I least like! :D

    Actually, "Following" is probably his weakest, but it's still pretty good.

    As are "Insomnia" and "Prestige" - they're both well-made films, but I just don't think they're great.

    Nolan is like James Cameron: he's never made a bad film*, and his "median film" is better than most director's best.

    My best-to-worst ranking - sans "Dunkirk", because I won't judge it after only one screening:

    -Dark Knight
    -Dark Knight Rises
    -Interstellar
    -Batman Begins
    -Memento
    -Inception
    -Prestige
    -Insomnia
    -Following


    * I don't count "Piranha 2" among Cameron's films - if I did, it'd be the only BAD movie he ever made! But I think he was pulled off of it early and didn't fully direct it...
     
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  21. vegafleet

    vegafleet Forum Resident

    Saw it yesterday on Imax, and liked it a lot. I too was bothered while watching it about the lack of scale (i.e. number of soldiers, boats and planes shown) for the magnitude of the historical event that we know happened. Getting past that, it is a very fine film , incredibly well filmed and acted. The shot of the plane gliding down on the beach literally took my breath away. The relative lack of CGI was a plus for me, as you can tell in so many shots, especially the aerial ones, that you are not seeing a cartoon.

    Friends had highly recommended this movie but complained a lot about the volume. I took my 13 and 14 year old German nephews who are vacationing here in America. They liked it ok but they are definitely of the Marvel and Xbox generation and the movie seemed slow for them at times.

    I took ear plugs into the theater and gave each kid a pair before it started, they looked at me funny ( I am their crazy uncle after all, the one who starts fights with the octopus tentacles on sale in Costco), but one minute in, when the first shot ran out, we all reached for the ear plugs and kept them in till the end. Even then the movie was plenty loud. At least on IMAX the sound level was an exaggeration and likely to cause damage. Go see it but take ear protection.

    I highly recommend it, exciting and inspiring all the way through, yet I don't know that I ever saw much blood, none that I can really remember.

    The idea that you can't make an emotional connection to the characters is ridiculous. If you don't know it by now, these are our brothers, fathers, grandfathers, cousins. You do know them. And if you were there, or in any other battlefield, I salute you.
     
  22. vegafleet

    vegafleet Forum Resident

    One more thing, I liked the Rylance character a lot and found him believable, specially when his backstory is filled in a little at the end. It is the Cillian Murphy character and what happens with the kid that I didn't buy and found too melodramatic.
     
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  23. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    I would say Dunkirk fell short of the above films.
     
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  24. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    LOUD!!!???
    Wish I wore earplugs for The Fury IMAX showing I seen.
    No tanx.
     
  25. garrincha

    garrincha Forum Resident

    Location:
    Plymouth, UK
    pretty high bar set there, so no disgrace not to reach those lofty heights.

    for me, Dunkirk is an absolute masterpiece
     
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