Dunkirk (2017)

[Dejana]

Vulture's (somewhat snarky) Guide to the Similar Looking Men of Dunkirk:

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Insofar as this sprawling ensemble has a protagonist, it is probably Fionn Whitehead’s Tommy — not that the character names I’m about to tell you matter that much, since so few of them are actually said during the film.

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If you’re trying to distinguish him from the many other young soldiers in the film, I’d focus on the mole near Whitehead’s chin (not to be confused for the film’s other notable “mole,” which is what the eight-foot-wide pier crammed with soldiers is called) and his somewhat distinctive teeth situation.

 

 

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And hey, speaking of singing, One Direction heartthrob Harry Styles is also in this movie, though his distinctive hair is cut short and his copious tattoos are covered up. In a pinch, how are you supposed to tell which one Styles is when he’s been groomed to look like all the other boys in the film?

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If anyone is shouting an actual line instead of just a garbled, trying-not-to-drown shout, it’s probably Styles. And since Barnard’s Gibson is practically mute, most of the scenes where Whitehead’s Tommy is talking to someone involve Styles.

 

 

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The two young men who man the Moonstone are Tom Glynn-Carney, cast as Dawson’s blond son, and Barry Keoghan, who plays the doomed George and looks kind of like a courtroom sketch of Tye Sheridan. Like Whitehead, Glynn-Carney is making his film debut in Dunkirk, and though his Instagram reveals him to be a secret redhead, he’s blond and preppy in Dunkirk and generally made to resemble a young Chris Nolan.

Yes, I see it! I was mildly puzzled about Rylance's onscreen child being blond—not that it can't happen in life, but it's a movie, unless both actors are already famous, usually the kid gets cast to look like the parent or vice versa. Still, I just figured that since most of the other young guys here have brown hair, maybe Nolan just wanted some variety. Heh, more like another onscreen doppelganger, like Leo in Inception.

 

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Let’s be real: In the air section, all you need to know is that there’s Tom Hardy and Not Tom Hardy.

Awww, I liked Jack Lowden!

 

Cillian Murphy's character is actually listed as "Shivering Soldier"! So many other characters were given names that aren't really used in the movie anyway, so it's kind of funny that they didn't bother with him.

Edited July 29, 2017 by Dejana

[Eyes High]

I assume we were supposed to be horrified by Gibson's cowardice, but I admired his quick thinking overall: swiping a dead soldier's uniform, staying above deck on the destroyer so he could escape if the ship was torpedoed, etc. He even tried to pull a Billy Zane in Titanic (albeit with an injured soldier instead of a kid)! I'm not even mad; that's amazing.

I enjoyed the film, but the paper-thin characterization, even though it was a deliberate choice, made it hard to care about anyone. Everyone was just sort of...there.

Hans Zimmer can fuck right off with ripping off Elgar's "Nimrod" for his main theme. Come up with your own stirring motifs, asshole.

Edited July 29, 2017 by Eyes High

[tennisgurl]

12 minutes ago, Eyes High said:

I assume we were supposed to be horrified by Gibson's cowardice

I don't think that at all. The whole point of the movie was that this wasn't some great big battle with lots of glory and honor, it was a bunch of guys just trying to get off this beach and live to see the next day. I think one of the whole themes of the movie is talking about being cowardly, and how wanting to live isn't cowardly at all. There was the scene where George asks Mr. Dawson if the soldier they picked up was cowardly for not wanting to immediately go back to Dunkirk, and he said he wasn't, he had just gone through something awful, the scene where Tommy the main beach character told off the other soldiers in the beached ship for calling Gibson a coward, even though he was just doing the same thing they were trying to do (get the hell away from their enemy), and, finally, the end where Alex assumes people will think they were cowards for retreating, when really, everyone treats them like heroes. While people certainly did heroic things in the movie, I think the movie is saying that sometimes the most heroic thing you can do is try to survive. I don't at all think we were supposed to be horrified by Gibson, we were supposed to feel sympathy for him and understand why he's so desperate to get off the beach, and sad when he didn't make it.

[Unusual Suspect]

Well, I loved it. Frickin' Kenneth Branagh breaks me with a word. "Home" Tears just streamed down my face, I well up just thinking about it.

I was impressed by the ... restraint in the film. Interstellar was overcooked, between Zimmer face-planting onto the organ and just over-wrought dialogue, I wasn't a fan. But Dunkirk? For all the big spectacle, it was glorious to watch, yet had enough moments of quiet and well, very British, reserve. I'm kinda glad the PG-13 rating, I don't think the gore was necessary.

Also ... hello Jack Lowden. Not Tom Hardy acquitted himself pretty well.

[Silver Raven]

On 7/25/2017 at 11:16 PM, Lonesome Rhodes said:

There was no hint whatever on the dock that the youngest boy of the family was being taken off the boat for the last time.

He wasn't a member of the family, he was a friend who just happened to be on the docks when Rylance and his son took off.

[Silver Raven]

I had to wonder if this was what Dunkirk looked like in 1940.  It looked way too modern.  Dumpsters in the streets, really?  And driveways leading to the houses?  And condos right on the beach?

But that was a nitpick that I put out of my mind early on.  This movie is intense, and thank you, Hans Zimmer, for ratcheting up the tension with your score.  Wow.

Mark Rylance and Cillian Murphy were the standouts, but all in all this was a great ensemble cast. And when the civilian boats showed up en masse, I admit to getting teary eyes.

[filmfan2480]

1 hour ago, Unusual Suspect said:

Well, I loved it. Frickin' Kenneth Branagh breaks me with a word. "Home" Tears just streamed down my face, I well up just thinking about it.

I was impressed by the ... restraint in the film. Interstellar was overcooked, between Zimmer face-planting onto the organ and just over-wrought dialogue, I wasn't a fan. But Dunkirk? For all the big spectacle, it was glorious to watch, yet had enough moments of quiet and well, very British, reserve. I'm kinda glad the PG-13 rating, I don't think the gore was necessary.

Also ... hello Jack Lowden. Not Tom Hardy acquitted himself pretty well.

 

On 7/26/2017 at 8:11 PM, tennisgurl said:

That was just super, super intense. I'm a big history fan girl AND a Nolan fan, so I went in pretty sure I was going to come out satisfied, and I absolutely was. The constant push of trying to just make it to the next point, and the quiet waiting mixed with the intense action, it was just brutal, and it nailed the feeling that everything was just going wrong, and that this was an epic level clusterfuck that just seemed to be getting worse and worse. It made the scene where the civilian ships all showed up and they managed to get a bunch of the soldiers home so much better and more hopeful. Kenneth Branaghs expression when he grabbed the binoculars and saw the ships coming, and he started tearing up, it just hit me right in the chest, and I started tearing up too. I knew what was going to happen, and I was just filled with relief. That's how you know a story has sucked you in, especially a historical movie like this, where quite a bit of your audience already knows what happened. Its like in Lincoln when I was all invested in the vote on Emancipation. I knew what was going to happen, but I was so sucked into the story, they almost made me forget.

I heard some critics complaining about the lack of character development, but I didn't think it was a problem at all. Its not a bio pic, I don't need to know details about these guys lives, its just a window into the lives of these people who went through this one big event in the middle of this big war. The acting was strong enough that I felt like these were real people, who had full lives outside this movie, and we are just getting a glimpse into their lives. I thought everyone was wonderful, but I think the standouts were Cillian Murphey as the shell shocked officer, and Mark Rylan as Mr. Dawson. They had so many great moments on the boat, it almost felt like they could carry their own movie just by themselves. I was invested in the characters enough to root for their survival, and that's all I needed in a movie like this. Do we need another Peal "We could focus on this huge military strike that changed the course of the war, OR on a boring love triangle!" Harbor?

It took me a little bit to realize we weren't seeing this exactly in order, especially when we saw Cillian Murphey in the story with the young guys on the beach. Then I realized we were seeing this in slightly anachronistic order, with the three stories happening at slightly different times, and I got it. I assume Cillian Murphey was an officer, based on him leading the rowboat in the beach story, which means he probably saw all the men under his command drown after the boat was sunk. No wonder the poor guy was a mess. It also hit me at the end that, while this particular thing ended (and ended better than most people thought it would) the war is still going to be going on for YEARS. Most of the soldiers, no matter how exhausted and traumatized, will probably go right back to battle, Tom Hardy's character will probably be a POW for several years, Mr. Dawson's son might be called up in a year or two to serve when he gets older, its just exhausting to contemplate. But, they survived, and that's enough for now.

This is going to absolutely kill at the Oscars, especially for the Best Direct, Best Cinematography, and Best Picture style categories. At least, I hope it does.

Both these posts/quotes make my heart sing.  I couldn't have said it better.  

USUAL SUSPECT, yes!!!

And TENNISGURL - firstly, I'm an insane tennis nut, so I love your name already - but your entire post is how I felt, too.  

Love this movie.  You both wrote how I feel so eloquently.

[Dame sans merci]

On 19/12/2016 at 0:22 AM, Danny Franks said:

You're probably right. But I just hope there will be enough of them with open enough minds to be interested in this despite it occurring a year before the US joined the war.

And then perhaps Nolan or someone else could follow it up with a movie about the Battle of Britain. More stirring stuff.

I visited Dunkirk a few years ago, and was dismayed to find there's little trace of what happened there. A half decent museum that had seen better says, and the remains of some German coastal defence bunkers. I guess the French had no real desire to commemorate it, which is a shame because tens of thousands of French troops were involved.

There's an interesting piece from the Guardian here surrounding the local perspective on Dunkirk, and how they hope the release of the film might change the narrative and understanding of French involvement:

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The museum team see the neglect of France’s history in Dunkirk as a disturbing triumph of Vichy propaganda decades after the regime itself crumbled. “French people don’t know, because (Marshal Philippe) Pétain made a silence about what happened,” said Christian Belen, one of the museum’s founders. “There are quite a lot of French visitors (now), because they don’t know the story and they want to find out more. They come because of the Nolan film.”

Lucien Dayan, president of the association that runs the museum, explained that after the war France’s difficult reckoning and the enormous task of rebuilding meant that rectifying the historical narrative on Dunkirk never really registered as a priority.

“Finally, when liberation came, there was no effort to correct the narrative that the British escaped and the French were left as prisoners,” he said.

He is particularly keen to point visitors to a quote from Britain’s Admiral Bertram Ramsay committing to evacuating French forces, and a board listing the numbers of both British and French soldiers evacuated. “With this the story is clear, and the propaganda is brushed away,” he says.

[CaughtOnTape]

I loved this movie, even though it was SO EFFING LOUD.  I walked out of that theater needing to sit down for a minute after I'd just sat for two hours and then wasn't able to sit still.  The ticking clock really got under my skin.

Interesting tidbit I ran across this weekend...

Charles Lightoller was captain of one of the "small boats" that rescued soldiers.  His boat was named the Sundowner.  The boat was requisitioned by the Navy to go retrieve soldiers but he refused to let them captain his ship and instead took off for Dunkirk himself with his son and a friend.  They rescued about 130 soldiers.  His evasive maneuvers helped them avoid an attack from the air that threatened to sink them on the way back.  Sound familiar?

Why am I mentioning this?

Charles Lightoller was the most senior officer to survive the sinking of the Titanic.  He claimed the ship sank in one piece and because of his claim (despite most of the survivors who were asked saying the ship broke in two, his word was given more weight because he was an officer) no one knew the ship was actually in two pieces until Ballard found it in 1985.

Wonder if Nolan gained inspiration from this and that's who Mark Rylance's character was based off?  I really wish someone would ask him.

[Schweedie]

1 hour ago, CaughtOnTape said:

Wonder if Nolan gained inspiration from this and that's who Mark Rylance's character was based off?  I really wish someone would ask him.

I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that it was indeed. I'm guessing they decided to stick with 'based on' because they wanted to add some extra drama and tension (picking up the stranded soldier, George dying, etc) and didn't feel right adding things if they kept the real names. Would've been nice to have the Sundowner in the film, though!

[Dejana]

2 hours ago, Schweedie said:

I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that it was indeed. I'm guessing they decided to stick with 'based on' because they wanted to add some extra drama and tension (picking up the stranded soldier, George dying, etc) and didn't feel right adding things if they kept the real names. Would've been nice to have the Sundowner in the film, though!

I saw an article about the family of the actual commander on the pier at Dunkirk being annoyed that his real name wasn't used in the film. Of course, Charles Lightoller was depicted in Titanic but it was not a flattering portrayal and IIRC, his descendants got a sizable donation to charity if not damages after raising a fuss. Nothing about Mr. Dawson or Commander Bolton was particularly objectionable but you never know what might offend people.

[CaughtOnTape]

1 hour ago, Dejana said:

I saw an article about the family of the actual commander on the pier at Dunkirk being annoyed that his real name wasn't used in the film. Of course, Charles Lightoller was depicted in Titanic but it was not a flattering portrayal and IIRC, his descendants got a sizable donation to charity if not damages after raising a fuss. Nothing about Mr. Dawson or Commander Bolton was particularly objectionable but you never know what might offend people.

That wasn't him.  It was the depiction of the first officer Murdoch.  The family was pissed off he was depicted as shooting people and then shooting himself when they say that didn't happen.  As far as I know Lightoller's family didn't have issue with how he was depicted.  Probably because in the movie, he was actually seen as being someone who tried and failed to tell the Captain to slow his ass down.

[Dejana]

2 hours ago, CaughtOnTape said:

That wasn't him.  It was the depiction of the first officer Murdoch.  The family was pissed off he was depicted as shooting people and then shooting himself when they say that didn't happen.  As far as I know Lightoller's family didn't have issue with how he was depicted.  Probably because in the movie, he was actually seen as being someone who tried and failed to tell the Captain to slow his ass down.

Oops, mixed up the officers, should have looked it up.

I was listening to a podcast reviewing the movie and the hosts were debating whether Churchill's speech should have been included. One guy felt like it was too far removed from the immediacy of the beach and too Hollywood, the others disagreed and felt the movie needed to offer an optimistic ending after everything the characters had suffered. Yet I didn't view the ending as completely optimistic, but only up to a point. As the speech is narrated, we're shown Farrier being captured and Tommy looking pensive, as if he's understanding that there will be more battles to come, more suffering, more death, before it's all over. Yet it could have been a lot worse, so there's nothing wrong with the event becoming a rallying point, either.

[gator12]

5 minutes ago, Dejana said:

Oops, mixed up the officers, should have looked it up.

I was listening to a podcast reviewing the movie and the hosts were debating whether Churchill's speech should have been included. One guy felt like it was too far removed from the immediacy of the beach and too Hollywood, the others disagreed and felt the movie needed to offer an optimistic ending after everything the characters had suffered. Yet I didn't view the ending as completely optimistic, but only up to a point. As the speech is narrated, we're shown Farrier being captured and Tommy looking pensive, as if he's understanding that there will be more battles to come, more suffering, more death, before it's all over. Yet it could have been a lot worse, so there's nothing wrong with the event becoming a rallying point, either.

Do you remember the podcast?

[Dejana]

1 hour ago, gator12 said:

Do you remember the podcast?

Here it is, The Film Stage Show.

 

Clothes On Film has an interview with Jeffrey Kurland, the costume designer. He talks uniforms and sweaters:
 

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CoF: You do realise that you are going to kick off a knitwear trend with Dunkirk, don’t you?

JK: I’m so happy about that! You know all of the knitwear was made in England. A lady named Jane Whatley knitted them in her home in Surrey. I travelled to her cottage and showed her what I wanted, the colours and that when she knits it needs to have a roughness. Drop a stitch here and there as they needed to look homemade. With Mr. Dawson’s sweater especially, she was knitting in certain flaws. She did it so beautifully. It feels so appropriate for the film that the sweaters should come from the hands of an English knitter. Really I’m so proud of the film. It’s a gift for the British.

 

Edited August 1, 2017 by Dejana

[gator12]

15 minutes ago, Dejana said:

Here it is, The Film Stage Show.

Thank you

[kiddo82]

1 hour ago, Dejana said:

Yet I didn't view the ending as completely optimistic, but only up to a point. As the speech is narrated, we're shown Farrier being captured and Tommy looking pensive, as if he's understanding that there will be more battles to come, more suffering, more death, before it's all over. Yet it could have been a lot worse, so there's nothing wrong with the event becoming a rallying point, either.

I totally agree.  You could view the entire event as a disaster (it was) or as symbol that sometimes living another day is just as good as a win (it is.). I like the ambiguity.  I found the ending more a guarded sigh of relief than anything else.  But just like on the beach, the returning solders knew that it could turn on its head at any time.

[methodwriter85]

On 7/28/2017 at 8:35 PM, Dejana said:

Vulture's (somewhat snarky) Guide to the Similar Looking Men of Dunkirk:

Yes, I see it! I was mildly puzzled about Rylance's onscreen child being blond—not that it can't happen in life, but it's a movie, unless both actors are already famous, usually the kid gets cast to look like the parent or vice versa. Still, I just figured that since most of the other young guys here have brown hair, maybe Nolan just wanted some variety. Heh, more like another onscreen doppelganger, like Leo in Inception.

Just tell yourself he got his looks from his mother, which works since we never see her.

I think the son might be able to get out of serving in the war because they lost the other son in war, but he'll probably go anyway.

I get the feeling that Harry's character does a lot more dirty and nasty stuff to survive to the end of the war, but still gets himself killed, probably by D-Day. Tommy, I think, makes it to the end.

"Courtroom sketch Tye Sheridan" had me rolling.

I was confused about Cillian Murphy's character. At first I thought he was one in the plane that got shot down. Then, when he wouldn't talk, I thought he was an Axis soldier. It took me awhile to figure out he was on the boat that got torpedoed. If I'm understanding this right, the big boat got torpedoed. He's on the lifeboat and tells Tommy and Harry that they can't get on. But that winds up saving them, because that life boat also gets torpedoed and he's the only one who survives, clinging to the hull until the morning.

I felt bad for Gibson because out of everyone he really did fight like hell to survive. And Tommy and Harry were only alive because of him.

Edited August 1, 2017 by methodwriter85

[CaughtOnTape]

12 hours ago, methodwriter85 said:

 

I was confused about Cillian Murphy's character. At first I thought he was one in the plane that got shot down. Then, when he wouldn't talk, I thought he was an Axis soldier. It took me awhile to figure out he was on the boat that got torpedoed. If I'm understanding this right, the big boat got torpedoed. He's on the lifeboat and tells Tommy and Harry that they can't get on. But that winds up saving them, because that life boat also gets torpedoed and he's the only one who survives, clinging to the hull until the morning.

I felt bad for Gibson because out of everyone he really did fight like hell to survive. And Tommy and Harry were only alive because of him.

I don't think he was on the boat that got torpedoed as there were a few lifeboats in the water headed to that boat when it got hit.  He also spoke of a U-Boat being the reason his boat sank.  While he was yelling down at Tommy and Alex to cool it he also said that the lifeboat had been capsized twice since they left the beach.  I'm not sure what boat he was on when he got bombed.

[Danny Franks]

Well, that was a very intense two hours, I have to say. I read some reviews snarking on the lack of blood and viscera, but honestly, I think Christopher Nolan just proved that you don't need graphic violence to present a visceral depiction of war, you can just do it with sound. Because the sound effects and mixing for this movie were tremendous. I've never hit as hard by mere sounds in a movie before. The punch of bullets and shellfire, the wail of Stukas and the thud of bomb impacts, even the underlying drone and tick that made for a soundtrack. It all just kept me on the edge of my seat. Empire said it best in their review, "Dunkirk thrusts you into a pressure cooker and slams the lid on."

The structure Nolan gave the movie took a little while to become clear, but the disregard for chronological storytelling, so he could build to peaks and crescendos of all the little stories at once was an inspired choice. I'm sure some will have been confused, but I thought it was done so well. I didn't find the lack of dialogue or the ensemble of grimy faces confusing, either. The actors all looked sufficiently different from one another that it was easy to tell who was who. Even the Spitfire pilots, Nolan thought ahead and made one Scottish, so we could tell the difference when they had their masks on.

What I'm not entirely sure the movie did successfully was convey the scale of Dunkirk. The evacuation, the hundreds of small boats that made the crossing, back and forth, over the space of a week. I don't think Nolan gave us enough establishing shots to impress that upon the viewer. Instead, he gave us those tense, surprisingly intimate stories, following several different people. It does work very well, and makes for a really, really good movie. But it's not quite the grand account of Britain turning abject defeat into victory that I was hoping for.

And it was almost... almost... ruined by a magical Spitfire. I mean, come on. Hardy runs out of fuel (after apparently being the only RAF pilot to make it to Dunkirk) and not only does he manage to keep control of his plane in a level glide, he actually somehow tracks and shoots down a Stuka, and then eases in while manually pumping his landing gear, to gently bounce onto the beach. Look, it might be theoretically possible, but it came off as ridiculous. Especially when the Spitfire was a notoriously difficult aircraft on takeoff and landing. I did appreciate the calmness with which Hardy and his buddy handled everything though. A nice change from fraught, screeching conversations between pilots in most war movies. They were so matter-of-fact about it all, which feels right for experienced combat pilots.

There were definitely some groups of young girls in my showing, who were there for Harry Styles. I hope they weren't disappointed, and I hope they learned a bit of history. I thought he was fine, for what the role was. Dialogue light, generally asked to look dishevelled, exhausted and scared. Same for the other young actors. One or two looked familiar, from other British TV shows and movies (excluding the obvious Rylance, Branagh, Hardy and Murphy), but this wasn't a movie for actors, and I'm guessing they all understood that when they signed on.

And with all that, I still got choked up when the small boats arrived, and all the soldiers cheered. It's such a great episode of small time heroism and solidarity. Everything from pleasure cruisers to trawlers to single-masted little sailing dinghies, heading across the channel into the sights of the seemingly unstoppable German army, to rescue British soldiers. But Nolan still undercuts it by dwelling on the empty shock of the soldiers arriving at home to blankets and congratulations, while they feel like failures. Churchill's speech is relayed not as a triumphant, glorious peroration, but with weariness and a burning (magic) Spitfire.

Edited August 1, 2017 by Danny Franks

[proserpina65]

17 hours ago, Danny Franks said:

Well, that was a very intense two hours, I have to say. I read some reviews snarking on the lack of blood and viscera, but honestly, I think Christopher Nolan just proved that you don't need graphic violence to present a visceral depiction of war, you can just do it with sound. Because the sound effects and mixing for this movie were tremendous. I've never hit as hard by mere sounds in a movie before. The punch of bullets and shellfire, the wail of Stukas and the thud of bomb impacts, even the underlying drone and tick that made for a soundtrack. It all just kept me on the edge of my seat. Empire said it best in their review, "Dunkirk thrusts you into a pressure cooker and slams the lid on."

I can think of only two other movies were the sound had this kind of impact: Master and Commander & Black Hawk Down.  Whatever other nominations this film might get, come Oscar time, it better get ones for the sound.

Edited August 2, 2017 by proserpina65

[snickers]

Well, I originally wanted to see the Dark Tower this weekend, but passed when I saw the dismal reviews, so I saw this instead.  This really exceeded my expectations.  I'm glad this was light on the violence and that this movie was not another saving private ryan.  I agree with others that the sound and cinematography is what the movie.  I so didn't recognize Tom Hardy until the end lol...it's what I like about it, him versatility.  I guess my only complaint was we didn't know any of the soldiers names, the only names stated it seemed were the sons....and I too thought that Cilllian M. was the pilot at first, but then I figured out the time sequence stuff.  I actually thought that was clever how he tied it all together.  I'm glad to see the movie is doing as well as it is, I thought this movie would have done better in the fall, not at the peak of summer blockbuster...glad to see I was wrong.

[Souris]

For a brief moment, I thought Tom Hardy was going to turn out to be Mark Rylance's other son, but then they said he died.

I'm sure there is probably some reason I don't know enough to grasp, but why couldn't Tom Hardy have parachuted out while he was still over the last of the British soldiers so the plane just kept going and eventually crashed on the empty beach? Or pointed it toward the German occupied area? I suppose there would be the chance of it hitting the French lines, but I kept wondering why he didn't.

It was certainly intense, and I'm glad the blood and gore was kept to a minimum. I thought it was well-done, though I wouldn't agree with EW that it was the best movie so far this year.

I also thought Mark Rylance's character must have been based on Charles Lightoller.

[methodwriter85]

On 8/5/2017 at 11:36 PM, snickers said:

Well, I originally wanted to see the Dark Tower this weekend, but passed when I saw the dismal reviews, so I saw this instead.  This really exceeded my expectations.  I'm glad this was light on the violence and that this movie was not another saving private ryan.  I agree with others that the sound and cinematography is what the movie.  I so didn't recognize Tom Hardy until the end lol...it's what I like about it, him versatility.  I guess my only complaint was we didn't know any of the soldiers names, the only names stated it seemed were the sons....and I too thought that Cilllian M. was the pilot at first, but then I figured out the time sequence stuff.  I actually thought that was clever how he tied it all together.  I'm glad to see the movie is doing as well as it is, I thought this movie would have done better in the fall, not at the peak of summer blockbuster...glad to see I was wrong.

Or Hacksaw Ridge. My god that was extremely hard to watch.

It's still weird to have watched a War film and realized that only two of the characters we follow actually die.

I'm still really confused about the timeline of Cillian Murphy's character. Did he make it back to the beach in the lifeboat or did the lifeboat sink? Or was the lifeboat going to another ship, which also got torpedoed and killed everybody but him?

Edited August 7, 2017 by methodwriter85

[backgroundnoise]

On 7/21/2017 at 6:27 AM, Dejana said:

I heard about the story structure months ago but wonder if I'd have had a problem with the movie, not knowing ahead of time.

I had heard nothing of this until after I saw the movie, and I was confused.  I kept wondering how long it was taking to cross the channel when it kept going from day to night.  I just went with it and ignored it. 

I was disappointed with the movie for not showing or at least telling the extent of the civilian fleet.  I was expecting more grandeur regarding that.  I knew about it and was expecting to see thousands of "little ships."  Going on just the movie, I would have thought there were no more than a few dozen.  They should have had a statement at the end giving how many civilians were involved and how many soldiers were saved that way. 

I was expecting a lot from this movie, and didn't get it.  It was good, but not great, IMO.

[Megan]

I loved this movie and I full on cried with the reveal shot of all the little ships. I was just thinking a lot of those captains probably survived WWI and then were brave enough to cross the channel. Multiple times.

 

On 8/1/2017 at 3:56 PM, Danny Franks said:

And it was almost... almost... ruined by a magical Spitfire. I mean, come on. Hardy runs out of fuel (after apparently being the only RAF pilot to make it to Dunkirk) and not only does he manage to keep control of his plane in a level glide, he actually somehow tracks and shoots down a Stuka, and then eases in while manually pumping his landing gear, to gently bounce onto the beach.

Supposedly like Mr. Dawson being loosely based on Lightoller, Tom Hardy's Farrier was based on Al Deere of New Zealand. He shot down multiple planes and did land on a Belgian beach, but wasn't even captured.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11895657

http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/entertainment/2017/07/tom-hardy-s-dunkirk-hero-based-on-a-real-life-kiwi.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Christopher_Deere

Most of the RAF was further inland holding German planes back so very few were visible on the channel and from the beaches, leading the evacuees to believe they had no air support.

Edited August 7, 2017 by Megan

[Danny Franks]

On 07/08/2017 at 11:23 PM, Megan said:

Supposedly like Mr. Dawson being loosely based on Lightoller, Tom Hardy's Farrier was based on Al Deere of New Zealand. He shot down multiple planes and did land on a Belgian beach, but wasn't even captured.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11895657

http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/entertainment/2017/07/tom-hardy-s-dunkirk-hero-based-on-a-real-life-kiwi.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Christopher_Deere

Most of the RAF was further inland holding German planes back so very few were visible on the channel and from the beaches, leading the evacuees to believe they had no air support.

I don't mind him shooting down multiple planes, especially when two of them were Heinkel bombers. I don't mind him running out of fuel and landing on the beach (although Alan Deere must have been a hell of a pilot to do that in a Spitfire). What ruined it was when Nolan over-egged the pudding and had Farrier somehow able to control his plane, with no engine, to bring it around and shoot down a Stuka that was in the middle of its bombing dive. A classic example of Hollywood taking something too amazing to be true and actually making it silly.

Unnecessary embellishments like that can really undermine the story you're trying to tell, and I'm surprised Nolan succumbed to it.

On 07/08/2017 at 7:21 AM, methodwriter85 said:

 

I'm still really confused about the timeline of Cillian Murphy's character. Did he make it back to the beach in the lifeboat or did the lifeboat sink? Or was the lifeboat going to another ship, which also got torpedoed and killed everybody but him?

I think we're just left to understand that he and his men made it onto a ship later, and it was sunk by the Germans. Because the hull he was sitting on was much larger than the small boat he was on when he told Tommy and Alex to swim for shore. But it would be interesting to see if there was more to his story that was cut.

 

On 07/08/2017 at 9:11 PM, backgroundnoise said:

I had heard nothing of this until after I saw the movie, and I was confused.  I kept wondering how long it was taking to cross the channel when it kept going from day to night.  I just went with it and ignored it. 

I was disappointed with the movie for not showing or at least telling the extent of the civilian fleet.  I was expecting more grandeur regarding that.  I knew about it and was expecting to see thousands of "little ships."  Going on just the movie, I would have thought there were no more than a few dozen.  They should have had a statement at the end giving how many civilians were involved and how many soldiers were saved that way. 

I was expecting a lot from this movie, and didn't get it.  It was good, but not great, IMO.

I think you had the same expectations that I did, when I first saw the trailers. I was expecting a grand, sweeping recreation of the Allied forces on the beaches, and Operation Dynamo. But that's not what Nolan wanted to do, he wanted to create a pressure cooker of a movie, using Dunkirk as the device that tightens the screw of tension. To do that, he decided to put us right alongside a few different people who were involved, but none of whom really got a sense of the scale themselves, other than at the beginning when Tommy arrived at the beach, and at the end when Farrier flew over it.

I would have loved a big, broad, epic retelling of the story, with a huge cast of familiar faces and an exploration of the characters involved to create personal connections for the audience. But I guess Nolan wanted to confound those expectations.

[methodwriter85]

51 minutes ago, Danny Franks said:

I think you had the same expectations that I did, when I first saw the trailers. I was expecting a grand, sweeping recreation of the Allied forces on the beaches, and Operation Dynamo. But that's not what Nolan wanted to do, he wanted to create a pressure cooker of a movie, using Dunkirk as the device that tightens the screw of tension. To do that, he decided to put us right alongside a few different people who were involved, but none of whom really got a sense of the scale themselves, other than at the beginning when Tommy arrived at the beach, and at the end when Farrier flew over it.

I would have loved a big, broad, epic retelling of the story, with a huge cast of familiar faces and an exploration of the characters involved to create personal connections for the audience. But I guess Nolan wanted to confound those expectations.

I was kind of expecting something like Saving Private Ryan but once I realized the out-of-order twist and what kind of movie this actually was the whole thing became pretty enjoyable. He definitely seemed to want something more "human scale", if you will. Still kind of shocked there wasn't any kind of sustained scene where things were calm and these guys got to know each other.

Quote

I think we're just left to understand that he and his men made it onto a ship later, and it was sunk by the Germans. Because the hull he was sitting on was much larger than the small boat he was on when he told Tommy and Alex to swim for shore. But it would be interesting to see if there was more to his story that was cut.

I guess that makes sense, but I definitely feel like we missed a scene with him.

I was walking past a showing of people walking out of the movie, and some guy said to this girl, "What I found most impressive was that he died and his dad was like, 'Well, okay." Then she replied, "That wasn't his father." "Oh." LOL.

Edited August 10, 2017 by methodwriter85

[Danny Franks]

12 minutes ago, methodwriter85 said:

 

I was walking past a showing of people walking out of the movie, and some guy said to this girl, "What I found most impressive was that he died and his dad was like, 'Well, okay." Then she replied, "That wasn't his father." "Oh." LOL.

Haha. To be honest, with Mark Rylance's stoicism, I would have believed the character reacting to his own son's death with 'well, okay'. He's such a great, understated performer, and does brilliantly in reserved roles like this.

[Cherry Bomb]

This film in my opinion should get a nomination nod for an Academy Award when that time rolls around. The film was intense pretty much throughout feeling you were on a roller coaster ride and the soundtrack was just absolutely amazing. 

[Browncoat]

I finally got to see this, and it was intense!  I only have a vague knowledge of the battle/rescue there, and I'm sure some liberties were taken, but it kept me on the edge of my seat, wondering who would make it and how.  Unfortunately, like many war movies (or any movie where all the characters have essentially the same uniform), I had no idea who was who among the soldiers.  Well, except Kenneth Branagh, of course.  Our three main soldiers had similar builds, and dark hair, and barely spoke.  I'm still not entirely sure who was on the train at the end, except I guess not the French soldier.

Mark Rylance was wonderful, as usual, as was our pilot who survived.  I admit I did scoff slightly at the magical pilot at the end -- amazing how he could land perfectly like that.  It might have been a better choice to ditch over the sea, but I suppose we needed to see that some people were captured.

I also was not aware of the timeline thing before I saw the movie, so I was confused at first, despite the title cards telling me that one story line started 1 week out, one 1 day out, and one 1 hour out.  I knew they'd all come together in the end, but I had to keep reminding myself that these night time scenes were a couple of days before the small boats were launched.

I might have to see it again to catch the bits I missed.

[Watermelon]

On 9/14/2017 at 8:26 PM, Browncoat said:

I finally got to see this, and it was intense!  I only have a vague knowledge of the battle/rescue there, and I'm sure some liberties were taken, but it kept me on the edge of my seat, wondering who would make it and how.  Unfortunately, like many war movies (or any movie where all the characters have essentially the same uniform), I had no idea who was who among the soldiers.  Well, except Kenneth Branagh, of course.  Our three main soldiers had similar builds, and dark hair, and barely spoke.  I'm still not entirely sure who was on the train at the end, except I guess not the French soldier.

Mark Rylance was wonderful, as usual, as was our pilot who survived.  I admit I did scoff slightly at the magical pilot at the end -- amazing how he could land perfectly like that.  It might have been a better choice to ditch over the sea, but I suppose we needed to see that some people were captured.

I also was not aware of the timeline thing before I saw the movie, so I was confused at first, despite the title cards telling me that one story line started 1 week out, one 1 day out, and one 1 hour out.  I knew they'd all come together in the end, but I had to keep reminding myself that these night time scenes were a couple of days before the small boats were launched.

I might have to see it again to catch the bits I missed.

As far as the main 3, yeah one was Frenchy, the other one was the actual MAIN guy, and the other was the angry one.   Frenchy died in the marooned boat when it started filling with water. Apparently he was caught in the chains.

[Browncoat]

1 hour ago, Watermelon said:

As far as the main 3, yeah one was Frenchy, the other one was the actual MAIN guy, and the other was the angry one.   Frenchy died in the marooned boat when it started filling with water. Apparently he was caught in the chains.

Thanks!

[wlk68]

After reading all these rave reviews, I feel funny coming in here and saying I thought it was just ... okay. It had some good dramatic moments and I very much enjoyed Mark Rylance's character but the editing drove me nuts. The sky went from sunny to cloudy and then sunny again in every scene and it was incredibly distracting.   

[Bruinsfan]

Yeah, Rylance and Branagh impressed me with their acting, and Richard King blew me away with the sound editing, but story- and direction-wise I wasn't that overly impressed. I remember coming out of Saving Private Ryan in more or less a state of shock, and I was weeping after Schindler's List. This didn't have nearly as powerful and effect on me except when I was listening to the planes over the beach.

[BigBeagle]

On 1/30/2018 at 4:24 PM, Bruinsfan said:

I remember coming out of Saving Private Ryan in more or less a state of shock, and I was weeping after Schindler's List. This didn't have nearly as powerful and effect on me except when I was listening to the planes over the beach.

Same here. I really enjoyed the movie, but it had a little too much of that "stiff upper lip" air to it, more of a documentary than a dramatization.

And I second your comments on "Saving Private Ryan" and "Schindler's List," Bruinsfan. I felt shattered after watching the former and emotionally spent after watching the latter.

[Ohwell]

2 hours ago, BigBeagle said:

more of a documentary than a dramatization.

Exactly.  I just watched it a couple days ago and that's just how I felt about it.

[WritinMan]

Just watched this and was really quite disappointed. Stunning technically, but overall it felt cold and shallow. More clinical than emotional. When a movie ends and your first thought is "huh"--that's not a good sign.

Someone earlier in this thread quoted a critic saying you'd have "wobbly knees" when it was over. Can't say that was my experience. Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, even Black Hawk Down...yes. This reminded me of The Thin Red Line. Beautiful to look at, but not as deep as it thinks it is.

Pretty sure I'd watch Tom Hardy reading the phone book, though.

[Danny Franks]

I'm so pleased that Dunkirk won the sound editing, sound design and editing Oscars. They were clearly the movie's strength, and some of the best work I've ever seen. Particularly Nolan's use of sound to achieve the same powerful effect as all the blood and gore of other modern war movies.

[BetterButter]