Anyone planning to see the movie "Dunkirk"?

[vegster]

We finally got round to watching this today.

It's fairly unique in style and it took some time to get used to the flitting back and forth in time. It's certainly not for those looking for unabated happiness!

But IMO this is a fantastic movie. Contains some goosebumps scenes, such as the first time three Spitfires appear and the finale of the famous Churchill speech against a backdrop of Elgar's Nimrod Variation. Great cinematography of dogfights.

Most people in the cinema sat quietly for ages after it had finished, something Mark Kermode just mentioned on his BBCNews film review.

If you haven't watched it yet, see it soon whilst it's still available on the big screen.

Saw it Wednesday, was a bit confusing the way the same ship was sunk about 6 times from different angles and perspectives.It's strange in the way you drop straight in to the action without much in the way of narrative. Have to say it was very gripping although lots of the film did not add up. Kenneth Branaghs character stood on the end of the Mole for days on end ? ridiculous ! he would be on board a ship near to the action surrounded by a phalanx of staff providing intelligence. The trawler, seemingly abandoned and taken over by the unit on the beach was ridiculous, as the tide came in it would have been pushed up the beach, not suddenly moved a mile offshore

. The Spitfire scene at the end was equally ridiculous, Tom Hardy's Spitfire glided for lord knows how many minutes up and down the beach before he landed. I could add that the French rearguard in the film was dug in just
200 yards from the beach when in reality it was several miles inland.It also seems that most British warships either possessed no anti aircraft defence or were utterly inept.
7.5/10

 

[vegster]

Nice try, but who's not up for a bit of clever story-telling? Using 3 timelines for Dunkirk was a clever way of telling that story; Inception has dreams within dreams within dreams; Memento was backwards; Insomnia was always in daylight. That's not the issue for me - it's me not being allowed to *care* about the characters. His films have become more and more about how 'cleverly' they're told - and this guy from the Guardian puts it better than I ever could...

https://www.theguardian.com/film/fi...-empty-christopher-nolan-dunkirk-left-me-cold

"Is it just me? Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk has bowled over critics and taken $100m (£77m) at the global box office in barely a week, but it left me cold.

The subject sounds enticing: the legend of Dunkirk tells of an array of unprepared civilians assembling an armada of fishing boats, pleasure craft, yachts, motor launches, paddle steamers, barges and lifeboats to rescue an army from a battle-swept beach. What might cinema reveal of the logistical skills, resourcefulness, courage, doubts, arguments and fears of the citizenry involved?

Yet Nolan’s film chooses to ignore tales such as that of the Medway Queen, a paddle steamer that brought home 7,000 troops in seven round trips and shot down three German planes, or the Royal Daffodil, which returned 9,500 soldiers after blocking a hole below the waterline with a mattress. Instead, we encounter just one boat, skippered by a saintly Mark Rylance, comically attired in his Sunday best. The travails such a figure might have endured were apparently not dramatic enough. Instead, Rylance’s character is subjected to a bizarre set of events garnished with grating sentimentality.

For it is not the dynamics of the people’s armada that interest Nolan. He is more concerned with what is happening on and above Dunkirk’s beaches. What’s mainly happening, however, is that lots of soldiers are waiting around. Escapades, not altogether convincing, are therefore contrived for a few of them. Some bombs fall, some ships are sunk. Commanders mutter briefly but sagely to each other. In the skies, fighter pilots conduct what seems like an endlessly repeated dogfight. One plane runs out of fuel, although not as quickly as audiences might have hoped. And that’s sort of it.

Film-makers usually instil interest in their protagonists by giving them backstories and meaningful dialogue, thereby creating characters who can be engaged in drama. In Dunkirk, these things don’t happen.

The film also denies filmgoers any context. We’re told little about how the army has come to be beached or the threat it faces. We never see a German soldier, let alone the generals and politicians of either side who are masterminding events. We don’t even get the customary three sentences of text at the end, explaining the outcome. This is deliberate: Nolan has said he didn’t want to get “bogged down” in politics.

Another flaunted absence is CGI. Scale is the essence of the Dunkirk myth. There were more than 330,000 soldiers on the beach, and 933 British vessels, naval and private, plying the waves. It is for this kind of situation that computers were invented, but according to Nolan CGI counts as giving up.

So, in spite of his film’s $150m budget, the Royal Air Force seems to consist of three Spitfires, although real-life pilots flew 3,500 sorties at Dunkirk. The Luftwaffe, which Hitler made solely responsible for wiping out the beached Brits, seems able to summon up little more than a couple of Messerschmitts, three Stukas and one bomber. The Royal Navy appears to comprise just two destroyers; in fact, it deployed 39 destroyers and 309 other craft.

Women are excluded from the action by being confined to stereotypical roles, such as providing tea for the homecoming menfolk. In real life, female Auxiliary Territorial Service telephonists – who received two-thirds of a male soldier’s pay – were some of the last military personnel to leave the beach. The evacuees also included female civilians, including girls, caught up in the turmoil.

The restrictions Nolan places on himself have been cited to demonstrate his brilliance as a director. Not for him the humdrum apparatus of lesser directors. His film must be pared back so it can home in on its true subject. Which is what, exactly? Don’t be silly, the reviewers groan: it is the horror of war as never before. OK, got that, another stab at war-is-hell. Except that Dunkirk is no such thing. It is a 12A effort that avoids blood and guts as thoroughly as it avoids so much else. In the film, people hit by bombs die discreetly, with no unseemly dismemberment. Even abandoning a torpedoed ship doesn’t seem too unpleasant. So the movie doesn’t, as claimed, make you feel the terror of those it depicts. Why not?

Well, Dunkirk isn’t actually a war film at all – Nolan tells us so. That is why it doesn’t concern itself with “the bloody aspects of combat”. Instead, it is “a survival story, and first and foremost a suspense film”, according to the director.

A survival story, like Gravity, perhaps? But Dunkirk’s soldiers are denied the means of effecting their own survival, and it is in this that their pathos resides. Their unheroic fate is to mill around on a beach and get ferried home by non-combatants. Signaller Alfred Baldwin, who was at Dunkirk in 1940, recalled: “You had the impression of people standing waiting for a bus. There was no pushing or shoving.”

Or is it a suspense film, like Rear Window? We all know the outcome of the event, and know that nothing terribly bad was ever going to happen to Harry Styles, Captain Rylance or our plucky pilots. Even Hans Zimmer’s manipulative score can’t make that brick out of this straw.

But at least I now understand why I didn’t get it: there was nothing to get. Nolan trades on a mystique fuelled by affectations such as mangled timeframes and Imax cameras. In the film, the complications of chronology seem silly, and the naturalistic environment exposes this. I trekked to Leicester Square in London to get the full benefit of the 70mm picture, but I didn’t notice any. Indeed, I thought the subject would have been better suited to the cold, TV-news glare of digital than the lushness of film.

Still, Warner Brothers and the world seem happy to indulge Nolan. Good luck to him, not that he seems to need it."

This

 

[Weststander]

Saw it Wednesday, was a bit confusing the way the same ship was sunk about 6 times from different angles and perspectives.It's strange in the way you drop straight in to the action without much in the way of narrative. Have to say it was very gripping although lots of the film did not add up. Kenneth Branaghs character stood on the end of the Mole for days on end ? ridiculous ! he would be on board a ship near to the action surrounded by a phalanx of staff providing intelligence. The trawler, seemingly abandoned and taken over by the unit on the beach was ridiculous, as the tide came in it would have been pushed up the beach, not suddenly moved a mile offshore

. The Spitfire scene at the end was equally ridiculous, Tom Hardy's Spitfire glided for lord knows how many minutes up and down the beach before he landed. I could add that the French rearguard in the film was dug in just
200 yards from the beach when in reality it was several miles inland.It also seems that most British warships either possessed no anti aircraft defence or were utterly inept.
7.5/10

At least some positives which you didn't mention, got it a 7.5

The frustrations I felt, were on the strategic, tactical and momentary, mistakes and incompetence of the real events, which the film deliberately touched on. Wars and battles aren't neat and tidy episodes. The UK, Belgium and France were out thought by a machine that had been secretly planning expansion for 7 years.

Which included being in a turkey shoot vulnerable to Nazi planes, dispite having prior knowledge from the Spanish Civil War and from Poland of Nazi tactics, their planes and Blitzkreig;,also from both world wars the threat of U-Boats. Lessons and forewarnings weren't heeded.

Unpleasant viewing to watch the chaos of it all, the incompetence, the avoidability of many deaths.

 

[JamesAndTheGiantHead]

The Spitfire scene at the end was equally ridiculous, Tom Hardy's Spitfire glided for lord knows how many minutes up and down the beach before he landed.

There was an account of a WWII Spitfire gliding without any engine for a full 15 miles; Dunkirk beach is 10 miles long, so certainly plausible. Would he have been able to shoot down a dive bomber whilst gliding? Probably not, but I think some artist liscence is acceptable now and again.

 

[Brightonfan1983]

Well, I've read the post and forgive me if I am unable to recount some of the points that are highlighted. Having seen the film last week I would like to point out that it was a film and not a history lesson. Despite the infinite detail that is apparently craved the story personified for me the struggles which beset young British soldiers and showed me certain aspects of how it would have been in Dunkirk. Has the author of the article ever been to war, struggled to out of a location other than missing a bus and ever had to make decisions on his personal survival. Has the author considered how the film has brought the attention of a middle generation to what actually happened. Three of my daughters asked what Dunkirk was about, where was it and why was it so important. We,ve all seen it and their understanding on the subject has been awakened and their awareness of events in general has been heightened. So the aspects of the film and the storylines it followed resonate with me as it unwound on the screen and I suspect the Guardian Film Critic had never considered these minor but very important facets of the film, because he's never been to war.

1. The opening of the film follows a section of young random British soldiers from various Battalions making their way through Dunkirk and
highlights their hunger and thirst as they raided kitchens in empty houses.
2. Confusion on the streets of the evacuated Dunkirk as these soldiers came under fire from French troops manning a road block.
3. As some of the section were hit by French fire it became every man for himself.
4. Arrival on the beach of one young detached British soldier showed how he was disowned by different Battalions and Regiments as he was
not one of them.
5. Overseas soldiers were seen as not welcome on the evacuating ships, the RAF were portrayed as having let the Army down, in the eyes of
the Army.
6. The RAF pilots were depicted as young men, which a great majority were, middle aged John Mills or kenneth Moore playing the roles of
teenagers and young twenty year olds.
7. Fear panic was evident, turning on a weaker member of the group and making irrational decisions, great signs of massive stress.
8. The civilian boat captain portrayed as a man of the time who knew a lot about the planes in the sky had lost his own son early in the war,
had a real connection with those he was rescuing. His actions at the end of the film demonstrate why he acted as he did and what it meant
to him.
9. There was no easy escape from the beaches, time and time again young soldiers were thwarted in their attempts to escapethe horrors.
10. Tiredness, hunger, ptsd, confusion and personal tragedy were all highlighted.

Sorry to disagree with the film critic, stay in your make believe world inside a cinema, try going to war, be held against your will, be hungry, tired, thirsty and stop criticing for the sake of it. I have personal experience of many of the emotions displayed within the film, all but in a micro scale and a personal connection with Dunkirk.

It is a good film and highlights the age of those who were involved. No story line, no star and no explanation needed, this film has brought the events of Dunkirk back to the consciousness of a new generation.

I'm wasn't criticising for the sake of it. I certainly wasn't trying to score points or big myself up - it was my opinion. I did say I wasn't a great fan of his anyway and it's boringly preposterous to trot out the old line about "try going to war" - I'm glad you liked it, found a personal connection to it, that it moved you: for that to happen to people sitting in a dark room full of strangers, to be transported for a moment, is pretty magical I'm sure you agree.

That it's a blockbusting record-breaking film, doesn't make it immune from genuine comments from the little people like me. 'Titanic' is one of the highest grossing films of all time and I think it's appalling. Trying to belittle someone for saying so just isn't cricket.

 

[Bulldog]

I watched it at the Marina a couple of days ago and I was very disappointed.

What was the original classification? This was a 12A, and none of the good bits that I had seen on the TV clips were even in it. I guess they have chopped it to bits for the school summer holidays?

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

I watched it at the Marina a couple of days ago and I was very disappointed.

This. Dunkirk is nowhere near as great as the knee-jerk supporters would have it. Only Oscar likely to be coming its way anytime soon is for the Hans Zimmer masterful suspenseful soundtrack.

 

[Brighton Mod]

I'm wasn't criticising for the sake of it. I certainly wasn't trying to score points or big myself up - it was my opinion. I did say I wasn't a great fan of his anyway and it's boringly preposterous to trot out the old line about "try going to war" - I'm glad you liked it, found a personal connection to it, that it moved you: for that to happen to people sitting in a dark room full of strangers, to be transported for a moment, is pretty magical I'm sure you agree.

That it's a blockbusting record-breaking film, doesn't make it immune from genuine comments from the little people like me. 'Titanic' is one of the highest grossing films of all time and I think it's appalling. Trying to belittle someone for saying so just isn't cricket.

Is it a blockbusting film? I have no idea if it was or wasn't. If you havn't been in a conflict, it is difficult to understand the combination of fear, hunger, thirst, fatigue and disarray. I found the Guardian article overladen with historical fact but underwhelming with any emotion and missing some of the real salient points that I found made it realistic in parts. As for the try going to war comment being preposterous and boring, that really is a value judgement, you don't know til you try it Did I like the film, yes. Did I like going to War no, neither the first nor second time
There was no intent to belittle anyone other than the original article, which attempted to denigrate the film on almost every level,no reference to what it brought to the youth of today, although it referenced the fact that no women were shown in great detail and then condemned because they were only shown in stereotypical roles. Are you aware of the percentages of men/women at Dunkirk, I would be pleased to see them. I thought it a poor summary of the film, judging it on a wider plane than the film sought to cover and introducing criticisms that had nothing to do with the subject matter. NO CGI, brilliant, real people great, no star, no storyline even better, thats war at close quarters, chaos.

 

[essbee1]

Nice try, but who's not up for a bit of clever story-telling? Using 3 timelines for Dunkirk was a clever way of telling that story; Inception has dreams within dreams within dreams; Memento was backwards; Insomnia was always in daylight. That's not the issue for me - it's me not being allowed to *care* about the characters. His films have become more and more about how 'cleverly' they're told - and this guy from the Guardian puts it better than I ever could...



Well, I've read the post and forgive me if I am unable to recount some of the points that are highlighted. Having seen the film last week I would like to point out that it was a film and not a history lesson. Despite the infinite detail that is apparently craved the story personified for me the struggles which beset young British soldiers and showed me certain aspects of how it would have been in Dunkirk. Has the author of the article ever been to war, struggled to out of a location other than missing a bus and ever had to make decisions on his personal survival. Has the author considered how the film has brought the attention of a middle generation to what actually happened. Three of my daughters asked what Dunkirk was about, where was it and why was it so important. We,ve all seen it and their understanding on the subject has been awakened and their awareness of events in general has been heightened. So the aspects of the film and the storylines it followed resonate with me as it unwound on the screen and I suspect the Guardian Film Critic had never considered these minor but very important facets of the film, because he's never been to war.

1. The opening of the film follows a section of young random British soldiers from various Battalions making their way through Dunkirk and
highlights their hunger and thirst as they raided kitchens in empty houses.
2. Confusion on the streets of the evacuated Dunkirk as these soldiers came under fire from French troops manning a road block.
3. As some of the section were hit by French fire it became every man for himself.
4. Arrival on the beach of one young detached British soldier showed how he was disowned by different Battalions and Regiments as he was
not one of them.
5. Overseas soldiers were seen as not welcome on the evacuating ships, the RAF were portrayed as having let the Army down, in the eyes of
the Army.
6. The RAF pilots were depicted as young men, which a great majority were, middle aged John Mills or kenneth Moore playing the roles of
teenagers and young twenty year olds.
7. Fear panic was evident, turning on a weaker member of the group and making irrational decisions, great signs of massive stress.
8. The civilian boat captain portrayed as a man of the time who knew a lot about the planes in the sky had lost his own son early in the war,
had a real connection with those he was rescuing. His actions at the end of the film demonstrate why he acted as he did and what it meant
to him.
9. There was no easy escape from the beaches, time and time again young soldiers were thwarted in their attempts to escapethe horrors.
10. Tiredness, hunger, ptsd, confusion and personal tragedy were all highlighted.

Sorry to disagree with the film critic, stay in your make believe world inside a cinema, try going to war, be held against your will, be hungry, tired, thirsty and stop criticing for the sake of it. I have personal experience of many of the emotions displayed within the film, all but in a micro scale and a personal connection with Dunkirk.

It is a good film and highlights the age of those who were involved. No story line, no star and no explanation needed, this film has brought the events of Dunkirk back to the consciousness of a new generation.

Well the "new" generation have been completely and utterly let down in that case.

 

[Brighton Mod]

Well the "new" generation have been completely and utterly let down in that case.

Thats a fail, how have they been let down? Have your children seen the film, have you discussed Dunkirk with your sons in law and daughters over a Sunday lunch and referred to details on the internet regarding the Dunkirk evacuation and why the troops were there. Have you discussed as to where your childrens great, great uncle in commemorated, who he served with and how came to be soldier
Let down, I don't think so, perhaps no film on the subject should have been made, that truly would be a let down.
Its just a film and as such would be totally unable to cover all the detail, backstory, future story or general scenario.

 

[vegster]

At least some positives which you didn't mention, got it a 7.5

The frustrations I felt, were on the strategic, tactical and momentary, mistakes and incompetence of the real events, which the film deliberately touched on. Wars and battles aren't neat and tidy episodes. The UK, Belgium and France were out thought by a machine that had been secretly planning expansion for 7 years.

Which included being in a turkey shoot vulnerable to Nazi planes, dispite having prior knowledge from the Spanish Civil War and from Poland of Nazi tactics, their planes and Blitzkreig;,also from both world wars the threat of U-Boats. Lessons and forewarnings weren't heeded.

Unpleasant viewing to watch the chaos of it all, the incompetence, the avoidability of many deaths.

7.5 is my standard rating of an average film, lots of tension and action but lots of plot disasters and incongruous situations. For instance, it was clearly stated that "when the tide turns and floods you know that because the bodies start washing back in " Strangely, when the tide turns and starts flooding in, the trawler slowly floats offshore ? Two of my late uncles were RAF ground crew during WW2 and I'm sure they would be aghast about a Spit flying up and down without fuel at low altitude for 15 minutes.

 

[SReffs]

Very powerful. Loved it. My other half on the other hand thought it was 'ok'.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[AmexRuislip]

Went to watch this, this evening.
Very poignant film, giving different aspects of the events leading up to and after the evacuation.
Without being patronising, it makes you think how lucky we are today.

 

[whitelion]

My dad "celebrated" his 23rd birthday somewhere in France on 13th June 1944. Just shows how young the men were who fought their way to Germany.

 

[Pudos]

Thought it was well made, worth seeing in imax if poss, but not what I would list as enjoyable, at times felt guilty when watching it, was this a film making money out of tragedy? Gives a reminder, or tiny insight, of what the forces did and went through, ordinary people going through hell.
Excuse the cliche but it did make me think how lucky i was to be born after such events

 

[dazzer6666]

Went to watch this, this evening.
Very poignant film, giving different aspects of the events leading up to and after the evacuation.
Without being patronising, it makes you think how lucky we are today.

Finally got around to going to see it this evening, and this sums up how I felt in a nutshell. Some brilliant cinematography too.

 

[Justice]

Any good streams of this yet?

 

[Taybha]

Probably posted already but found this and the fella just sums it all up at the the end of the clip .

[yt]XwaJcZnR7us[/yt]

 

[Albion my Albion]

Any good streams of this yet?

Don't go chasing after the 2017 movie Operation Dunkirk which is a very low budget profiteering endeavour that is poorly made and had little to do with the plot of Dunkirk. I imagined they rushed it out on seeing what profit could be made by the movie Dunkirk. Many Germans and language that goes back and forth between German and English and very little real French. One particularly sadistic German truly makes you squirm a little. It seemed as if an actor got a better paying part on another movie their character was suddenly killed in this movie.

You might get a few laughs out of it.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/operation_dunkirk_2017/

 

[jaghebby]

It may have been possible for a Spitfire to glide 15 miles but only from a considerable altitude! In the film Tom Hardy's Spitfire is at a very low level and it would just not be possible to maintain flight and go up and down the beach for that time. So its an impossible scene in reality. If you loose and engine at that level your only concern would be getting down straight or near enough ahead or if you had enough height to bail out! You would not be flying up and down the beach with an engine out. I also think Tom would have run out of ammunition well before the end of the film as a Mk 1 Spitfire only had about 16 seconds worth of ammo! During the film you see him blazing away so that's another major error in the film! Also the shots taken supposedly along the nose of the Spitfire in some of the flying scenes - sorry to say aren't taken from a Spitfire!