Dunkirk

As expected, escalated with drama and focus, with a lifespan of a personal experience on the edge of perfection and with a cutting musical accompaniment that is physically exhausting. Christopher Nolan has been in top form for more than a decade, a form that everyone else can only envy, and perhaps solely due to the tightness of the war genre, which does not allow any deviations in the script, Dunkirk will be one step behind his previous masterpieces in my eyes. (25/07/2017)

The architecture of time and space prevents Dunkirk from looking like a malnourished drama with fleeting characters that again perform more assigned narrative functions (such as Branagh's sculptural explanation), rather than embody some deeper thoughts. In the end, Dunkirk, with all its efforts to achieve objectivity, cannot avoid pathetic words and premature dramatic abbreviations. It’s been a long time since the war has had such a booming and creaking physical element. Unfortunately, the demolished drums are the only thing I carry with me the day after. For me, it’s more of a noble imitation that has to fire on all cylinders to cover the inner emptiness and lack of nuances. The greater the ambition Nolan has in working with a storytelling perspective, the more doubtful the results. The modest, but psychologically and narratively incredibly functional and agile film The Prestige remains an unattainable goal. Dunkirk is a flashy creative maneuver that creates a big wave around itself. However, it does not reach the depths. (26/07/2017)

Nolan cannot be denied that he did not just shoot another war film according to a proven scheme. In many ways, it is in line with old-school war films, which are no longer made today, just in the form in which they were never made. Following the example of Greengrass's United 93, in view of The Dunkirk evacuation, he got rid of all political background, expressed no opinion, did not mirror anything. He was not interested in other parties of the conflict, sidelined characters, dialogs and story, and focused on a single aspect; the feelings of those thousands people who were evacuated, those soldiers who where cut off from their homeland. The movie strictly follows (except for the elaborate structure of the narrative and the form, which can be fully enjoyed only during the subsequent screening) the concept of "beach/week-water/day-air/hour" with an unseen enemy and thus fully mediates the feelings of pilots enclosed in a cramped, deafening cockpit, while German fighters circling around, panicked drowning boys in the billowing night waves and soldiers on land who don't know if they'll get their turn during the evacuation or will be left at the mercy of the advancing German army. This is by far the greatest strength of the film. The cast couldn't have been better, because even if Branagh doesn't move from the pier, Hardy from the cockpit or Rylance from the helm, they are so convincing and charismatic that simply could not be any better. At the same time, they play everything purely with their eyes or imperceptible gestures (and in the case of Caine, using purely intonation). Thanks to the symbiosis of Nolan/Zimmer/Smith, the result is undeniably captivating, chilling, nerve-wracking as well as intense and earthy production (the difference from the best CGI is simply tangible, that´s for sure) and a technically refined masterpiece like no other far and wide. But… But at the same time, Zimmer's phenomenal addition of sound (not really a music background) is overused so that the whole footage rumbles and ticks. It´s non-stop. I repeat, non-stop. Do you get that? Non-stop! Neither a second of silence, nor a second without the highest possible intensity of pumping creaking, while the "calm" sequences on the ship would obviously call for quiet moments. However, it is still a "Dunkirk miracle", because everyone in the seventy-millimeter Imax took the bait and myself breathed exclusively in the rhythm given by Nolan. (21/07/2017)

Emotionally, it flew over my head. Like, really, zero experience. Dunkirk looks nice, but that’s all there is to it. What fascinates me somehow is that Nolan, who’s always been a better storyteller than a director of action scenes, chose for his latest film a plot-lacking reconstruction of one action scene. He only gave the shape of a film to a historical event, which, given his cold approach, wasn’t enough for me. He made an unconventional war movie, yes – without Germans, almost without dialogue, alternating three storylines of different lengths … but to me the result is nothing. I never got the impression that the intertwining storylines supported each other in any way. If only their overlaps had some kind of reinvigorating effect (which was 100% de case in the escalating climax of Inception). Here, there’s nothing but chaos, which, IMHO, is also strangely missing some rather important parts of the story (the pier line: the conversation between the commanders, while two boys are hidden under the pier, that no other ship can sink by he pier … and voilà, in the next chronologically linked scene there’s another ship sinking? How did it get there? Did the boys try to get on it? How much time passed? Or was it the ship that sailed in the previous scene?). And though it all somehow fits together temporarily (although, at least for me, nothing comes out it, no catharsis, no satisfaction), in terms of spacial orientation, a couple of the scenes are a real mess. The pathos in the end unpleasantly surprised me, given the course so far. The concept is great, but the execution lacks any subjective effect. (25/07/2017)

Pomo, you just didn't get it. This isn't "sloppily edited", this is the brilliant creative intent of Nolan. The way he works with time in this film, how he tells three storylines through different time spans and then glues them together with the surgical precision of a master watchmaker, letting them intersect at the end to achieve a cathartic effect is simply admirable. Brilliant screenwriting. And this film has such high production values that I wouldn't hesitate to compare it to David Lean's war epics. This film will be the subject of extensive essays in film schools in the future, and film theorists will discuss it until judgement day. And it’ll get Oscars for sure. (24/07/2017)