Movie Review: Dunkirk

 

Michael's Movie Grade: A-

 A fascinatingly experimental and moving movie that actually overcomes some Christopher Nolan's usual faults as a filmmaker.

What makes this movie so particularly fascinating is that there is often very sparse dialogue. While this is very different for almost any film today, it is even more shocking to be seen in a Nolan film. While I like some of his films (particularly Following and Batman Begins) a huge fault in many of them is an over reliance on dialogue. This dialogue can often feel un-cinematic as it explains things we could have easily seen and often dissects scenes in a way that should be left up to the audience not the characters. With all this much of Nolan's dialogue in previous movies comes off as pretentious and pointless, even when the movies themselves are good despite that. However here that fault is much less prevalent, because there is so little dialogue in this movie. This works to its full advantage here as we are still drawn into what the characters are going through and no dialogue is needed to make us do this. With this we have a fully cinematic film and in many ways a very effective one because of that. We make our own judgements on what we are seeing and the result feels more satisfying because of this.

All in all this film is a different kind of character study than many other movies out there. Instead of it being a study of a specific character it is the study of a group. We see their reactions to the war and how different it is for many of them at times, but also what panic can do to them as a group. This is quite fascinating and great to watch. At the end while we do not fully know any of these characters as individuals, we still know them quite well as a group. This makes this movie an experience rather than just a simple war story.

However this film does have some faults. The camera never stays still. This can be very distracting and kind of hurts the film. There is also on the camera side too much of a reliance on close ups, which can also be a little distracting. However despite these faults this is a really good movie and I highly recommend it.