Dunkirk Movie Review

Anant Sharma
Jul 28, 2017 · 2 min read

I entered the hall full of hopes. I left feeling empty.

Before I say anything, I would just like to state that I enjoyed Dunkirk but not as much as the newspapers or critiques who are blasting on about it. Ever since I clicked on the link to the Dunkirk trailer, I was hooked. Opening with Hans Zimmer’s score “Supermarine” using the Shepard tone to its full glory and Fionn Whitehead reciting “We shall fight on the beaches” in his deep sexy voice, Dunkirk’s trailer had me convinced that this was going to be Christopher Nolan’s best work. However, I can hardly grant it the 4th position, following after Interstellar, Inception and The Prestige.

Making Dunkirk was a huge gamble on Christopher Nolan’s part, but as always Nolan delivered to his best. Nolan decided to sacrifice character attachment for storytelling, a sacrifice that was pivotal to how Dunkirk was made. In its grand entirety, Dunkirk is about the evacuation, not Tommy or Alex or Gibson. Comparing it with The Titanic (the movie, since both movies were based on colossal accidents), we see a stark difference between the two movies. In Dunkirk, we are exposed to every scenario, every viewpoint and we get to experience how everyone was playing their roles in this evacuation. In Titanic, we are subjected to the romantic journey of Jack and Rose and their escapades. While Dunkirk massively trumps Titanic in almost every criteria including cinematography and storytelling, it is important to note how James Cameron makes us root for Jack and Rose. With Dunkirk and it’s 3 massive viewpoints (i.e the beach, the water, and the air), Nolan did not have time to focus on every character. However, in the Titanic, when the iconic shot of Jack drowning comes on the screen, we can’t help but feel pity for him. This is because Cameron expressed in every single way that Jack was a loving free-natured man and when the time came we felt that pang in our gut watching him slip under the ice cold water and into his death. However, when Dunkirk ended and we get to know that Mr.Dawson’s (Mark Rylance) son died fighting in the war, we aren’t able to make any sympathetic connection with the character. If you’re like me who loves to root for the characters to succeed and make a personal bond with the characters, you too were probably very much disappointed. This brings us back to what I said in the starting of the review, that I “left feeling empty” because I wasn’t in any way connected to the movie. Generally in a war movie, the whole thing is pretty much character-driven and since I am only 13 and have never experienced war, I didn’t relate to the story, nor the characters.

Anant Sharma

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I have no epithets to describe myself.

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