
Dunkirk
Hollywood released a number of hits in the past few months: Wonder Woman, Dunkirk, Baby Driver, and The Big Sick, to name a few. I haven’t seen most of these, but today, I saw Dunkirk.
Christopher Nolan knocked it out of the park. While the classic Nolan timeline jumping was a bit distracting, the intersection point of the three stories was more than enough to tie the movie together. The jumps helped liven up the storytelling, as the heavy nature of each story often put me down spiritually.
The cinematography was stunning. Simply stunning. The Spitfire dogfights put me in the middle of the action, the sudden gunshots kept me tense, and the hopelessness of the fighting enflamed my empathy. Speaking of Spitfires, the Spitfire was the star of the show: throughout the movie, at the most pivotal scenes, the Spitfire proved heroically useful.
I also liked the lack of dialogue. Normal dialogue would’ve worked fine as a way to deliver the story, but Nolan decided to tell the story in a much more powerful way: through gunshots, facial expressions, and body movement. Going back to the cinematography, my favorite moments were when the camera focused on the face of a solider, then the high-pitched drone of a fighter jet crescendoed, then the soldier’s face changed, and then the camera jump-cut to the incoming disaster.
If you have the time, go watch Dunkirk on the big screen. The combination of audio and visuals on 70mm film is something you need to see on the big screen, not a laptop or tablet.
