Dunkirk (2017)

The most crucial necessity before seeing Dunkirk is accurate expectations. For those of us who flee from movie trailers, reading reviews, or researching films ahead of time, this may not be the smoothest of rides. And typically, I’d be right there with you spouting similar complaints; however — and I do not say this lightly — we’re dealing with Christopher Nolan here. And despite my natural aversion to exceptions to the rule, Christopher Nolan is always my exception to that rule. But if you are one of those audience members who finds themselves sitting in the theater at the end of Dunkirk in a bad mood, you may share one of these common misgivings on the film:
- The chronological structure was too confusing, I didn’t know what was going on, and I found that annoying, pretentious, and/or unnecessary.
- There’s hardly any dialogue, but when there was, I couldn’t understand a word.
- The lack of character development made me ambivalent about the main (or any) characters and their respective fates.
I’ll address these one by one because it is with you in mind that I write this review. Because I did quite a bit of study on the front-end, I was prepared for each of these aspects beforehand, and thus none of them bothered me in the slightest. Which is not common for me, I’ll admit, but again: This is a Christopher Nolan joint. My perspective is simply that I respect the dude way too much to walk in cold or expect a cookie cutter, easy, lazy experience. After all, that’s what Marvel movies are for!
… kidding. So, to the people in Camp 1, I offer you this fantastic article by one of my favorite critics, Jason Bailey, who found that element to be distracting and alienating too. The whole land / sea / air bit is jarring if you didn’t know it was coming, and if you’ve forgotten about Nolan’s affinity for messing around with time (Interstellar, Inception, Memento), which is understandable considering Nolan makes a new film every couple of years. People in Camp 2: Yes. The dialogue is sparse, but challenging to hear clearly, especially in IMAX, which is still absolutely the place you should watch it in. The accents are thick, and you may have flashbacks of trying to decipher *anything* Bane uttered in The Dark Knight Rises. I didn’t personally find this to be the case, but the other people who saw Dunkirk with me did, so there’s not much consolation I can offer here except that you’re not alone. And maybe someday re-watch it at home. With subtitles.
People in Camp 3, I give you this other fantastic article that does a terrific job of showing how Nolan focuses on the overarching magnitude of Dunkirk’s larger themes rather than on the personal particulars of a few individuals. Mike D’Angelo sums it up nicely in his review as well: “The actors aren’t playing characters so much as they’re embodying impulsive strategies (there’s almost no dialogue throughout); Nolan’s emphasis remains defiantly experiential, proliferating Steven Spielberg’s harrowing you-are-there approach from Private Ryan into something more along the lines of you-are-there-and-also-there-and-also-over-there-and-it’s-all-happening-both-separately-and-at-once.”
My guess is that the most disappointed viewer will be the one who goes in expecting something like Saving Private Ryan or Fury in the sense of wanting a war movie about a brotherhood of men who we get to know well, come to love, and feel a great deal for at the end. While Nolan’s film does evoke emotion, it is in another way than perhaps we’re accustomed to. And it is the opinion of this moviegoer that we are the better for it.

