Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk - July 2017 (Shot in 70mm) (1 Viewer)

[Tino]

Absolutely worth the trip! They also recently renovated with new padded leather chairs (not full recliners, but much wider than regular theater seats), so it's more comfortable there than it used to be.

Josh. Do you know how long it will be playing there?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

They don't have anything posted. However, the next thing scheduled to be released in IMAX is the Inhumans pilot on Sept. 1st.

I doubt they'll run the 15/70 print for 5 weeks, though I'd love it if they did. I predict that it'll play in 15/70 through this weekend and the next, and that they'll switch to the laser projection at some point for slower nights so they don't have to keep a projectionist on the clock. And if the movie doesn't do well overall, it could be replaced with some repeats of movies from earlier in the summer. But honestly, those are all guesses.

 

[DavidJ]

What I can't tell you is where I'd rank this in Nolan's canon. I think this will be a lot of people's favorite Nolan movie, and some of that will be due to that unconscious bias that some people have (not to mention the more overt bias that other people have) that dramatic films, especially historical films, are intrinsically more worthy than films which have science-fiction, comic book, fantasy or mystery elements. I don't share those feelings, so Dunkirk to me doesn't automatically deserve more praise than, say, Interstellar, just because it took place solely on Earth. And since I've seen every Nolan film a minimum of five times (and some of them significantly more), I feel that I need to see this at least one more time to get a sense of how I'd rank it. Because the subject matter is less up my alley than some of his other films, I may revisit it a little less just based on that, but the filmmaking itself is equally good. I was at the edge of my seat for most of the film, with a big grin on my face, enjoying the way that Nolan handled everything - the cast, the crew and IMAX photographer, the scripting, editing and construction of the story, etc. - without ever showing strain.

I don't know if it's Nolan's best film, but it is a magnificent filmmaking achievement.

There's so much I agree with in your post, Josh, that it would be hard for me to reply to, but I wanted to at least comment on this.

I don't think there's any way this ends up being my favorite Nolan film. That's a battle between The Dark Knight, Inception, and Interstellar. And I can understand some not taking to this one or having issues with it, but I do think it's his best.

There's no way, and I don't just mean financially or in terms of creative control,that Nolan could've made this movie before now. It's the work of master at the pinnacle of his powers (to this point and honestly, I don't see how he could top it) And by the way, I include his filmmaking team in this comment. They've helped him become the filmmaker he is and his vision has helped lead them to great heights. The craft on display is phenomenal.

The sound design, mixing and editing, and score builds on ideas, concepts and techniques from previous films. The command of structure and pacing does too. As inherently ridiculous as comments like this are, the editing in this film is the best I've ever seen. Lee Smith and Nolan don't hit a wrong note in their choices dealing with complicated timelines and scenes. And that's without even mentioning the visual storytelling on display by Nolan and Hoyte van Hoytema using the IMAX format. They've obviously upped their game and learned from their previous movies together too.

As you said, it's a magnificent filmmaking achievement and though I'm not a big Kubrick fan,l (he was clearly a great), I don't think you're wrong in the comparison. They have a lot in common from my point of view.

So, I do think Dunkirk is his best, but I doubt ever ascends to my favorite.

 

[Edwin-S]

Well, I'm two for two in films that I expected more from. This one is the exact opposite of Valerian in that the BGM is the star of this film. Although, I found the constant crescendoing to create tension rather repetitive, I also have to say that it did its job well. Without the music, this film would have been entirely empty.​

There was really nothing and no one to get emotionally involved with in the film. A person was just an isolated observer of the mayhem. My emotional involvement with this film was similar to Lost City of Z: Almost zero.

There was even a scene that took me entirely out of the film for a bit.

Spoiler

That dead stick nonsense with the Stuka just left me shaking my head.

Nolan spends almost the entire running time trying to create authenticity and then puts nonsense like that in the film. Then he doubles up on it by

Spoiler

Having an experienced fighter pilot lowering his landing gear for a dead stick landing on a beach?

I still think it was a good film, but far from the best war movie I have ever seen. It definitely does not surpass or even reach the level of SPR. It was also far from his best film. Personally, I still think his best films have been Inception and Memento.

 

[cinemiracle]

Sorry Tino! Busy afternoon at work, wasn't able to really take my lunch break to write as I often do.

Christopher Nolan is one of my favorite filmmakers. I grew up as a huge fan of Stanley Kubrick, and while there are plenty of people who reject the comparison, Nolan's films grip me in a very similar way to Kubrick's. Furthermore, I am consistently impressed with Nolan's ability to make films that have a very distinctive voice, but also work as popular entertainment. That he's able to get Warner to routinely give him a couple hundred million dollars to make films of his choosing is an incredible achievement in and of itself. I think his take on the Batman character is the definitive version of the story, representing the best possible way to translate superhero stories to the big screen, and whereas I mentally start checking out of most superhero movies (even ones I like) by the third act battles, his Batman films keep my attention from start to finish. Even for his films that I don't like as much as the others, I find a lot to admire and appreciate. And as a fan of seeing actual film, and a fan of IMAX, no one does that better than Nolan. His unprecedented uses of the IMAX 15/70 film camera in narrative filmmaking have presented his works with a scale and vastness that is befitting their subjects.

So obviously I was going to be seeing Dunkirk. And yet, the war movie is one of my least favorite genres. I used to say that I was deficient in westerns, horror and war. I've made a lot of progress on westerns, and I'm still mostly unmoved by horror films (with some exceptions of course), but I remain mostly unmoved by war films, that is, films that are solely about war. So that was my big point of concern, that on one hand it was my favorite filmmaker working in my favorite format, but on the other hand, working in a subject that didn't interested me as much. Fortunately, I really enjoyed the movie.

I saw it in IMAX 15/70 film projection, and the sheer size and scale was incredible. Nolan's used IMAX before, but the most he's used it was for about 40-50% of The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar, often shifting within single scenes - so there were moments of those films that felt huge, but the movies as a whole were very much a combination of formats. But with Dunkirk, it seems that 90% or so of the movie was shot on IMAX 15/70 film. If it was less than that, it wasn't noticeable. This wasn't a conventional film that had a few short IMAX sequences within it; this was an IMAX film that had tiny portions of non-IMAX footage when that was the only way to capture the moment. All of those years that I went to see IMAX documentaries, and all of those years I saw hybrid IMAX/standard film productions, I wondered what it would be like to have a narrative film that was entirely in IMAX. Dunkirk is the closest thing yet to that. For all intents and purposes, this is basically an all IMAX film. And the effect is stunning.

One of the things I loved most about the movie is something that's been getting some criticism: Nolan's use of time. I think some critics are just lazy, and rather than viewing each film on its own, would rather simply say, "Oh, Nolan's doing a movie that's not in linear time? Another one of his stupid gimmicks!" rather than considering how it tells the story. I love that Nolan decided to make a film about the evacuation at Dunkirk, rather than a film about the socio-political conflicts of the time that led to the war that then led to the need for the evacuation. Nolan had decided that showing the rescue efforts by land, by sea and by air was the best way to tell the story (and who am I to argue?), and I think by doing so, he's making the point that each of these efforts was important to the success of the evacuation. The soldiers surviving a week on the beach wouldn't have mattered if there hadn't been boats to pick them up, and the boats picking them up wouldn't have mattered if the enemy planes could just sink the boats. All three pieces of the puzzle were essential to the rescue effort, and therefore, I think Nolan made the right choice to structure the movie as he did. The structure isn't meant to trick the viewer or to confuse the narrative, as Nolan has sometimes done in the past. Rather, he goes out of his way to put title cards on the screen to very clearly establish what is happening, where it's happening, and when it's happening. But if the story had been told strictly chronologically, the opening of the film would have been entirely focused on the men on the beach Then, the people on the sea coming to rescue them wouldn't have come up until halfway through the film, and we wouldn't have seen any of the aerial stuff until near the film's end. Had the film been structured that way, it might have seen that the most important part of the effort was the soldiers surviving on the beach waiting for rescue - it would have made the film a more passive story about people waiting to be saved. By giving each setting equal screen time and telling them at the same time, Nolan is able to convey how vitally important each component was, and to show how one impacted the other. (Frankly, if another filmmaker had used this structure, it would have been hailed as a brilliant decision. I think Nolan is being criticized more for having this kind of structure as a signature of his, rather than it being a criticism of how it works for this particular story.)

This isn't really a movie about characters. Although everyone has a name in the end credits, I could swear that most of these people were never identified onscreen during the film. But in the end, that helps serve the film's dramatic power. Dialogue is another thing that's not especially clear; sometimes we can't clearly hear what everyone is saying, but it doesn't really matter that we can't. What's more important is the rhythm of the filmmaking, how the sounds of people shouting orders or whispering their fears contrasts with the sound of explosions and violence, or the eerie silences before the fighting begins. Everyone in the film just wants to survive. Some people put on their brave face and do their best to be honorable; others just try to keep their heads down and go along with the plan; still others try to sneak and cheat their way to safety - it's nonetheless easy to empathize with all. It's easy to get the sense that everyone is a real person, whether it's the commanders on the ground, the rank and file soldiers, or the civilians coming to rescue them - we don't need to know about their entire lives to understand that the moments here are the ones that will matter most in the final estimation. And if the characters don't come out and recite their backgrounds and personal stories, we come to understand so much just looking at the body language, the state of their clothing, how clean or dirty they appear, how they carry their injuries. I've rarely been so riveted watching people that I didn't really know.

That said, there were some fantastic performances, some quite short, that convey a lot of gravity in limited screen time. Mark Rylance is utterly fantastic as a civilian taking a boat out on a rescue effort. Cillian Murphy is equally good as one of the soldiers he rescues along the way. Tom Hardy, as usual, is able to do so much with just his eyes and the way he moves his head in the confined cockpit space. Kenneth Branagh and James D'Arcy are commanders on the ground who convey calm discipline and authority in a chaotic situation. Fionn Whitehead is the solider on the ground we spend the most time with, and he's able to convey so much of what the character is feeling and with very little dialogue. The best thing I can say about the performances is that they're so natural and convincing that it doesn't seem like actors acting, it seems like people reacting.

What I can't tell you is where I'd rank this in Nolan's canon. I think this will be a lot of people's favorite Nolan movie, and some of that will be due to that unconscious bias that some people have (not to mention the more overt bias that other people have) that dramatic films, especially historical films, are intrinsically more worthy than films which have science-fiction, comic book, fantasy or mystery elements. I don't share those feelings, so Dunkirk to me doesn't automatically deserve more praise than, say, Interstellar, just because it took place solely on Earth. And since I've seen every Nolan film a minimum of five times (and some of them significantly more), I feel that I need to see this at least one more time to get a sense of how I'd rank it. Because the subject matter is less up my alley than some of his other films, I may revisit it a little less just based on that, but the filmmaking itself is equally good. I was at the edge of my seat for most of the film, with a big grin on my face, enjoying the way that Nolan handled everything - the cast, the crew and IMAX photographer, the scripting, editing and construction of the story, etc. - without ever showing strain.

I don't know if it's Nolan's best film, but it is a magnificent filmmaking achievement.

Westerns are my least favourite genre. Perhaps you would change your mind about disliking war films if you saw some of the greatest war films ever made .Some examples are ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT;STALINGRAD ( the original Russian film, not the remake);COME AND SEE (perhaps the greatest war film ever made)(Russia); THE BURMESE HARP (Japan)- in the top five films that I have ever seen. CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH (China) is another classic and unforgettable war film. I could name many other war films that were masterpieces (mostly from Europe and Asia). Many people raved over SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (U.S.A) but I hated that film. .I am not a fan of Christopher Nolan and DUNKIRK has little interest for me.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Perhaps you would change your mind about disliking war films if you saw some of the greatest war films ever made

a) I never said I disliked war films
b) I've seen quality war films, inclusive of some of your suggestions
c) why is it so important that I change my mind?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

There's no way, and I don't just mean financially or in terms of creative control,that Nolan could've made this movie before now.

I agree completely and for all the reasons you listed. I read a recent interview with Nolan and he essentially said the same thing - that he's wanted to make this movie for a very long time but that he needed to hone his skills before he was ready to make it.

I'm now rewatching all of his films chronologically - watched Following, Memento and Insomnia so far - and there's a clear evolution visible. Watching this progression from nearly the beginning has been very rewarding to me as a fan. It's like when you find a great young unknown band that's still rough around the edges, and then watch them grow and evolve into a major act.

 

[AshJW]

I'm going to see it next Thursday when it starts here in Germany.

And I will bring my earplugs, just in case.

 

[Tino]

Well, I'm two for two in films that I expected more from. This one is the exact opposite of Valerian in that the BGM is the star of this film. Although, I found the constant crescendoing to create tension rather repetitive, I also have to say that it did its job well. Without the music, this film would have been entirely empty.​

There was really nothing and no one to get emotionally involved with in the film. A person was just an isolated observer of the mayhem. My emotional involvement with this film was similar to Lost City of Z: Almost zero.

There was even a scene that took me entirely out of the film for a bit.

Spoiler

That dead stick nonsense with the Stuka just left me shaking my head.

Nolan spends almost the entire running time trying to create authenticity and then puts nonsense like that in the film. Then he doubles up on it by

Spoiler

Having an experienced fighter pilot lowering his landing gear for a dead stick landing on a beach?

I still think it was a good film, but far from the best war movie I have ever seen. It definitely does not surpass or even reach the level of SPR. It was also far from his best film. Personally, I still think his best films have been Inception and Memento.

I thought the film had characters to care about even thought the film was about the overall event.

I cared about Mark Rylance and his son and friend. I also cared about Tom Hardy's pilot. The film doesn't spend its time on big character development. But there was enough there to keep me involved.

And I agree the film's music is essential to help build suspense. But I also believe the film would be almost as powerful without music and far from empty if that were the case (I have the soundtrack coming today btw). But it is integral to the film similar to the effectiveness of other films like Jaws, Gravity and others.

 

[Greg_S_H]

Is the bombast real or overstated? I was going to encourage my mom to see this, but she has tinnitus and I'm not wanting to risk exacerbating that.

 

[Tino]

I'm 54 and have tinnitus. No lingering effects. But I say bring plugs just in case.

 

[Steve Christou]

"The movie is being shown in several unnecessary formats, including 70 mm, 35mm and IMAX. My advice is avoid the ghastly IMAX version which obliterates the soundtrack, poses a dangerous threat to the eardrums, and renders the dialogue undecipherable."



Film critic Rex Reed, who is definitely not a Christopher Nolan fan but he did find parts of Dunkirk agreeable.

http://observer.com/2017/07/dunkirk-review-christopher-nolan/

 

[Tino]

Rex Reed used to be a respected NY critic.

Not so much anymore......

 

[Tino]

His shtick was and still is insulting people.
I remember one of his early reviews in 1981 of a film called So Fine (about see thru plastic pants!) starring Ryan O'Neal and Richard Kiel of 007 Jaws fame.

Regarding Kiel, he said something to the effect of "this freak of nature should be working for Ringling Bros not Warner Bros"

Not a nice guy. Had a cameo in Superman '78. Even arrested for shoplifting.

 

[Steve Christou]

Well he is getting on a bit Tino. How old is he now? 80? 90? Maybe critics of a certain age should be barred from reviewing the big summer movies. [wink] (Or maybe take their hearing aids off when they go in) [Stop it Steve!]

I remember reading something about 'legendary' NY Times critic Bosley Crowther eventually getting the boot after he gave Bonnie & Clyde a scathing review in 1967? He didn't like all the sex and violence turning up in new movies, 50 years ago!

 

[TravisR]

I cared about Mark Rylance and his son and friend. I also cared about Tom Hardy's pilot. The film doesn't spend its time on big character development. But there was enough there to keep me involved.

One of the things I liked about the movie was that you're in the same position as the characters. Even if they do meet (I don't think most of the characters between storylines speak to each other), they don't know much or anything about those other people. And that's exactly how it would be in that situation. It's a Hollywood convention that someone takes a quiet moment to tell a revealing moment of their history while in a crazy situation.

Is the bombast real or overstated? I was going to encourage my mom to see this, but she has tinnitus and I'm not wanting to risk exacerbating that.

Speaking with zero knowledge of tinnitus, I'd say you might want to stay on the safe side and skip IMAX. In my experience, a regular/non-IMAX screening always has a much lower volume.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Yeah, Rex is up there in age, he should be pushing 80 by now.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Is the bombast real or overstated? I was going to encourage my mom to see this, but she has tinnitus and I'm not wanting to risk exacerbating that.

Yeah, I wouldn't take her to an IMAX showing. Even though loud films don't usually bother me, this IMAX showing was a little too loud for my liking and it affected my ability to discern spoken dialogue in the film.

 

[Tino]

Yeah, Rex is up there in age, he should be pushing 80 by now.

Yup. 78. I used to like his reviews when I was younger...mostly because like me he LOVED Superman (probably because he was in it).
Then he just got mean.

 

[skylark68]

(Disclosure - Some spoilers included)

I saw it last night in 70mm (non-IMAX) at the local AMC theater. It was very loud. To the point where the theater speakers were clipping. Someone in the audience even remarked "What was that???!!!" This was early in the picture. I could understand very little of the dialog because of the music and sound effects being turned up so much. There wasn't that much dialog there though so it wasn't that important. One part though that I was confused about was when the soldiers were on the beach in the trawler I didn't understand (because of the volume issues) was why some of the men were so mad about the one fellow. Was he French in an English uniform? It seemed that some of them were implying he was a German spy because he wouldn't talk.

It was nice seeing it projected in film rather than digitally projected. I enjoy Nolan's films but I'm definitely not a "fan-boy." My opinion of this film is editing wise it's one of his best though. The aerial footage in particular was masterfully done. I don't believe I've seen another WW2 based film with such accurate seeming footage of dogfighting. It really shows just how difficult it was for a pilot to line up his opponent while weaving and making sure someone else wasn't on your tail. I have to agree with an earlier comment that Hardy's landing on the beach was dramatic but probably not very accurate (or safe for the pilot). Another slight detail was when his wingman splashed down the prop wasn't even bent. At that speed and impact it would have been bent back pretty good. Also, the dead stick Spitfire fortunately shooting down that last Junkers 87 Stuka was pretty "miraculous." Minor faults.

One other thing that I had an issue with (maybe because of my lack of knowledge about the evacuation) was that it didn't seem like there was a very real issue of expediency. The Royal Navy ships that did show up before the civilians were at anchor which I thought was odd. I would have figured that with Germans pressing all around it would be a good idea to be keeping the engines running and getting the heck out of the area as soon as they loaded up the max number of soldiers disembarking. I guess I need to read up more on the story.

While he didn't have many speaking lines, Kenneth Branagh's sheer presence was masterful. I love this guy. One of the best contemporary actors of all time in my opinion. Even though it was late (around midnight) when I got home, I had to re-watch "Conspiracy" about the Final Solution. His portrayal of Heydrich is just amazing. I recommend this to anyone that loves dialog driven films although the subject matter is very harsh.

I recommend this film to anyone interested in World War 2 films and films about survival. For me, it's definitely Nolan's best film to date although I still greatly enjoy "The Dark Knight."