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Dunkirk (2017)

Nolan is a magician who knows how to sell average for a premium and has a support of rabid loyalists who amplify the PR artillery. Those who don't belong to the loyalist fraternity, succumb to the peer pressure of agreeing to praise even forgettable, unoriginal work. I can definitely say neither this is his best work nor the film the best film of summer. It never picks up! Yes, the background score is great and definitely will win an Oscar for best score, design or editing but the film is not much about to take home.

Nolan is genius "product maker" and now a "better marketer", a rare case where the consumer is held responsible (considered dumb, juvenile, ignorant, gawky etc) if he doesn't find the product good and not Nolan. Moreover, the mistakes and flaws are celebrated as deliberate strokes of mastery. I saw countless articles floating on internet dubbing it as "the best war film ever", "best work of Nolan" etc.. There are better works on a backdrop of war than Dunkirk but never received praise as much this play fetch movie did. Hollow and shallow would be correct adjectives and not masterpiece and genius when describing average works.
You might wonder I haven't talked about the plot or characters, or the play with timelines and vantage point: the mole, the ship, and the air since there is not much to talk about. Especially the characters,

PS: no doubt the film is technically strong, be it the score, visual effects(quite a good amount) or camera work, the whole film is immersive.

Nolan is a Genius. The moment he makes a movie of a genre... So many similar ones follow... Like superhero movies changed after him, rival stories came after prestige, time stories came after inception (which he treated as a heist movie than anything else). Similar for Interstellar which he treated as a father daughter story than a space exploration. Dunkirk is a VERY different war movie from any other. There's no flash back to good times. No strategizing by people at top, no blood, nothing. The emotion is brought in just by showing you what is really going on and can be seen with eyes without dramatizing. He treated it more as a suspense and survival movie than a war movie, justifying all the accolades and praise.
hen I had first heard about the storyline of Dunkirk, to be honest, I was a bit disappointed. No magic, no superhero, no sci-fi, no mind numbing brain puzzles, but a story about the World War II. A Nolan movie - a plain old war movie! However, as one would expect with the director, it turned out to be different. It's a gripping story that keeps you captivated with the Hans Zimmer music in the background.
It's not so much about the warriors as about the survivors. Not so much about the destroyers as about the saviours. The palpable tension in the pin drop silence. The stillness of mind amid the explosions. There's no denying the fact that if anyone could revel in portraying such paradoxes, it's Christopher Nolan. Victories are overrated. A victory would just be a one time affair whereas true success would lie in the sustained excellence, in beating sky high expectations again and again, in delivering a masterpiece after masterpiece.
Dunkirk isn't just a war movie, it's a roller-coaster of emotions, a salute to the human spirit of survival.
Highly recommended to all.

Dunkirk Movie Review:
From his very first film (Memento) Chris Nolan has been obsessed with using TIME as his narrative tool. From Batman Begins, The prestige to Interstellar, he has used this tool effectively many times.
So his effort in contributing to the WAR film Genre also uses this narrative tool.
THIS is NOT A Spoiler….
The movie runs in three separate stories.
1. The beach – Plays out over a week.
2. The Boat – Plays out over the course of a day
3. The Place – Takes place in the span of an hour.
If the viewer misses this important cue about the film, the rest of the film can feel like a jumbled mess. Which it is definitely not.
So now we have events taking place in on story which overlaps another story and so on…
This and using strings and a clock beat to the background music, makes this film unique in this genre. The pacing is super tight and very very tense. The film tries very hard not to slow down at all, so even the slower scenes have a rhythmic clock tick sort of music to it.
The plot is quite simple. The British and French armed forces are stuck at Dunkirk and they are waiting for rescue / evacuation on a large scale.
This story could have become a melodrama fest with lots of sobbing and teary eyes. But instead Nolan keeps it matter of fact, no jingoism, no needless British patriotism (he IS British, least people forget). This is film is all about showing the horrors of war and the toll it takes on a person without going down the drama route. The tense is felt in the music, the atmosphere, the acting and the pacing. Not in the dialogs of emotions.
But that is not to say the film is devoid of emotion, it just SHOWS you a scene and lets you feel the emotion rather than dictating what you are supposed to feel.
These above things, make this one of the best war genre films ever made.
Not to mention, all of the film barring maybe 1 or 2 scenes is all practically shot minus CGI. That hugely adds to the film’s authenticity.
The aim of this film is to tell this story of the biggest civilian helped evacuation of an army in all of history. It doesn’t show the war fare, the gore, just the plain and simple facts.

In the acting department, everyone is pretty good as is expected in a Nolan film, but other than Tom hardy, no one really stands out too much, mostly that is intentional, this is about a group effort, but films need a few central characters to narrate a story, or it becomes a documentary.
Kenneth Branagh is good as the admiral (or some high rank) of the Navy and his is the role which shows the gravitas of the British forces and their dignity under fire.
Rating: Just as a WAR FILM, I would rate this a 9.5/10. But compared to this director’s masterpieces over the years, as a NOLAN film, this would come somewhere in at 8/10. Pretty good, but not his film till date. But a GREAT change from Sci-Fi and super heroes to a real incident.
Final Rating : 8.5/10.