Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk.

[touchingcloth]

Going to watch this again tonight if anyone has any particular bits they want me to pay attention to...

[MoonDust]

Going to watch this again tonight if anyone has any particular bits they want me to pay attention to...

How about Ryan's Pri--

Oops, wrong film.

[mobias]

Going to watch this again tonight if anyone has any particular bits they want me to pay attention to...

I always find it easy to trip on those long steps that lead up the isle to your seat so best pay attention to them. Especially in the dark during a toilet visit. Tripping is monumentally embarrassing in front of a full cinema audience. Believe me I know!

[Glebe]

Saw it tonight in IMAX, thought it was pretty impressive... quite relentless in stretches, Zimmer's score really ratchets up the tension, but there's also some odd, beautiful, quiet moments. I admit I got a bit confused by the time jumps, although I did get the gist of things. Hoping to see it again in 70MM!

Oh yeah, and Sgt. Bob Cryer as 'Man at Train Window'!

[Head Gardener]

a neg review is in https://shadowandact.com/dunkirk-christopher-nolan-failed-whitewashing-world-war-ii

[touchingcloth]

SPOILERS




On a second viewing, regarding the question from whoever about whether Tommy and "Gibson" were trying to genuinely help the stretchered soldier or jump the queue, it's a little ambiguous, but I think the answer is it's a bit of both, but mainly trying to jump the queue.

And why doesn't the Hardy character ditch or bail? Too shallow to ditch, maybe, but he seems plenty high enough to ditch and parachute. All I can think is that he might have been so determined to not let his plane fall into enemy hands, even if it involved them recovering it from the sea or as a piece of twisted wreckage on the beach that he went for a controlled landing and deliberate torching, but that seems far fetched. Still confusing on a second viewing.

[buzby]

SPOILERS

And why doesn't the Hardy character ditch or bail? Too shallow to ditch, maybe, but he seems plenty high enough to ditch and parachute. All I can think is that he might have been so determined to not let his plane fall into enemy hands, even if it involved them recovering it from the sea or as a piece of twisted wreckage on the beach that he went for a controlled landing and deliberate torching, but that seems far fetched. Still confusing on a second viewing.

He (Farrier) was nowhere near high enough to successfully bail out. Unlike modern jets that have zero/zero-rated ejection seats, the lowest altitude you could consider bailing out of a WW2 fighter and expect the canopy to deploy fully was 1500-2000 feet. Farrier was at about 300-400 feet. His engine was windmilling, so if he tried to gain altitude the plane would stall before he got there (and he didn't have the speed to make another turn back toward the Allied enclave of the beach). Also, the safest way to bail out was to roll the aircraft inverted so you effectively fell out of the cockpit, and he couldn't safely do that at low altitude (unless you were going the right speed, bailing out in level flight had the risk of being hit by the tailplane as you slid off the wing).

As far as ditching into the sea, his wingman Collins showed the dangers of that (the fuselage distorted with the impact and jammed his canopy - the procedure was to open it before commencing descent, he opened it when considering bailing out but then closed it again). Apart from that, it's actually quite tricky to successfully ditch a Spitfire on water. Unless the sea is very calm and you get the wings level and the angle of attack perfect, there is a great risk of the propeller or radiator and supercharger air intakes under the wings digging in to the water, which will flip the plane over on it's nose.

[touchingcloth]

There does seem to be a bit of having their cake and eating it with those final scenes with the last remaining Spitfire, though. It's not entirely clear what happens due to what they actually show of the plane on screen, but judging by people's eye lines and the direction of the beach, it seems that after he runs out of fuel he manages to manoeuvre enough to take down a German fighter, and turn a full 180 before his final run at the beach. The 180 while gliding I can buy, but would he really have been nimble enough to effectively attack a powered enemy before needing to land on the beach out of necessity? I guess in part it was driven by the cinematically pleasing ability to show his stricken plane gliding over the heads of cheering troops applauding his final victory.

[buzby]

There does seem to be a bit of having their cake and eating it with those final scenes with the last remaining Spitfire, though. It's not entirely clear what happens due to what they actually show of the plane on screen, but judging by people's eye lines and the direction of the beach, it seems that after he runs out of fuel he manages to manoeuvre enough to take down a German fighter, and turn a full 180 before his final run at the beach. The 180 while gliding I can buy, but would he really have been nimble enough to effectively attack a powered enemy before needing to land on the beach out of necessity? I guess in part it was driven by the cinematically pleasing ability to show his stricken plane gliding over the heads of cheering troops applauding his final victory.

He switches to reserve fuel to attack the Me109 fighter escorting the He111 bomber. He takes out the fighter and runs out of fuel, and is setting uo to glide back out into the Channel to ditch (where he would be more likely to be picked up by friendly forces). He sees the He111 going in for it's bombing run on one of the boats in his mirrors, and decides to turn back to see if he can take it down despite being out of fuel.

The He111 is on a bomb run, so by going after it Farrier has a good chance of shooting it down if the German pilot decides to press home the attack (a bomb run relies on the pilot flying straight and level for the bomb aimer to time the release properly, which leaves the bomber extremely vulnerable), or if the pilot decides to take evasive action he will at least have put the bomber off the target.

The attack was successful, but by then Farrier's Spitfire has so little energy left his only option is to attempt to land on the flat sand straight ahead, which unfortunately is in German territory.

[touchingcloth]

I think there's another fighter (yellow nose) he takes out after switching to reserve and fully running out of fuel, but could be a false memory.

[buzby]

I think there's another fighter (yellow nose) he takes out after switching to reserve and fully running out of fuel, but could be a false memory.

Sorry, yes it's a Ju87 Stuka dive bomber he shoots down with no fuel. It's coming in for a bomb run over The Mole. The He111 is shot down over the sinking minesweeper and sets fire to the fuel oil

[touchingcloth]

One thing this film moved me to look up was whether the screams you always see bombers diving and bombs falling with are true to life, or an invention of Hollywood. I was reasonably surprised to find that not only are they real, but that the Germans actually designed their planes and bombs with sirens and whistles to make their targets even more terrified, and that they stuck with those devices even though they hampered the speed and fuel efficiency of their planes to an extent. Oh, and I also found out that those dive bombers were fitted with special brakes that would automatically pull them up and out of their dives, because the g forces involved were extreme enough to make pilots often blackout. War's a grim old business.

[buzby]

Yes, the early Ju87s had wind-driven sirens added to it called the Jericho Trumpet as a psychological weapon. They were deleted as they took about 25mph off the top speed and the enemy had got used to it. Dive brakes were pretty much essential for any dive bomber (such as the Douglas Dauntless/Banshee, the NA A-36 Apache dive bomber variant of the Mustang) to prevent overspeed in the dive and overstress of the airframe when pulling out. The Ju87 and it's twin-engined successor the Ju88 were the only wartime designs with a fully automated dive attack system though.

The RAF weren't keen on dive bombing, but the FAA (and most other naval air arms) used it as it was the easiest way to bomb small targets like ships. The aerodynamics involved for a good dive bomber did tend to produce slow aircraft though, and  so they were vulnerable to ground fire and other fighters. The Ju87 was removed from the Luftwaffe's front line during the Battle Of Britain due to heavy losses. The successor Ju88 was hardly ever used as a dive bomber, and was used as a conventional bomber instead.

Going back to the film, there are no flyiable Ju87s left, so large scale RC models were used. The last flying He111 (actually a Spanish-built CASA 2.111) crashed in 2003, so large scale RC models were sued for those too. The Me109 (again actually a Spanish HA 1112 Buchon) was real though, and along with the CASA 2.111 was originally used in the filming of The Battle Of Britain (they were bought from the Spanish Air Force and restored to flight - they had been converted to use RR Merlin engines as there were no spares available for their original Daimler Benz 601s after the war ended).

[Large Noise]

a neg review is in https://shadowandact.com/dunkirk-christopher-nolan-failed-whitewashing-world-war-ii

There's an interesting article to be written about Nolan choosing to depict Dunkirk and how it fits with his generally reactionary politics, but this is dreadful.

[Sin Agog]

Dunkirk: One Man's Quest to Find a Quiet Place to Take a Shit

[buzby]

There's an interesting article to be written about Nolan choosing to depict Dunkirk and how it fits with his generally reactionary politics, but this is dreadful.

The film isn't really about the French army, so reducing their Sengalese troops to 3.5 seconds isn't that much of an oversight (the French Army don't feature for more than a couple of minutes in total). The author of the article seems to be using it as a placeholder to shoehorn his own axe-grinding in.

There's much more of a case for pointing out the omission of the Indian Muslim regiments who were part of the BEF at Dunkirk (the Indian press has been quite vocal of this in their reviews of the film).

[Beagle 2]

I thought this was more or less a masterpiece. The few negative reviews I've seen seem to have missed the point about what they are reviewing, I don't think it's a valid criticism to say "a better film about this subject would have been the one in my head".

For me, this was the perfect way to tell this story. I wanted to feel like I'd been there, and explore the immediate motivations of the participants (staying alive, stopping the enemy, bringing people home alive). All the rest of the historical context or emotional impact is there for you to go and find out about, I don't think this film needed to do that.

Ken Branagh's dialogue was hilariously clunky at times, but I guess it needed to be to move the story along. And the stuff with George was a bit shit, even if he had just taken a bullet or drowned instead of the cheap way he bought it. But that aside, a really amazing piece of work and deserves to be regarded alongside some of the greatest war movies.

Jesus, the soundtrack is good.

[touchingcloth]

I thought this was more or less a masterpiece. The few negative reviews I've seen seem to have missed the point about what they are reviewing, I don't think it's a valid criticism to say "a better film about this subject would have been the one in my head".

They often aren't even comparing it to the film in their head, and the negative reviews mainly seem to be by people wanting to demonstrate just how much stuff about Dunkirk they had read on Wikipedia that morning already knew. It's like criticising Lawrence of Arabia for its lack of trench warfare. The film very fucking obviously chose to depict only certain aspects of the evacuation, so the starting point of any review should be with those obvious choices in mind and whether a successful film was made and story was told about those aspects.

One reasonably valid criticism in reviews has been how the French have been marginalised in the story, and about the historical bitterness that they have felt about being abandoned by the British and left to the Germans. On a rewatch I realised that Nolan actually addresses these points head on with the scene in the hull of the boat, where one of them (One Direction?) talks about how, in a survival situation, it's the "people with the guns who make the rules". On the face of it that's saying that Gibson is fucked and needs to take one for the team if he wants to retain a slim chance of survival, but I think there's a subtext to it as well - the Germans are the ones with the guns, and the British government and armed forces made the decision to prioritise the evacuation of our troops over that of the French. You can argue about whether that was a morally sound decision or not, but I think the point being made fairly directly in the film is that, rightly or wrongly, the looming danger changes how people think about morality.

And the stuff with George was a bit shit

Yeah, that whole subplot could have been dropped with no damage being done to the film. I think the thing is that we're really not given any reason to care about George and, judging by their reactions, neither have Rylance and son been.

[Beagle 2]

I thought Rylance was superb in this by the way, a really great, understated performance. And considering you only see Tom Hardy's eyes for 99% of the film, he was also excellent.

It's a shame that anything remotely patriotic and celebratory about British identity immediately makes me want to burst out laughing considering what a joke we've become, the stuff with the boats and Elgar just made me think that "This is Britain, and in this glittering sea, this perfect fusion of man and mineral, we know that conflict will always perish in the brotherhood of flags..." was going to fade in. But it will play well overseas and with the Brexit bunch I guess.

Aw man, the use of music in the dogfights to ramp up the tension was so terrific, I'm going to have to see this one again.

[touchingcloth]

It wasn't a very patriotic film I didn't think, arguably the opposite. I commented to my partner after seeing it that it was nice to see a war film without the usual jingoistic nonsense, and that was probably thanks to Nolan's perspective as an outsider. She responded with a "you do know he's British, right?"

Nope, I didn't.

[marquis_de_sad]

I thought this was more or less a masterpiece. The few negative reviews I've seen seem to have missed the point about what they are reviewing, I don't think it's a valid criticism to say "a better film about this subject would have been the one in my head".

For me, this was the perfect way to tell this story. I wanted to feel like I'd been there, and explore the immediate motivations of the participants (staying alive, stopping the enemy, bringing people home alive).

So you're saying the film matched the one that was already in your head? This criticism of criticism has come up a few times already on here, and it's just lazy.

I liked a lot of Dunkirk, but my problems with it were basically the problems I always have with Nolan's films: their grimness and lack of humour. Nolan paints everything in one colour, so there was little contrast between the horrors on the beach and the plucky little boat coming to their rescue. Think about the scene when George (the boy who later gets knocked on the head) decides to board the Moonstone. The navy is coming to requisition the boat, the time to load the lifejackets is ticking away; it's tense. As is the rest of the film. They leave with a grim determination, so there's no contrast to when they're faced with the terrible (and pathetic) reality of war, personified by Cillian Murphy. The random and pointless violence that kills George is not heroic, but the film never depicted any naive belief in heroism that could be shattered by it. It's bleak followed by very bleak.

In a way, I would have wanted a more patriotic film, as I think that motivation was missing — why did people sail rinkydink little pleasure boats into a warzone, sometimes going back again and again? Yes, to save lives, but they also did it for their country. The good parts were on the beach and in the air — and from a technical perspective the film is really amazing — but for me the Moonstone sections didn't work.

[Beagle 2]

So you're saying the film matched the one that was already in your head? This criticism of criticism has come up a few times already on here, and it's just lazy.

I think that reviewers should review the piece of work in front of them, not imagine the completely different sort of film that might have existed in its place. Sure, you can point to plot holes with the structure, or if it's a true life account, innacuracies or important events left out, but grumbling that an entirely different approach should have been used is, for me, missing the point.

As for the bleakness, I think it was more grim determination. Notions of heroism in these sorts of circumstances are painted in after the event. As they are unfolding, there are knowing looks and brief moments of joy amongst the fear and confusion.

[Glebe]

Went to see this again, in 70MM at the IFI, who should I walk passed on the way only Cillian Murphy himself! At least I'm almost certain it was him, bloody good lookalike if not! (Also very proud of the fact that I made it to the showing as I thought I wouldn't make it on time, had to run some of the way!)

[newbridge]

The first 1/2 or 3/4 of this is an amazing Kafkaesque anti-war movie, but I thought it was let down by the entirely predictable patriotic ending. There's nothing heroic about war, and I thought the scenes with Mark Rylance stoically setting out to do his duty, but then starting to freak out a bit as they got closer, were great. But then Nolan ruins it by giving in to trying to please the crowd with the scene of the entire army cheering the civilian boats approaching, etc.  The whole plotline with the kid who falls and hits his head in the boat felt particularly awkward to me.

It's still a good war movie though. Five bags.

[Pdine]

I give up on Nolan. He's a remarkably consistent 6/10er.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Pretty good. I don't feel like it gained anything much from being displayed in Imax though, especially as the scale of things seemed so bizarrely small. "There are nearly 400,000 men out there" says Branagh's character. There really doesn't appear to be. With the exception of the opening shots of propaganda raining down on the soldiers there aren't any particularly memorable images. I thought the sound did the majority of the work, especially the LOUD sound effects.

The time structure blunts the tension. It's hard to feel that the situation on the beach is hopeless, when we've already seen the rescue underway.

I was fine with the limited dialogue/characterisation, we didn't need to hear about how one of them had a sweetheart back home or whatever. Could they not have cast some actors who didn't look so similar though? At least mix up the hair colours a bit.

George was crap.

[Sin Agog]

Haha I love what you did there.  I've done it myself.  You had a generally good vibe about the movie, but once you set out to write a few words about it, your critical mind started to kick in and by the end of the post you liked it a fair bit less.  Forums kill the fun of movies.

[Glebe]

I thought the sound did the majority of the work, especially the LOUD sound effects.

Yeah, when I saw it in IMAX, the fucking seats were shaking. It felt like being on an actually plane during the air scenes.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

Just saw this, and it's a tepid, bloodless, soulless piece of shit. A feature-length platitude.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Haha I love what you did there.  I've done it myself.  You had a generally good vibe about the movie, but once you set out to write a few words about it, your critical mind started to kick in and by the end of the post you liked it a fair bit less.  Forums kill the fun of movies.

Actually, I think it might be more the case that paying so much to see a film makes me want to go easy on it, to avoid feeling like I've wasted my money.