one of the most perplexing films I've ever seen

Rating: 6/10 (22 August 2017)

Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk was heralded everywhere as his greatest achievement yet, so you can imagine as a big fan of his i was excited to see it.
Well, that excitement turned to disappointment very fast
The first 30 minutes are very impressive, the camera-work, the direction, the pacing are fantastic, the film has the best ship sinking scene filmed since titanic, the air battles are also exceptionally well filmed, and are way more subtle and realistic than most films.
The problems however stem from two different, but very important things.
first of all, the film has no characters, none of them are developed at all, we don't have a protagonist to root for really, all the actors are just used as props for the big battle scenes without any personality or investment.
i feel like Nolan was so happy with how well he story-boarded his big scenes that he only realized he forgot to write actual characters in the movie when the cameras were already rolling, which is really confusing to me, because Nolan used to be one of those directors who prioritized characters over the plot in most of his movies, sometimes even to their detriment (like the dark knight rises).
but this was just a big spectacle with zero personal investment, granted the sequences themselves were exceptionally well executed and filmed so kudos to Nolan for that, he really took it to the next level, but if we're not invested then no matter how well it's done we wont care, so the movie unfortunately became boring very quickly, which wasn't helped by the other big problem.
The movie becomes very repetitive. We see an amazing ship sinking sequence, with mouths wide open, but then the next big sequence is another ship sinking, and then another, and then another, the same with the plane fight sequences, they just did the same thing over and over, and since we weren't invested to begin with, it became even more boring.
So the movie was ultimately an exercise in futility, Christopher Nolan wasted one of his best directorial achievements on a movie with his worst writing one. Resulting in an impersonal, albeit impressive film, that lacks heart and character.