Two hours in the war zone, Nolan's best work!!! Hans Zimmer you beauty!!!

Rating: 10/10 (1 August 2017)

What a fabulous film, what a great depiction of the battlefield. Nolan has doubtlessly pulled off his best work and one that he'll himself find it hard to surpass. Right from the scene where the first aerial attack takes place and the Allied soldier trying to gun down the plane gets wiped away from the earth, the film never looks back and provides one gripping moment after another. The dogfight between the air forces yet will forever go down as the most thrilling scenes in the history of any war film. Mind-blowing work!
As many World War Two films do, this doesn't resort to showing blood and gore, or deformed dead bodies to depict a war (which isn't necessarily wrong), but yet makes the point of the horror of a war in a most eloquent way. It seems as if Nolan had over the years been watching war films as a layman instead of a film-maker, and had realised that the public is demanding for something more than just deformed dead bodies. Yet on the other hand, it doesn't show any false bravado on part of the Allied forces. It just depicts the reality of the battlefield, and gives a hint of Forces beyond their control having made it happen.
Hans Zimmer's background music will forever be remembered as the ultimate decoration of any Nolan film. That music was killing and created nail-biting suspense even in moments of relief, coupled with it the sound effects that make you feel as if bullets are coming your way from every direction - another highlight of epic film-making. I'd a time of my life, two most thrilling hours ever spent at a cinema. #ThankYouNolan - thank you for the heart palpitations and the shortness of breath!
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Now, let me address some of the criticism directed at this film by a minority of people, two of which were my brother and my brother-in- law, who went to watch it yesterday with me (first time by the way that I've walked out of the cinema with a split opinion with anyone that I've gone in to watch a film). Yes, the film doesn't show a background or even a short history for the laymen watching of the Battle of Dunkirk. So anyone going into it with expectations of a proper story will be disappointed, as will be those who haven't done any bit of a research on the battle.
Secondly, yes it has no characters and doesn't even show a single German soldier, and as a last bit of the criticism, omits reactions or the talks of the people in command from either sides, or discussions from the offices as to what the plan is to get them evacuated and how much under stress they're regarding this, or how the Germans are plotting to attack them. But that's not criticism, that's a misinterpretation of the purpose of this film. Showing all of that to please some viewers would make it a film, and this isn't a film. This a literal presentation of what war is or what the happenings of the surroundings of a battlefield are. Ask yourself, if you were amongst the Allied soldiers stuck there, would you on that beach have an idea of what the people higher up are planning to save you, or what the Germans are plotting? No! The problem is, showing any of that would make it a film with breaks and stopages and will never give you the feel of a battlefield. A war zone, a battlefield is exactly like this and it offers no time to wipe a sweat from your forehead. It is relentless, it is unfair and it constant. Watching it, by the 40th or the 50th minute I myself was exhausted and was saying that such a film should have an interval of 15 minutes, but again, the battlefield has no intervals and being exhausted is a part of it. There are moments when you scratch your head as to whose plane is flying overhead, but here too one has to study to understand that it is after this particular battle that the Allied forces chose to draw a colour- based distinction on their planes for identification. So here again Nolan makes you go through exactly what the Allied soldiers on the ground had to.
I'm a fan of Nolan but not a huge fan. I criticise his films when I don't like it, but here he has succeeded tremendously in making you as an audience feel like a soldier effected by it. It's a project, not a film. As for characters and a story, a war does have a story, but a battlefield doesn't. A battlefield just has gunshots, grenades and bombs, and soldiers fighting for survival. At most, the only criticism that I can remotely accept is that the action or the plot didn't have a prelude, which would've been useful for a layman watching this film without having studied the Battle of Dunkirk, But again, Nolan has his own thought process here and it has its own justification.
All in all, 100 out of 10 for this masterpiece. I wouldn't mind it getting a well deserved Oscar. Nolan and co. have richly deserved it.