Vivid, sweeping drama with almost no character exposition

Rating: 7/10 (28 February 2018)

I appreciated Christopher Nolan's interpretation of the events in "Dunkirk," and how he focused on the sounds and sights to connect the audience to the terror and uncertainty experienced by those who were involved. Visually, it's very exciting, especially the dogfights in the skies and the strafing of boats on the water. He obviously made a conscious decision to reveal almost nothing of a personal nature about any of these characters, including their names in some cases. You simply don't know anything about them, which is risky in a movie. Why should the audience care about some character we don't know? As the movie plays out, you do come to fill in those gaps a bit due to the excellent actors involved, particularly Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy and Jack Lowden. I assume Nolan's purpose for doing this was to show that it was this very large group of individuals coming together to do something miraculous in a time of global peril, when truly, their whole world and way of life was in jeopardy. Still, I couldn't help thinking that he might have added a few minutes here and there to give us more information or background on these men. The younger ones seem completely anonymous and almost blank.
The soundtrack is very loud at times, and there's "ticking" that conveys the sense of danger and impending doom. It's almost as if you hear these men's hearts beating because they're just terrified. The action scenes are very well done. U.S. viewers (particularly younger ones) who are not familiar with the events of Dunkirk or the larger geopolitical situation of the start of WW2 would do well to read up on it a bit before seeing "Dunkirk," because Christopher Nolan is not wasting any film on explaining it all to you. I think people who like war movies in general or scenes with edge-of-your-seat action will enjoy this movie, but anyone who wants deeper character exposition will find it wanting.