A Strange Mixture of Emotion and Noise

Rating: 6/10 (22 July 2017)

As the daughter of a man who fought in WW2, together with all other male relatives in our family, I was anxious to see this film which should have been both an emotional and educational experience. Sadly for us it was a disappointment and left us wondering exactly why the film is called "Dunkirk".
There are good performances and some emotional scenes, particularly at the beginning of the film. But the time line was so confusing and the beach was so empty considering that there were well over 300,000 men awaiting evacuation. And where were the 800+ small boats which sailed back and forward over a period of 8 days and, together with the larger British destroyers and merchant ships, saved almost 340,000 soldiers. We saw endless air battles which were beautifully filmed but weren't exciting or effective.
Finally the music - Hans Zimmer is a wonderful composer of film music and his creation for this film was effective. But why so loud and so much? It was almost impossible to hear some of the text and I'm astonished that a director of the caliber of Nolan thought that this would add to the tension. Sometimes silence says far more than the constant background of very loud music.
I presume that many of these things won't bother a younger audience but I believe that the story of Dunkirk deserved to be more accurate. The most annoying thing was the fact that in the brief introduction to the film, where there is an explanation as to the situation of the trapped soldiers, the enemy surrounding the soldiers is not named - they are just 'the enemy'. What happened to naming them as the German Army or the Nazi Army?