I wanted more in a Nolan film

Rating: 7/10 (23 July 2017)

I saw Dunkirk at the Dolby Cinema in Eindhoven (NL) last Friday with a friend and in the end we both didn't really know what to think of it. It's by no means a bad movie, I mean visually...man...Hoytema has done terrific cinematic work. Hans Zimmers score was again a stunning combination of sound design and music. But for a Christopher Nolan film the movie left something to be desired. In the past, every film he did, it kept you thinking about it. The implications, the deeper meanings of what Nolan is trying to say to us as a story teller. This one doesn't do that. It's an unfolding of events, and although spectacular, it keeps the audience at a distance. To me the movie screamed 'look at me, look at me' but when you look at it, it doesn't communicate its message. Does it even have a message? Apart from Mr. Dawson I did not connect with any of the characters. When his son dies, I feel for him. I don't feel for any other person who dies. I would compare this with Schindler's List, which has lots of (unnamed) characters, the girl with the glasses, the little boy who tries to hide, the girl with the red jacket, to name the obvious ones. Maybe they have names, but my point is they aren't main characters and their names aren't important. But you experience some of the story by following their events. Dunkirk is a movie that's contrived only of those kind of characters and it constantly jumps between them. Even between time frames, which disoriented me.
And there's nothing wrong doing this in a movie, but in my opinion you have to compensate this with context. A reason or connection of why you do this. Why are you telling it this way? Also when a movie starts or ends with titles, and those titles are so crucial to your story that if left out, you can't explain (part of) the movie, for me that's a tell that in the cutting room they discovered the movie or a part of it didn't work on its own. The jumping between time lines could have been fixed by connecting those time lines at some point halfway through the movie or maybe another clever trick. He's Christopher Nolan after all, or are we discovering that it was actually Jonathan who was the clever mind behind Chistophers movies? We don't need opening titles that tell us about hacking minds to gain access to peoples dreams. Inception tells us this as the movie unfolds, although the exposition scene with Ellen Page was a bit too much. The introduction of the Joker in the Dark Knight or Bane in the Dark Knight Rises. We don't need to know who these characters are for the audience to become intrigued by them. I for one did not know the Bane character before seeing the Dark Knight Rises. But the introduction alone, just hearing his name makes you fear him. Memento takes us on a journey discovering what's happening and what has happened. Interstellar, how it connects time and events. Cause and effect are connected. Each movie brilliant on their own. But for me, Dunkirk doesn't fit in this list of movies.
Again, I'm not saying Dunkirk was a bad movie. It just isn't, and I still gave it a 7. If it were any other director, I wouldn't be writing this. But for me it wasn't enough of a movie to feel whole. For a Christopher Nolan film, I wanted more, I wanted to be inspired, I wanted to be thinking about the deeper meaning of the movie, I wanted to feel the need to re-watch this over and over and I didn't get that. I just got a movie.