I'm stunned people hated this film - but then -

Rating: 10/10 (16 June 2018)

I watch just about every war movie and tele series I can, and Dunkirk is my favourite to date. It's totally brilliant and clever, but most of all, totally different to others in this genre, which I reckon is at the heart of why people hate it so passionately.
In a way, calling it a war film is a misnomer. This is not the stereotypical war flick, in any way. It's not about being in the blood and muck with everyone dying around you while you hang by a thread - if you want that, something like Black Hawk Down can't be beaten. It's not about individual failure or triumph - say Jarhead or the Hurt Locker - nor even about how 'the unit' works - that's what Band of Brothers or Generation Kill has well and truly covered.
It's really an evacuation movie - a movie about being trapped, and about time closing in on those poor bastards on that beach, the psychological experience of that.
Aside from it being a beautiful movie to look at, and exploring the psychological experience in a way I've not seen in a war movie before, the way time is handled in this film is to me the truly magic part. It's almost as though time is actually the main character of this film. It circles around and back around, creating and maximising that feeling that these guys are pawns, trapped, waiting, always waiting for what happens next, (just as those at Dunkirk must have waited,) not knowing if anything would happen before the enemy got onto that beach. It reminds me of the book Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, where the timeline circles around three times, escalating at each pass, the pressure only increasing. I admit I usually hate non chronological movies, with the proviso, unless it serves a purpose - and this movie is one of the very, very few that fit that proviso for me.
I admit that if you watch war movies for action, you're going to hate this film - but for a film that captures a psychological truth of this part of the war, this film stands brilliantly alone. I love it.