Why this could actually be one of the best war films even after accepting its weaknesses

Rating: 10/10 (2 August 2017)

Dunkirk is one of the rare cases a film receives a huge critical acclaim and a mixed reaction from the audience. Some reviews arrive to consider the praise for the film being based solely on the name of its director, Christopher Nolan.
The main criticisms that Dunkirk receives is: poor character development, repetitivity of the action, little emotionality.
Dunkirk indeed doesn't really have character development. This is a fact. You get to know something briefly about Mark Rylance's backstory and his son's friend George, but nothing about anyone else. There is a reason for that: Dunkirk relies mostly on its fast pace, which simply does not give enough time to fully develop characters the way, for example, The Thin Red Line did with Stavros, or Saving Private Ryan did with John Miller. I dare to say that's not something the film needed at all. Stopping the story from taking its course so that Harry Styles and Fionn Withehead talk about their backstory and are more identified as characters would have taken away from the whole suspense feel the film expects the audience to receive. We got to love John Miller because of the night-time church moment, or the past reveal scene, or the scene in which he talks to Ryan prior to the final battle. These scenes are also those which make Saving Private Ryan a 2h40m film, with about 1h40m of action.
Repetitivity of action is a criticism I understood while watching the film. As many of the readers might know, this film tells three story lines contemporarily: one that lasts days, on ground, one that lasts less than a day, on the ship called "Moonstone" and another that lasts less than an hour, on the spitfires. These storyline become increasingly interconnected through the film, until the final climax. What sometimes happens is that you see the same action from a different perspective ten minutes after you have seen it from another. So, the film's first sequence that involves Spitfires has three of them flying over the sea, and there is a sailor ship in the corner of the shot. 30 minutes later you will realize that the ship was the Moonstone when you see that same thing from the perspective of the people on the ship. There are several of these repetitions. That's why some viewers felt it repetitive: most of the time (expecially the ship scenes and the plane scenes) they saw simply the exact same scenes. Anyone familiar with Nolan must know how he either did complex story lines on a linear plot, but is more known for the non-linearity of Memento, The Prestige and so on. Dunkirk is following this habit in a truly outstanding and clever way.
Dunkirk had no "Earn this." scene, or any moving John Williams score. The ending had some emotionality to it, but no other scene in the film. Dunkirk doesn't want you to cry. It wants you to feel the suspense the soldiers felt. Up until the last minute or so, not a moment of relief is left to the audience, and this is conveyed through the fast pace of the film and its very intense Zimmer score. Taken alone, the score is very similar to others he composed, but it does what is needed for the film's intensity.
As for accuracy, I looked up the main things about the Dunkirk evacuation before watching the film. A lot of elements are slightly mentioned or implied. E.g. the french defending the perimeter, or the existence of a second dock for the french, overall the sense of chaos is fully present, and the film delivers it well. There are some minor inaccuracies or simplifications, true, such as the German planes' scheme colour being one that they didn't use until some time later, which apparently was an intentional choice, but all the main details of the Dunkirk evacuation where there, in my view.
When the movie finished, I was relieved through the ending, but it delivered the intensity and climax that no other war movie gave. And Dunkirk did this without showing a single nazi soldier or without true warfare scenes: this is why Dunkirk should be considered one of the best war films made so far.