An experience, with an important history lesson

Rating: 8/10 (20 July 2017)

After seeing it, I understand completely the campaign to see this in IMAX.
For one thing, there's actually very little dialogue, so the meat of the film consists of the sights and the sounds. And they paint a pretty grim picture with some traumatizing sounds.
And that's exactly the point.
What Christopher Nolan has done is essentially recreate the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, remove most of the dialogue (as well as the gore, after all it is PG-13) crank up the soundtrack, and reverse the film so the men go into the water instead of coming out.
As a student of World War II history, I understand the situation of the men stranded on the beaches from an intellectual standpoint. What this film has done is what Saving Private Ryan did for D-Day: give the event real emotional stakes, which is what it needs.
The British have basked in the victory of the rescue of their army for decades, but here on the other side of the pond we know very little as a society, probably because no-one has made a movie about it until now.
This film has succeeded in making the disaster and the miracle come to life.
As with any film, there are things that aren't quite right. For instance, it's a good thing there's so little dialogue because almost all of it is bereft of emotion in its delivery (perhaps a commentary on the rattled nerves of the men?).
Perhaps the main oddity of this film is how it portrays events. There are three different story lines interwoven 1. The men on the beach, 2. The men on the boats (really one boat, captained by Mark Rylance's character) coming to save the men on the beach, and 3. Two British pilots, one of whom is played by Tom Hardy, protecting both the men on the beach and the men in the boat. Their stories are not shown in chronological order, and if you don't catch on to this in short order, you may be left confused for much of the film. Did it need this gimmick? You be the judge, but I'm going to say probably not.
All told, this film's take on an event that Americans know little about may be imperfect, but it is sorely needed to show the desperate situation these men faced, and we should think about the possible consequences if those 338,000 men hadn't made it off the beach.