Beautiful depiction of Threat, Time and Hope.

Rating: 9/10 (31 July 2017)

An exceptional Nolan's venture into the war drama genre that had me captivated from the start. It's pure Cinematic thrill cleansed the ongoing plethora of superhero films being churned out by the likes of DC/Marvel to offer a serenity that was missing.
It's not a history lesson. Purist will look at the Spitfire's fuel range and complain or the presence of a French Destroyer rather than an English one, or of how the yellow nose of the German planes did not come in till later in the actual war. But trust me, it gets drowned out in the outstanding visuals Nolan offers without sacrificing the pace of the film or the narrative.
It's captivating to see how, without showing any actual enemy soldiers, Nolan could make us feel the threat by just using brilliantly shot scenes and a heart pounding sounds by Zimmer. Man! The pure adrenaline rush at each moment the soldiers faced was equally perceive by us, taking us along in every bullet sizzling by and the suspense of not knowing when another German bomber will fly by.
You can actually hear the roar of the Spitfire's Rolls Royce long before it approaches, or the imminent threat of the German war-birds swooping down for a fish in a barrel run. Even if you closed your eyes, you'd actually feel the fear grip you simply by the sounds on these scenes.
Nolan perfectly uses the concept of illusion to great effect. While at first i thought the enemy was the German army invading and cutting off all exits and closing in for the kill, upon further pondering, the real enemy i think was "Time" itself. And i think he used the Beach, the Sea and the Air scene transition just to reaffirm that.
While the Beach scene probably lasted about 1week, the Sea was about a Day and the Air fight about an hour. At first, the transition was confusing, but towards the end of the movie, you realized it was all leading up to the climatic closing and it had the impact, at least to me, of what the film was about. How different people perceive time.
Without showing us the enemy except for a few dogfight scenes and never from the perspective of the enemy planes, you are immediately made to think about the "enemy", and the film goes on to gnaw at your thoughts to affirm who's the enemy? Time? or the invading Germans?
We've had brilliant films based on war from "The Thin Red Line" to "Saving Private Ryan" that I've watched and loved. Dunkirk, while not focused on a group of soldier to tell the story, relies on the overview of the war and tells a broader story while feeling every sting of the bullet and then feeling hopeful when Farrier, played by Tom Hardy, shoots down the German fighter on a beeline for the French & English soldiers awaiting transportation to go home, even when he was out of fuel.
The film left me with a broader sense of how an event plays out and how different people react and perceive the actual threat of Humanity, Time.
To me, This one is for the Oscars. Thank you Nolan & Zimmer and to all cast & crew of Dunkirk for giving us one of the best movies of 2017.