Plot spoiler alert if there had been a plot. I don't understand the praise?

Rating: 4/10 (23 July 2017)

I am a bit of a WWII buff so knew the story of Dunkirk going in. I can only imagine how lost a person not familiar with this chapter from history would be while watching this movie. Outside of a few lines of text at the beginning that provide an extremely brief bit of background info, there is zero explanation of what is happening so don't expect any sort of history lesson. It's kind of like a documentary that used all of its budget to create excellent reenactment footage but ignored the narration.
Instead of a voice like David McCullough or Morgan Freeman to tell the tale, there is an annoying, overly loud, virtually continuous music score that instructs the viewer how to feel every single second. For a few scenes the director must have decided that loud manipulative music wasn't quite enough and elected to use dead silence instead. Frankly, my ears were so relieved during these precious quiet moments that any scene at all, another pan of the sky, another upturned face, a boot in seafoam would have triggered a tremendous emotional response.
And yes, scenes are repeated. Remember when you first saw the trailer? When the cold, grey, ominous sky; cold, grey, ominous beach, and c.g.o. water made you feel almost as if something ominous was going to happen? Well, if you appreciated all of that great dreary English Channel atmosphere in the trailer you are in luck because the one thing Dunkirk succeeds in is establishing an ominous, dreary atmosphere. It's kind of a miracle how minutes and minutes of panning clouds, water, and beach don't begin to get old until about 45 minutes in. That's about the point when you sneak a look at your watch and realize that nothing more is going to happen.
At my first watch look I was still hopeful and subtracted 35 minutes for previews which still gave the movie time to, you know, start moving. By my third time check I found myself wishing that I had paid A LOT more attention to one of the young dark headed guy's garbled words during the first ten minutes because I was starting to worry that I had missed something drastically important to the plot. But it turned out I hadn't missed anything more important than determining what was going on in any of the three, non-linear, confusing story arcs.
Dunkirk follows the separate stories of a soldier, a sailor, and a pilot who are just trying to get home during war. Except for the pilot, who glides his plane down on the wrong shore. And except for the sailor who takes his children into known danger because he already lost one son to the war and loses another son on the journey but doesn't seem to mind. But these lads might not even be his children. I either forgot or it somehow slipped by me in the 50 or so spoken words that I actually understood. Regardless, I liked the sailor character the best by far, if only for the fact that he had the lead speaking role.
At the end, the director predictably juxtaposes the bleakness of the beach at Dunkirk to the colorful landscape of the English countryside to suggest that the war is behind the dark headed soldier guys. And as one of them reads aloud from a newspaper about how silly their mission was, their countrymen somehow know that the newspaper is wrong and welcome them home with drink. Oh, he also reads part of Churchill's famous, "We will beat them on the beach," speech in what might be the most awkward style ever recorded. I assume this was done to hammer home the fact that young men who go to fight in our wars are just simple, uneducated fellows. But really, I have no idea. This movie might be deceitfully deep or just a collection of nicely filmed war images.
I left the theater not knowing a single character's name, not caring the slightest about any of the characters, and not able to even coherently describe what happened. It was like retelling a fading dream that seemed to have narrative and importance but only images and atmosphere remain.
What is even more astounding, but to my great relief, I couldn't even remember enough of the nonstop, blaring score to hum a single bar.
SUMMARY: If you've never seen a war movie you might be very impressed by Dunkirk's power. Or, judging from the positive critical reviews, you might have seen all of the major war movies and still be impressed. I honestly have no idea. POSITIVES: *Great attention to atmosphere and mood *Great cinematography *Probably will get people interested in learning about Dunkirk and WWII *Reaffirms that war is bad *Does not rely on gratuitous violence *Might be the only realistic war movie of the past 30 years that could be appropriate for kids *Story is told from a creative, non- traditional p.o.v. NEGATIVES: *Boring *Repetitive *Is basically a silent movie outside of the ear shattering score and sound effects *Incomprehensible narrative *Zero character development *Zero historical context *The score ODD INCLUSION: *I get that the director wanted to show that war is hard on the regular people who are involved. And I get that fear is hard on the bowels. But TWO pooping scenes/references within the first five minutes?? COMPARISONS: *The movie "Carol" which was long on atmosphere and got critical acclaim but was a lazy snooze-fest