A disappointing example of bad pacing

Rating: 9/10 (31 August 2017)

I would never had thought that Christopher Nolan, the man that created some of my most beloved films as a young cinema goer, would film such an unusually bad paced film and I'm starting to think that all the fuzz about it comes from the natural instinct of patriotism it evokes rather than actual technical prowess. Sure, the film is beautifully shot, but it's a shallow beauty. There are so many films that show the horror of war and coming to face one's own mortality to the point of giving anything to "go back home": "Saving Private Ryan" and "Full Metal Jacket" come to mind. Both films are wisely divided into tense and relaxing scenes, so that the tension is shared by the public when it comes on screen. In "Dunkirk", the whole movie is a tension scene, which completely cancels any reason to feel tension after the first few dangerous situations our heroes find themselves in. And let's talk about these "heroes". It rarely happened to me to find a movie so crowded with useless talent: none of the characters mean anything to the overall story, they are sketches of the valiant, the mean, the wise, etc. and we have no time whatsoever to indulge in more intimate moments with them. This was definitely a conscious decision by Nolan, so that he could convey the feeling of telling the story of all 400.000 men and not only Harry Styles's, but if I don't feel anything for the few we actually get to know, then all 400.000 are misrepresented. Not to mention the only relevant death (which I won't spoil): it clearly just happens for some emotive involvement between such arid scenes, but it looks so artificial, so useless and stupid that it really makes you chuckle. One of the worst aspects of the film is the music, by Hans Zimmer. I would say by previous Hans Zimmer tunes, considering how any part of this score could have come from "The Dark Knight" or "Inception" and no-one would've noticed. Apart from its repetitiveness from other films, it's repetitive in itself: just like the endless action and danger, Zimmer's music is always tense, always on a high-alert tone, resulting in pure nothingness. Last, the week/day/hour narrative device. Nolan clearly needed something original to tell such an ultimately dull story so he and his team conceived this utterly useless idea. Throughout the film there is not a single time I thought "Wow, now I see why he organized the story this way!" and that is because it serves no purpose other than to give the feeling of an edgy, nolanesque feature. For reference, consider "Memento", Nolan's debut; there the complex narrative pattern makes complete sense and is functional -nay, essential- to the end result of the story. In "Dunkirk" this temporal distortion is completely useless: the film could've followed a more regular pattern without suffering anything on the narrative side.
I consider this the worst film Nolan has ever made, and I feel very disappointed knowing his potential.