A survival thriller set in WWII

Rating: Null/10 (11 December 2017)

Although the time frame on the Dunkirk beach is a week (not sure if this is historically accurate), Nolan found a clever way to convey the sense of urgency and time pressure by mixing it with different time spans of 1 hour (Spitfires in air) and 1 day (ships on sea). Let's get one thing out of the way right up front: The camera-work (including IMAX scenes) is just marvelous.
Whereas war movie classics such as Saving Private Ryan shined by the character arcs and the writing, Dunkirk is a totally different beast. You could say this is a war movie where the complete 1st act is missing as it starts right at the battle. A more conventional movie for example would have shown the protagonists being introduced in boot camp (Full Metal Jacket) or when they enrolled to go to war (Gallipoli). By this unconventional choice Nolan dodges a lot of war movie clichés (which is refreshing to any viewer who has seen it all a hundred times before), but also trades off a lot of potential depth the movie could have had.
It felt a bit anonymous, but maybe that just emphasizes how unimportant individual lives in these wars are. On the other hand, if it had let's say flashback backstory scenes cut in, this would only have slowed down the incredible pace and tension. As it is, the movie has maximum effectiveness in what it tried to do: Become a survival movie set in WWII. Sure, I don't know anything about the soldier we're following on his way to the beach (I'm not even sure his name gets mentioned), but boy, was I sitting on the edge of my seat as he tries to survive throughout the movie.
And this is where Hans Zimmer comes in. The score ramps up this tension. I like to compare this movie to a Wagner opera: You're really on edge the whole time. This is not a lazy couch movie. Of the whole run-time there was maybe half an hour in total where my heart was not racing. The sound design was something that I criticized in Interstellar, because it overcasts the dialogue. But given that most of characters speak less words in Dunkirk than I wrote in this review so far, this is not a concern here. (Acting is fine, however, by the way.)
Much like Nolan's earlier work I can see how it is a polarizing movie to audiences, but without a doubt it is something special. I prefer this any day to the average Marvel popcorn entertainment movie. Ironically, Marvel characters might be more fleshed out, but in a Marvel movie you never fear for anyone's life. It is like a James Bond movie, to give another example: you know exactly that despite all the insane action his life is not at risk. But in this movie, despite knowing that 300,000 soldiers survived, you feel like everything's on stake.
High praise to the technical capabilities of everyone involved in achieving this.