A Triptych of Colors & Zimmer's Score Not Enough To Compensate for Nolan's Artsy Excess

Rating: 6/10 (25 July 2017)

This is one of those films where a lot of nothing happens. Not exactly nothing, but there is a focus on the mundane, if that can be said in regards to anything during wartime. This is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I can name several films, especially international ones, in which this is the exact reason I love it. It did not really work in this film, though.
The Good: * The best thing about this film is Hans Zimmer. Aside from the music, constant clock ticking creates the almost claustrophobic and every present fear in the film (Zimmer actually used a pocket watch belonging to Nolan). With very little dialogue, Zimmer's score is its own character. * Along with the score, the cinematography was gorgeous. Wide angle shots of the beach, dark colors, the mise en scène. The film was actually divided into three segmented colors; sky blue, dark blue, and orange, referring to the triptych plot of air, sea, and land, respectively. (Note: Continuing his advocacy for film over digital formats, Christopher Nolan chose to shoot the movie in a combination of 15/70mm IMAX film and Super Panavision 65mm film in order to achieve the maximum possible image quality. After The Master (2012) and The Hateful Eight (2015), Dunkirk (2017) was the third wide release motion picture of the current decade to be primarily shot and shown theatrically in 70mm. I was fortunate enough to see this version.)
These two things set the tone and mode for the entire film.
They made the film.
The Bad: * I hate to admit that I was greatly disappointed. Nothing happened. It was depressing and depressing and sometimes that is a good thing. This is war, after all. There are other ways films that do this, but Nolan screws this up by trying to interweave all the stories. * Nolan always has admirable concepts, in theory. Lamentably, he then makes the mistake of being excessive with the special effects + unnecessary fancy tricks. His splicing of three different timelines and stories not only made watching it a little confusing, but killed the connections I could have felt with any characters.
The film is told from three points of view: on the beach with the infantry, the evacuation by the navy (showing how civilians came to the rescue), and in the air. Speaking about the narrative structure in Premiere magazine, Christopher Nolan stated: "For the soldiers who embarked in the conflict, the events took place on different temporalities. On land, some stayed one week stuck on the beach. On the water, the events lasted a maximum day; and if you were flying to Dunkirk, the British spitfires would carry an hour of fuel. To mingle these different versions of history, one had to mix the temporal strata. Hence the complicated structure; even if the story is very simple. Do not repeat it to the studio: it will be my most experimental film."
Although I have always and still do love Nolan's work, I refuse to play the cognitive dissonance game to convince myself that I loved this film for its artistic examinations of the desolation of war.
6/10