Great film...but exceptional...I'm not sure!

Rating: 8/10 (31 July 2017)

First of, I enjoyed (for lack of a better term) this movie. I wasn't exactly on the edge of my seat, but there was suspense and I wasn't bored one bit by what I was offered on screen.
Having seen quite a few war movies (Platoon, Apocalypse now, Saving Privat Ryan, Full Metal Jacket, All quiet on the Western front, etc.) and having read a lot of war novels (The Naked and the Dead, The Thin Red Line, From Here to Eternity, etc.) I have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as an anti-war movie or anti-war film. It is my contention that young men will continue to be easily lured into the military because it offers something they supposedly miss in their private life: action! I know, because when I was eighteen I signed up for an additional two months to my mandatory military service because I was keen on getting away from home and I had no idea what awaited me. Fortunately, I didn't stay long enough to be picked for IFOR or KFOR.
Dunkirk will not keep young men from joining the army for certain aspects that I find in a lot of war films. For example, the protagonists are almost always good looking (Fionn Whitehead as Tommy) and they have always a great character (Tommy aka Whitehead protects the French soldier who poses as an Englishman). War also allegedly offers young men the chance to prove themselves, to grow and to turn into men (Tom Glynn-Carney as Peter - Mr. Dawson's son). Apart from that, you also have acts of bravery and heroism that appeal to young men (Tom Hardy as the heroic pilot who risks his own life to save that of others). And there are these moments of patriotic triumph that you find not so often in Dunkirk but which do exist and seemed to me typically Hollywoodish (not sure this word exists): the moment when the private boats arrive or the moment when Commander Bolton aka Kenneth Branagh sees the boats arriving and says "HOME".
All in all, I don't see how an entertaining film like this is supposed to make young men consider war something dull and boring. An actual anti-war movie to me would be a man who refuses to pick up arms and kill other men and escapes to a place where there is no war and hides there until things blow over. I just don't see Christopher Nolan making a film about that and turning the protagonist into a hero.
Be that as it may, I'd like to point out the things I liked about the movie: The fact that most of the film is about survival and not heroism, the fact that almost no CGI was used, the fact that the pictures are beautiful and impressive in every sense of these two words, the fact that it mostly spares us typical (American) patriotism and the fact that the German soldier remains almost completely invisible instead of being portrayed as evil as it happens in so many other war movies.
But there are also things I had problems with: The score by Hans Zimmer. Don't get me wrong, I like the score, but I believe some scenes would have worked better if there had been silence. I perceived the music in this film as a tool intended to dictate my feelings, and I don't like it when music tries to tell me what to feel. Especially the boat arrival scene was a caesura to me, until that moment I had experienced the film as rather naturalistic in style and then in this scene it turned into Hollywood.
Bottom line: This film is good and thought provoking, but other war movies have done that before, so I don't think Dunkirk stands out among the other war movies I have seen. It's different in parts, but it is also a very typical war movie in other parts.