Dunkirk--Review/Thoughts

[labingi]

I saw Dunkirk yesterday and highly recommend it. It's very good across the board, gripping, gritty, and realistic. I have only two small quibbles: it was hard to hear the dialogue over the music and bombings. (My hearing is getting progressively worse, but my partner agreed.) The non-linear storytelling sometimes worked for me and sometimes was just a bit confusing. It didn't seem like a story that really needed non-linear storytelling to get the point across. Otherwise, it's an utterly fantastic look at the terrors of war and the courage of people pulling together in crisis. (Oddly, it made me think, "Maybe we can survive climate change.")

The film I am most reminded of is Grave of the Fireflies, though Dunkirk is about soldiers (mainly), not civilians; takes place over a day or so rather than months; and is not animated. It is, however, a story about the horrors of war with virtually no reference to the politics of war. The enemy is nothing but an implacable force raining down fiery hell. The whole story is from one side's perspective, but that's okay because that perspective is not used to project anything onto the other side; it's really just all about surviving hell and making us ponder why we put ourselves and fellow people into situations like this.

Comments

[vilakins]

I haven't seen it yet, though I know the story well and admire the bravery of the small-boat owners who crossed the channel again and again.

It's on here, but your report, and someone else's, puts me off. Loud music is becoming so pervasive, often drowning out dialogue. We were watching a doco about the Roman Empire last night and we had to fiddle with the sound settings to be able to understand the narrator. Music usually isn't necessary, and to me adds a layer of artificiality to fiction.

[labingi]

I will add this, in case it helps: there isn't much dialogue, and it's not very important to understanding the story. Honestly, it could have all been in a foreign language, and I would have understood 85% of what was happening, no problem.

It was loud though. I didn't experience it as uncomfortably loud in the theater, but when I left, my ears were hurting. That may be the theater though. We saw it at an art theater, same one where I recently saw 2001... and that hurt my ears. It was like being at a rock concert.