Saturday, July 29, 2017

Thoughts on Dunkirk

What do you need to know about Dunkirk? I think this statement from a 97-year-old veteran who was there says it all:

“I never thought I would see that again. It was just like I was there again.”

Which means it is intense. Early in the film there is an attack by a Stuka dive bomber and the volume increases to almost painful levels as the screaming plane makes its bombing run. I wanted to duck under my seat. Zimmer's score also keeps everything tense as I'm sure you can imagine if you're familiar with his work. It's not something you'd want to turn on and unwind with after a long day. I'm listening to it now (thanks Amazon Prime) and getting a little tense.

A few other thoughts:

-The movie is split into three stories each taking place over a different period of time: One week, one day, one hour. This is clearly indicated in the titles but many people, including myself, seemed to have missed that at first.

-"Mole" is another word for essentially a big break wall, so when you see that show up in the titles don't think the guy on the screen is a German spy. This also confused me until they used the word later in the movie.

-If water really freaks you out don't watch this movie. It's definitely as close as I ever want to be to being inside a sinking ship.

-The movie is surprising bloodless. There is plenty of violence and death but it's not gory like the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan.

-You're probably going to jump multiple times watching this movie.

-It's a different movie than some of Nolan's previous work, like Interstellar and Inception, but I still liked it a lot. I will need to see it again to really appreciate it because the first time you sort of just survive it.

-The movie ends with one of the characters reading Churchill's famous speech in a newspaper. Here's the speech:


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