Dunkirk - movie
 

Saw it last night. Can't decide whether to love it or hate it. But it certainly was a different kind of movie. And I'm usually a huge fan of Nolan.

Anyone else care to share their opinion?

I saw it on dvd and wished I had seen it at a theater, as big screen and surround sound would have helped.


3 themes land - sea -air and they kept jumping between them. I wish the film was just sequential as I kept getting confused with timeline and couple characters looked to be in all 3.

I rarely go to the theater but my wife and I did see go to see Dunkirk. I thought it was good but I wish I had seen it in one of the theaters that had the equipment to show it using the larger film that he used, 70MM I believe. I thought Nolan's viewpoint was effective. It was a bit hard to hear the dialogue at times, but that's common with his films.

Saw it in IMAX when it opened. I liked it a lot but the pacing seemed a bit off even for a Nolan film. The people I went with didn't care for it much but I'm huge into that stuff. There is a lot of stuff that would have made for a more interesting movie though other than Tom Hardy flying around. For instance the French First Army fought to annihilation to cover that retreat. If I were French I would not like it.

The real story is one of great import, or was when it occurred. Incredible mustering of a nations civilians for the war effort. I plan to see it.

Ditto

We saw it in an IMAX on opening day (not 3-D). The cinematic effects were quite powerful. Amazing colors and sounds. However, Nolan left the story in the locker room.

One of our sons came home for Christmas with a bunch of "screeners." Those are DVDs handed out to academy voters and, since our son gets to vote in a couple of categories, he is on the list for all of them. (Makes you feel pretty special when you get to see a movie that hasn't opened yet.)

BTW, our other son told us that the planes they used in Dunkirk were all restored at a huge cost, only to be destroyed. It is amazing how Hollywood spends money.


We watched The Darkest Hour, which is Dunkirk from the political point of view. If you can, see that one soon, PA. Puts a lot in perspective.

For example, when you watch Dunkirk, you realize that the 300,000+ soldiers on the beach were almost the entire English army!

By comparison, in May of 1940, the US army was around 100,000 men!

Darkest Hour paints a... well, a dark picture for what was going on at the time. Truthfully, I had to go look a lot of this stuff up. Amazing how ignorant I am of the early part of WW2.


Dave

If you’ve ever seen “Mrs Miniver” they reference Dunkirk in a part of the film where the father is called out in the middle of the night to bring his boat. He returns 3-4 days later exhausted.......but they don’t really explain why.......

Walter Pidgeon plays the father.....Greer Garson.....the wife. It’s a neat old film about the early part of the war. It was made in 1942

That was a favorite film of my mom's, she watched it many times on TCM. Greer Garson, who is one of the all-time great movie stars, won the Academy Award for her role in Mrs. Miniver. She was nominated for an Academy Award seven times and in five consecutive years.

Another favorite of my mom's, and mine, was Random Harvest, also with Greer Garson. Random Harvest is a story about a man who has an accident and gets amnesia just before he's about to move into a new home with the love of his life, Greer Garson.

That was the gripe my friends had with it. They didn't understand the setting and how dire the situation was. The Battle of France shows what happens when a force loses its cohesiveness and it's opponent catches a streak of rolling sixes.

they spent $100 million making this film

and it has already had over $500 million gross return

I recently saw "The Darkest Hour" and enjoyed it. After seeing this thread I went to redbox and rented Dunkirk. The movie started with the text on the screen saying that the allies had been pushed to the sea at Dunkirk by the enemy. The enemy!?! For the first 29 minutes (that's when my dvd crapped out) of the movie "the enemy" was not identified nor could you identify who was doing the bombing of the coastline. Did the movie ever make reference that Germany was the enemy?

Indeed.

The war for England was all but over because almost their entire army was on that beach, helpless.

One must remember (which I did not when I saw Dunkirk) that the U.S. was prepared to allow England and Europe to sink rather than to engage.

This was May, 1940. We did not enter the war effort until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, almost 18 months later. At that time, both houses of Congress voted unanimously for war.

Even Russia did not enter the conflict until a year after Dunkirk, when Germany attack their western border.

I do not yet understand how or why Hitler did not simply move forward to England while the army was on the beach at Dunkirk.

BTW, it was not "all is well" after getting the men off the beach. Over 40,000 men were captured from the beach at Dunkirk and another 40,000 in that same area. They were treated horribly in concentration camps, and transported all over Europe to work on farms and in factories.

The UK would never have lost the war. The RAF defeat of the Luftwaffe in the Battle Britain marked the end of any chance Germany had of winning against the Empire and it was miniscule even before that. An interesting fact that is largely glossed over is Hitler never wanted war with France or Britain and was furious when they declared war on him over Poland. Hitler's real aim was Lebensbraum and defeating the Bolsheviks but actions like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact eroded any chance of that happening as far as the UK and French were concerned.

The What-ifs of WW2 are fascinating to ponder. Instead of the Phony War if the Allies had actually attacked Germany the Nazis would have been pounded and likely defeated early. If anyone other than Petain commanded the French and threw the reserves into the Ardennes the Nazis would have been suing for peace in a matter of months. If Britain and France don't declare war after Poland, Hitler in likely '41 or '42 gets the Nazi-Soviet showdown he really wanted as France, the UK, and US likely cheer him on.