Dunkirk

[killdozzer]

viewer fill in the blanks

I didn't see it that way. I can't remember one single blank I needed to fill.

But I guess that's the way it should be. Each with his own experience. I'm glad you liked it. I'm not all that in mainstream and blockbusters, but I like to find examples of blockbusters evolving in any other field other than noise and eye-candy colours and effects. I believe this one did.

So, in your own experience, why do you think the chronology in the movie was out of order? This stroked me as odd. I kept asking myself why did he think he needed non-linear chronological order for the battle of Dunkirk? What could possibly be the reason?

 

[panteragstk]

I didn't see it that way. I can't remember one single blank I needed to fill.

But I guess that's the way it should be. Each with his own experience. I'm glad you liked it. I'm not all that in mainstream and blockbusters, but I like to find examples of blockbusters evolving in any other field other than noise and eye-candy colours and effects. I believe this one did.

So, in your own experience, why do you think the chronology in the movie was out of order? This stroked me as odd. I kept asking myself why did he think he needed non-linear chronological order for the battle of Dunkirk? What could possibly be the reason?

Honestly all of his movies are like that. When I went to see it they had a before the movie feature talking specifically about Nolan's storytelling style. Very interesting.

I like it due to the fact that you're seeing the same event from multiple perspectives. It didn't detract from the story, but pulled all the characters experiences together more that it would have if we would have just gotten a shot from each perspective in quick succession. Instead we get the same event, but in sequence with the particular characters story, not really in order of the overall story.

Interesting way of doing things IMHO.

 

[killdozzer]

Honestly all of his movies are like that. When I went to see it they had a before the movie feature talking specifically about Nolan's storytelling style. Very interesting.

I like it due to the fact that you're seeing the same event from multiple perspectives. It didn't detract from the story, but pulled all the characters experiences together more that it would have if we would have just gotten a shot from each perspective in quick succession. Instead we get the same event, but in sequence with the particular characters story, not really in order of the overall story.

Interesting way of doing things IMHO.

I agree. That's what my first post was based upon.

Because, what happens then; when you get all those perspectives, when you see one soldier, for example, getting hurt and then another one rushing to prevent that not knowing it already happened, or getting a chance to see that one decision (to take down the Jerry bomber i.e.) eventually led to people being burned alive, you can ask yourself would you still have done it if you knew the outcome and you see that you wouldn't have any choice, it was almost on a level of necessity... Even knowing the outcome doesn't affect the decision. This way you're really getting lifted above singular perspective and you get to see cause and effect, or rather the lack thereof. That's how I got to my first comment. This is what I imagined to be so liberating. You can see that regardless of how romantically we envision the war and heroic deeds of certain individuals, inner workings of chaos render any decision meaningless.

History has its Churchills and Chamberlains, but what really eats the ordinary foot-soldier is could I have helped him? Is he dead because of me?

And I see this film as really consoling. Putting souls down to rest. Dispersing specters and apparitions. That's where I found something worthwhile to this story of Dunkirk.

 

[Mitchibo]

It seems that Nolan was telling many stories at once. As stated above, it's distracting to pan from one scene to the next in fast motion. He took the time to tell each story, then linked them all together. A sudo-common device; that is, messing with the time line. Here it worked well (once we discovered it) and accomplished the goal.

Someone mentioned lack of character development. I think that too was on purpose. This isn't a story about a few guys... it was about random soldiers and random people fighting for Great Britain. This event had untold implications for Britain. Had Germany captured all these guys the war would have gone in a different direction.

The flying scenes were fantastic. I love the fact the Nolan used real Spits. Even the water ditching scenes he must have used a towed mock up. Nothing beats real images.

 

[j_garcia]

Finally got around to seeing this in IMAX yesterday. I liked it, but the whole time shifting only to tie them in was a bit distracting.

He pulls it off because it comes together in the end, but it wasn't as obvious that this was where he was going. I agree that where the movie succeeds is in giving an overall picture from different perspectives and how all of it related. It is one event but that event was made up of vastly different experiences that can be seen in different ways. Good example being the survivors saying to the pilot "Where were you?". We get to see both sides of that question. Nolan managed to give you a wide picture but made it personal with a few intimate situations, so though we don't get close to the individual characters quite specifically like a person you could know, I felt like I was with them in these situations.