Dunkirk? Don't bother.

[W44NNE]

Saw it at the weekend. I wanted to love it, but the constant continuity issues were driving me mad and distracting me from the film. The weather was constantly going from blue skies straight in to grey cloud throughout most scenes. I also felt that a little bit of humour wouldn't have gone amiss as we all walked out miserable as sin. The facts are no laughing matter but even the Ypres tribute the other day had a bit of comedy; this really needed something.

The worst thing for me though was the supposed hundreds of thousands of soldiers rescued on all of about 4 boats in the film. It just seemed poorly done overall.

[Tomaitch]

Spitfire / Air scenes were fantastic , I agree the sea changed as quickly as the camera moved . But a great story and well presented . Worth seeing .

[bongo]

Still struggling to find anything that challenges my initial view of this film, technically, and what it was trying to say, beyond war/drowning is hell. Maybe I've seen too many documentaries/archive footage and misinterpreted what my parents said of it.
The uncomfortable truth is Dunkirk was a huge defeat that virtually broke us and opened the door for invasion. The whole 'little ships' thing was bourne out of desperation and then used as an early use of 'spin'.
I think this film will quietly sink and will not be troubling TLD, The Boat, Come and See, In Which We Serve, 12 O'Clock High, Downfall (good spot) in the list of truly special WW2 films.
Sorry.

[snowman]

Still struggling to find anything that challenges my initial view of this film, technically, and what it was trying to say, beyond war/drowning is hell. Maybe I've seen too many documentaries/archive footage and misinterpreted what my parents said of it.
The uncomfortable truth is Dunkirk was a huge defeat that virtually broke us and opened the door for invasion. The whole 'little ships' thing was bourne out of desperation and then used as an early use of 'spin'.
I think this film will quietly sink and will not be troubling TLD, The Boat, Come and See, In Which We Serve, 12 O'Clock High, Downfall (good spot) in the list of truly special WW2 films.
Sorry.

Don't be sorry, no-one says you have to like it and I agree that it will be interesting to see how it stands the test of time.

I enjoyed it, but it's not on my top 5 films list and is, to a degree, of its time - I think you've neglected "A Bridge Too Far" in your list - Great film! Saving Private Ryan, whilst a little 'cheesy' and with some dubious technical 'facts' at times, definitely set a new standard for (mainstream, at least) war films' 'gritiness'. Nearly everyone I know says the first time they saw the beach landing scene it left them a little stunned.

I think a film on The Falklands conflict must be due about now (I know we had Tumbledown, but that's a very personal film too) - Would be good to see it presented without too much political/nationalist bias. The Argentinians have made a number of films about the war, I believe.

M

[Neil.C]

Still struggling to find anything that challenges my initial view of this film, technically, and what it was trying to say, beyond war/drowning is hell. Maybe I've seen too many documentaries/archive footage and misinterpreted what my parents said of it.
The uncomfortable truth is Dunkirk was a huge defeat that virtually broke us and opened the door for invasion. The whole 'little ships' thing was bourne out of desperation and then used as an early use of 'spin'.
I think this film will quietly sink and will not be troubling TLD, The Boat, Come and See, In Which We Serve, 12 O'Clock High, Downfall (good spot) in the list of truly special WW2 films.
Sorry.

I think you're right.

[Webwatchmaker]

I've not seen the movie yet, but listening to Mark Kermode hype up both the movie and Christopher Nolan can't be a good thing as Kermode is completely hopeless as a film critic.

I totally agree that Mark Kermode has no feel for films he reviews. He tries to be too academic.
Watched Dunkirk and was surprised at how empty returning ships were !
Just a few soldiers standing by the deck rails. That wasn't the case in reality.
I think it's much overrated.

Brendan

[Franco81]

Well I am looking forward to the experience of seeing this in the cinema tomorrow, mixed reviews on here and elsewhere have at least prepared me for the pro's and con's.
Hope the boss can enjoy it too.

[jwillans]

We saw the film on Thursday evening and enjoyed it (we don't get out much!). I thought the film was a timely reminder of the awfulness of war generally and the situation in Dunkirk including some challenges I wasn't previously aware of. On the other hand, I too struggled with the realism of scale which I thought let the film down. It would benefit with a new cut using CGI to increase the size of the army and number of boats. I also found elements of the ending slightly sacharin.

[catch21]

Saw it last night. I don't particularly enjoy the confined cinema experience so I don't go often. Time went very quickly, which is always a good sign. I enjoyed it. Didn't think petal would appreciate the extended 'violence' and impact of the sound track, but she was ok with it.

My take is that it wasn't ever supposed (primarily) to be a historical representation of what happened. What I believe it was intended to be, and did very well, was in some way to show what it would have been like from a personal perspective and to that end it succeeded very well. The whole film was very well balanced.

You could feel you were a pilot, monitoring your ever dwindling fuel level.

You could feel you were a boat owner, deciding if anyone if going to take your boat over the channel it will be you.

You could feel you were infantry, being shot at, and looking for any opportunity to get away,

From that perspective, for me, it worked really well.