Come anticipate (I guess?) Christopher Nolan's Batman/One Direction prequel DUNKIRK oh wait I have that wrong

so if he sticks to making short, not too dialogue heavy, action orientated pics - at least steady mediocrity will be assured.

Alluded to it upthread, but I do like that the big thematic speech in this is about shitting.

I also like that that guy doesn't know what a mole is. Clearly he should read the vox explainer.

I went the whole movie thinking Fionn Whitehead was a spy because it said "The Mole"

Not sure what i was expecting but a combination of In Which We Serve, Titanic and a ‘Punchdrunk’ style immersive art installation wasn’t it. Easily one of the most intense experiences i’ve had in a cinema. Looked unbelievably gorgeous in 70mm Imax. The score is just insanely good. Was shook up/rattled for the rest for the day yesterday as a result.

Beach bits reminded me of Atonement. I think maybe it’s simply not possible to stage a WW2 beach scene and not look like Atonement.

Another piece on Dunkirk and political conservatism - from both the left and right of the political spectrum.

bunch of thoughts

- I could not tell apart the guy the movie started with and the guy who took the clothes off the body.
- setting up that one guy doesn't talk much doesn't work when half your movie lacks dialog.
- it spends a lot of time setting up the idea that a character might be a spy -- his intro, a title, his hiding under exposition man, his avoiding the mess hall because he's psychic i guess. but why would there be a spy in the place where everyone is getting killed ffs. it's a dumb idea with a tiny payoff.
- the air section is a generic bore. planes shoot at each other and at ships and go down. i did not care. also, did every pilot forget about their parachute?
- a ship is already sunken, a ship has one survivor, a red cross ship gets bombed, another ship gets torpedoed with a few survivors, another ship gets fired at by troops, another ship gets bombed with oil in the water, and i'm probably forgetting some other slight variations on the same. i don't know why the movie needed all of this.
+ land section works the best because it's the only one with some scale. you actually see how many people were involved and how the story characters were a minor part.
- the setup for the evacuation is done just with title cards, but then at the end of the movie the secret failurecess of the operation is brought up as one of the key points. i never thought about this through the movie because it spends like 10 seconds on the battle of france. the ending conveniently passes over the failures of the evacuation which was what the movie spent most of its time on.
- what was the point of this movie? it ends with the churchill speech, making it seem like a propaganda film for a war that ended over 70 years ago. that ending is way more forceful than the real british war propaganda i've seen.
- i saw this in digital and it looked bad -- all the pixels noticeable. i noticed the brightness flickering on the sandbar scenes -- haven't seen that film artifact in a while.
+ the sound was good. lots of range, and it got appropriately loud.

No title refers to anyone being a spy... They're standing on a freaking mole for a week.

I was looking at some stills from an amusing straight to rental knockoff version of Dunkirk. In that movie they have accidentally dressed the soldiers as Paratroopers(who didn't yet exist at Dunkirk). And it features a French spy storyline, and just so there is no confusion, she is dressed in a beret and stripey top!

I know the mole is the structure. It's designed to possibly have a double meaning.

I really don't get why people think that. It's just a mole?

It's his least worst film since /The Prestige/.

Ouch

from what I understand this film is about the search for the perfect mole sauce, kind of weird considering the setting but idk

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/01/indian-african-dunkirk-history-whitewash-attitudes

The echoes of modern politics are easy to see in the British-first policy of the initial retreat that left French troops at the mercy of the Nazis. In reality, non-white troops were at the back of the queue for evacuation, and far more likely to be caught and murdered by Nazi soldiers than their white colleagues who were able to blend into the crowd.

Nolan's whitewashing of history criticised here. I recall reading that De Gaulle also insisted on "whitewashed" parades after the liberation of Paris, typical racism of the era - I haven't heard Nolan's excuse yet.

I'd like to be erased from this. Thank you CL!

I don't think I've felt such a strong disinclination towards a movie than this one. I mean not just for the Nolan factor, but also for the ball of shit collection of Tory scum that admire it's myopic vision of it'll be all white on the night heroics etc...

You'll be missing out on Harry Styles' monologue on shitting though.

Ah, a bit of comic relief from the barrage of Nazi artillery Christopher Nolan.

b-but six stars!!

Christopher Nolan was almost made for Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, and they're predictably brilliant on Dunkirk:
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2017/08/02/dunkirk-part-1-straight-to-the-good-stuff/
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2017/08/09/dunkirk-part-2-the-art-film-as-event-movie/

I am trying to imagine this movie with a cast of Trevor Francis clones playing the BEF and Tony Galvin ones playing the Nazis.

Mr Veg came out saying this was great & I walked out in a daze

i dont think I fully "got" it because I didnt really understand the context very well? i have delved into various areas of ww2 history but dunkirk seems to have eluded me so i had to get mr Veg to explain it all to me a bit more afterwards.

that being said, the air footage was gorgeous, really put you in the cockpit in a believable way

the sound design was excellent: screaming of the messerschmidts was A+, fkn terrifying

i think i need to rewatch at some point to really get the full effect & appreciate it more

now can we please talk about Tom Hardy's magical gliding Spitfire O_o

Very visceral, a bit corny and fast and loose with the idea of physics.
& I spent most of the film thinking the guy in the glider was Martin Freeman cos I haven't been indulging in the hype.

Shame Bobby Gillespie has such a cameo in this but at least he dies a hero.

hi I have seen this 3 times now (saw it in 70mm IMAX on Sunday)

wish my 70 mm had been in IMAX, it was gorgeous all the same tho

Even before getting into what a garbage filmmaker Nolan is, pretending that there were no colonial soldiers present at Dunkirk is a crime imo.

Atonement isn't a great movie but at least the Dunkirk scenes made it look like there were more than a 100 people on the beach, and (gasp!) some of them were not white.

Sigh. There's a colonial soldier in Dunkirk.

What there is one?

Yeah. Amongst the French.

And even the screenwriter of Atonement admitted a black soldier in the regular British army was probably wishful thinking. Britain was quite racist at the time.

this movie is crudely patriotic (i.e. racist) and the lack of speaking parts given to non-whites is v consistent with that.

but "all-white production" (per the guardian article) is a bit much. there's a handful in a crowd scene (couldn't find a screenshot, but maybe 5?). normally that would be risible, but as you say, the crowd scenes make it look like we're dealing with a couple of hundred soldiers total.

fighting alongside the dutch and french is also a major plot point fwiw.

i remember them because when they are shown (quite prominently, wearing turbans iirc?) a few people in my screening literally snorted or laughed out loud. this was in southern california so they may have thought it was Political Correctness Gone Mad.

My official takeaway after 3 viewings is that Harry Styles' soldier better have lived to fight & win a bloody purple heart or something bcz he behaved in a v cowardly manner belowdecks on that trawler & all that boohoo self pity didnt endear him any further. French dude Gibson shouldve taken his place bc he was 10 times braver despite being just as scared

it seemed like maybe Gibson couldnt swim & that is why he ultimately drowned, was that the upshot? that is my theory anyway

I know for a fact there were numbers of Indian and African troops present, cos some book I read. These subliminal turbans you are offering don't inspire confidence.

The French guy speaks. Otoh, I don't remember any turban-wearing soldiers in a crowd scene? There was one Indian company on the beach, amounting to around 0,1% of the soldiers. And they famously didn't panic and bolt, which is kinda what everyone the film follows does, so they don't really fit in with the plot of Dunkirk, which basically deals with deserters.

yes there were apparently ~1000 present (out of 400,000). the guardian article you linked says " Some non-white faces are visible in one crowd scene, but that’s it."

There are 2 or 3 black faces among the French who are not being allowed into the queue for the British ship.

i am NOT going to rewatch this film to prove that it is very slightly less racist that it might seem at first though. it is garbage.

The African soldiers must have been on the French side? Nobody has ever found evidence of any black soldiers in the British army at Dunkirk. That doesn't disprove it, though.

Yeah. Amongst the French.

And even the screenwriter of Atonement admitted a black soldier in the regular British army was probably wishful thinking. Britain was quite racist at the time.

― Frederik B, Monday, August 21, 2017 3:43 PM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

britain was also quite white at the time

Not that white, though.

You might be able to say the Graun piece wasn't balanced with some justification or whatever, but considering grisly events, like the fate of the Senegalese Tirailleurs massacred by the Nazis after the breaking of the Maginot Line , and just the general whiteness of all WW2 films. I can understand the anger behind it and how some find this shite Nolan film, distasteful in other ways.

can I go back time-delay my post so that it's less poorly-timed

How does the general whiteness of WW2 films make the anger at this one more understandable? The fact that the anger could be leveled at pretty much every other film in the genre, and often with a lot more reason, only makes it more hypocritical for me. Yeah, someone should make a film about the Senegalese Tirailleurs, and about the colonial Indian regiments on the beach, but that is not what Dunkirk is about. And come on, nobody mad at the film is thinking about the Tirailleurs. They just want to shit on Nolan and use any excuse they can find.

The whiteness of this film didn't bother me at all. The clamor and having to listen to Kenneth Branagh did.

lol, sorry I'm not having a go at you or Veg. But Fuck this movie and Nolan. My fave war movie is Paths Of Glory - which is all white, but without the triumphalism that infects this pile of shit.

The whiteness of this film didn't bother me at all. The clamor and having to listen to Kenneth Branagh's crypto-Churchillisms did.

calzino, you must really hate almost every war movie? I mean, 'triumphalism'? Dunkirk ends with a dirge-like rendition of funeral music, and one of the heroes being captured by Germans after setting his own plane on fire. It's hardly Rambo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUpvEgJEn94

my prior: if your movie includes nimrod and approvingly quotes churchill i'm going to assume it's racist unless proven otherwise. so, while a few black soldiers in a cast of a few hundred is not of itself a problem, in the context of what the film is about it is, even if it's statistically accurate or whatever.

also nolan is an unbelievably bad filmmaker.

That's in and of itself an incredibly dumb prior. Churchill happened to deliver a very famous speech about Dunkirk, which is used. No 'approvingly'.

that dirge-like rendition of funeral music is a variation (ha) on nimrod. there's not a more patriotic piece of music.