Christopher Nolan's, director of the Dark Knight trilogy, Dunkirk opens this weekend. He depicts how in 1940, the English army was trapped on the narrow beach of Dunkirk, France. Considered a miracle, most of the more than 300,000 soldiers successfully made it back home.
The problem is that Nolan doesn't narrate a miracle. The movie flips between triple plots: a civilian mariner's (Rylance) family answering the call to rescue the English trapped on the beach, an English soldier (Whitehead) trying to escape through vanquished efforts, and a Spitfire pilot (Tom Hardy), masterly acted. The beginning was Nolanesque suspense you can cut with a knife. You can feel the Germans arriving at any moment, as the English are neatly ranked in rows, crowding the pier. Yet, nobody is in the air or ocean to protect their retreat. Then Nolan's nonlinear, artistic style takes over. The suspense dies. Granted, Dunkirk was not a panicked retreat. Still, this isn't Gotham. The movie drawled out into a dark, nihilistic intermission.
My younger teen said, "Boring." I had to keep explaining the war to her, because you never see a Nazi. My older teen loved it! He's all about the subplots and cinematography. We trekked out to the cinema early, but only a few dozen arrived--about the same amount of private boats seen in the film approaching Dunkirk. The horizon should be covered with them. The civilian boats were supposed to ferry soldiers to the warships at midchannel. That was the miracle! Nolan was too immersed with character portrayal and sends the yachts full of Brits all the way to the island. There should've been a grand reception for the soldiers--only some soda pop through a train window.
The French are negatively portrayed. They were the ones that prevented a total rout by fighting off the Germans. The camera shots beguiled you to feel like you were there on the Channel or beach or air, so I'll advance this to the Winning 45 yd Line.
No comments:
Post a Comment