I have a strange relationship with Christopher Nolan’s films. The last one I liked unabashedly, adored 100%, is The Prestige, which is the perfect “Nolan movie” in every way. It has his trademark gimmickry, but this gotcha-ness is folded beautifully into the story, which demands that gimmickry. I mean, it’s about seeing something you only think you’re seeing.
Subsequently, Nolan has applied this kind of narrative to increasingly bloated films, and his real talents have gotten buried under layers of exposition and themes that these films just can’t support. He’s like a cuddly dog who let go of his favourite toy. (You know this, of course, after the 745th appearance of “Do not go gently…” In Interstellar.)
And yet, even these films I’ve found fascinating on some level. There’s always something that Nolan does. He thinks big, touchingly so. His filmmaking isn’t as pure and elegant as Spielberg’s (this comparison comes about because he’s the Spielberg of this era), but even these lesser films I keep coming back to, because he does that “density” thing so well. His films are so packed with stuff that the bloat and the redundant dialogue cannot keep you away from unpacking… more stuff.
All of which is to say I am really pumped about Dunkirk, whose running time is a reassuring less-than-two hours. I’ve heard it’s one set piece after another — that’s something Nolan does better than anyone else today. Can’t wait.
PS: Here’s what I wrote about Inception.
PPS: And Interstellar.
Baradwaj Rangan 
MANK
July 20, 2017
you put it best in the Inception thread
Nolan is the kind of filmmaker who likes to tell, then show, then tell us about what he’s just shown
this lack of economy is his biggest weakness as a filmmaker. And i dont know whether he could be called today’s spielberg, because Spielberg never got much critical respect until he made Schindler’s List. Every Nolan film is greeted with so much critical fanfare. Dunkirk already sits at 98% on Rotten tomatoes. May be from a Box office POV , as a director who can bring in the audience purely on his name. there are even some who compares him to Kubrick which is laughable really . because Kubrick is the exact opposite of Nolan’s tell, show tell filmmaking style
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MANK
July 20, 2017
Agreed about Prestige. the way he translated the 3 act structure of magic in to the 3 act structure of movies was brilliant. Prestige and Insomnia are my favorite Nolan movies. Insomnia has one of the last great Al pacino performances
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Raj Balakrishnan
July 20, 2017
Waiting for your Dunkirk review BR. It is getting great reviews worldwide. According to Guardian, this is one of the best war films ever made and Nolan is being compared to Stanley Kubrick.
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GODZ
July 20, 2017
@BR If you are planning to Watch, Please watch it in 70MM IMAX or biggest and best screen possible. More than 70% of the film is Shot in IMAX. Nolan himself said in his recent interview that the running time is short considering his movies so called intense 3rd Act starts right from the 1st frame and the Experience might be too much for the audience too handle. It’s the rare movie that put the audience right in the middle of the battle field. And According to Peter Travers, this is the best war movie ever made even better than saving private Ryan….Cannot wait and so excited. So happy to see a director has such command and control over Studios and his creative process..I guess only him and James Cameron have such authority in hollywood.
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GODZ
July 20, 2017
https://moviepilot.com/p/dunkirk-which-resolution-is-best/4314342
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brangan
July 20, 2017
GODZ: As a highly entertaining thread on Twitter went, the only way to watch Dunkirk is to see it projected on the right half of the moon, standing on one leg, clutching a rooster in one hand and placing the other hand on the heart. 🙂
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Siva
July 21, 2017
And like all talented directors, Nolan seems to have the knack of juicing out his composers’ quintessential rendering that uplifts the end product to breathtaking levels. Especially Zimmer. DUNKIRK is, excluding unreleased/documentaries/shorts, is only Nolan’s 10th feature film to date. And Mr.Zimmer has done it for 6 out of those 10! And we already are reading rave admiration over the scores too.
So, apart from the IMAX visuals, I was looking forward to watching the epic in a screen with top notch acoustics as well. With an IMAX screen out of the question in Chennai, — (and NO!, I won’t watch it in the ‘Sasikala MAX’ screen that was so unfairly bullied and usurped from SPI Cinemas. I am loyal to SPI that way 😀 ) — my next best hope was the elusive ‘Sathyam Main Screen’. Alas, that wish went haywire as well, with ‘Vikram Vedha’ contending and winning the contest of “whichever movie has the highest probability of the most seat occupancy during ‘weekdays’ gets the ‘Sathyam Main Screen’ prize”.
So, no can do for now. I am going to wait until the tickets open at midnight of next Wednesday to see if I at least get a ‘6 Degrees’ consolation. If not, I will have to be content with the next-available-best of ‘Palazzo Screen-9’.
And that ends the ranting 😀
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dagalti (@dagalti)
July 21, 2017
It is hard to disagree with the contention that The Prestige was his best realized film. That said, methinks you are being a bit harsh on assessing him overall.
//Despite the recurrence of what could be an auteurist signature or thematic obsession (his protagonists, whether superheroes or sorcerers, are work-bound men haunted by women they’ve lost),//
Surely this isn’t the most important thematic obsession that merits first mention. The rug that really ties the room together – is the question of identity.
Yes, Inception’s dream world is ‘prosaic’ – it didn’t take us there like Fellini did (honestly, nEkku adhu theriyAdhu, so let me instead say: like Kaufman & Jonze did)
But the film that took us to the experience of what the character was feeling was Memento. That, you call gimmicky. Sure, without the gimmick the film is nothing, but that really isn’t saying much, is it?
It is unfair to disentangle the ‘what the film is about’ and ‘how the film is about’ wrt to Memento.
The concerns of each of Nolan’s films are about an aspect of identity. And the film’s exposition – and yes overexposition – services that.
We are our memories, and Pearce’s accentuated emotion is because of the physical inability to move past. An apparent authenticity engendered by sheer accident, not choice.
Which is completely inverted in Prestige – of course much of it could have come from the novel. The choice is precisely what makes authentic ‘personal’ life impossible (we both lived half a full life vs. a complete annihilation of oneself)
Now, refusing to choose a carefully constructed perfection IS what Inception is. If one didn’t feel affected by the love story, then yes it is a ‘mere’ B movie which squandered its heist-potential. But it is that overt sentimentality that the film unabashedly bringing up as its core- Rosebud kaathaadi in the safe etc.
This would be thematic obsession that should merit greater attention insofar as it provides an insight into assessing his output as a whole.
நிற்க, none of this is to say he doesn’t overexposition to the extent of making one cringe.
Perhaps we ought to tell ourselves that economy isn’t the only virtue and the overt unabashed sentimentality is his primary concern (e.g. the ‘brief’ he sent Zimmer about developing a score for Interstellar)
And what do we get: moments of richly imagined intensity bang in the middle of mainstream aesthetics:
The emptiness when DiCaprio-Cotillard wake up from the suicide pact and the wordless emptiness of Watanabe waking up from a full-life lived. A pensive shared silence as they move on back into ‘reality’.
Look forward to your review of Dunkirk.
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brangan
July 21, 2017
dagalti: Oh, I agree with quite a bit of what you say, and I love Memento and Insomnia — because till The Prestige, he was “clean” filmmaker, in the sense that he told the story he wanted to tell (and with deference to the “genre” of the story) without needlessly inflating the narrative with Big Ideas.
I’m not saying genre cannot coexist with Big Ideas. But you need to be a Kubrick to pull it off, and while I certainly admire Nolan for wanting to reach higher, he lets himself down by overexplaining everything to the point of tedium.
The reason 2001 works so well is because Kubrick doesn’t explain, and we take away what we see — it’s a grand puzzle. Nolan, on the other hand, is like a PhD professor who wants to make sure the LKG kids get his fundas — and that’s self-defeating.
And this tedium comes in the way of the moments like the ones you describe. He tries to make things seem terribly cerebral, when they’re not — he’s really making grand genre pictures.
But yes, his gimmickry worked brilliantly in Memento as well. It’s just that I like The Prestige better. I think it’s the fullest realisation of… Nolanism, if you will.
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dagalti (@dagalti)
July 21, 2017
Re. Spielberg v Nolan
One should feel emboldened to dwell on the names: Dreamwork v Syncopy
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Honest Raj (formerly 'V'enkatesh)
July 21, 2017
BR: Nolan, on the other hand, is like a PhD professor who wants to make sure the LKG kids get his fundas — and that’s self-defeating.
Ha, well put! Does Mysskin fall under the same category?
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Anuj
July 21, 2017
Nolan is a film maker who understands his audiences’ limitations and yet never takes them for granted. Most of the complexities in his films are explained yet unexplained in equal measure. Be it Tesla’s machine in Prestige or the dream and reality perception in Inception, every film of his speaks just enough and yet hides that little bit which the audience takes home with them. I have never come across a film maker in world cinema who can engross the viewer and make the viewer feel like he is literally a part of the film as Nolan does. His films might have all sorts of scientific and psychological complexities in the world but yet, all his characters connect instantly to the viewer at an emotional level. Even a psychotic mischief maker like The Joker was made relatable to the viewer courtesy his one liners on “human behavior and nature” etc. Yet despite all of this, he lets the viewer draw his own conclusion at the end of every film of his. A clear sign of an intelligent film maker who considers his audience as intelligent as himself and believes in carrying the viewer along with him instead of narrating self indulgent stories.
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GODZ
July 22, 2017
@All who reads this. Can Someone please explain me Interstellar. I do know that Nolan is speaking about 5th Dimension etc. But As a simple movie goer, Is there a paradox involved here..? Cooper Gets the coordinates of NASA station through a pattern of dust, he goes to NASA and story goes on. It has also been shown later in the movie that its the Cooper in the Fifth dimension is the one who passes on the coordinates info. If so, How Cooper in any timeline knows the original Coordinates/Location of NASA..? Is it the chicken or egg paradox. If so whats the point of this paradox.
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Ratish Ravindran
July 22, 2017
Saw Dunkirk today. Within the same genre I personally felt it is not a patch on Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. I think he is good with his usual mind bending stuff than making movies on true stories. The film has minimal dialogues and the meditative shots reminded me of Terence Malik than Kubrick’s work.
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brangan
July 22, 2017
Ratish Ravindran: I have to agree with you.
But I don’t think the problem is, as you say, “he is good with his usual mind bending stuff than making movies on true stories.” I think that he is so bent on being above the material that he messes it up, doesn’t give it its due.
I am not saying he has to give us a linear, understandable story. But here, he goes so far in the other direction that it’s hard to care — before you get invested in one scene or situation, you are yanked out and thrust into another one. And because none of the characters are really characters — in the sense that we know much about them — it’s hard to stay invested in anything. Take away the Mark Rylance character, and this could be any war. The Cillian Murphy character comes and disappears almost as immediately.
Again, I am not saying a conventional character-building approach is the only way to go. One could say that they did not want a “regular” movie, just snapshots of what war is like — and I cannot deny them that. But with this approach, Nolan succeeds in giving us a rat-a-tat, video-game experience of battle without telling us anything new or meaningful. And even as a breathless experience, I wasn’t really holding my breath or anything. It was just one great visual after another.
This is like saying “I want to make The Godfather. But I won’t tell you who Don Corelone is, who Michael is, who Sonny is. But I will show you what it’s like to have Michael shooting Solozzo, and I will show you Sonny getting filled with bullets at the toll booth, and I show you the Godfather dying peacefully in the garden.” This may be a kick to those who want to see a shooting, a brutal killing, a peaceful death — but it will never be Michael’s shooting, Sonny’s killing, the Don’s death. Without solid characters, everything’s an abstraction.
I saw this on a regular big screen, not IMAX, so the holes really show. (I plan to watch in IMAX for the visuals and the cinematography, which was quite outstanding.)
For my money, Saving Private Ryan is still the best “bringing someone back home in the middle of a hellish war” movie. Even a Hacksaw Ridge is more of an experience that this film.
And no, this doesn’t have the poetry of a Malick movie — or heaven forbid, the cold mastery of a Kubrick film. I mean, see Paths of Glory or Full Metal Jacket before you make that comparison, for crying out loud.
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Ratish Ravindran
July 23, 2017
@BR:Thanks for the response. That was a master class in film appreciation. Will catch up on Paths of Glory and Full Metal Jacket. Surprisingly the film has been well received in Hollywood. The cumulative critics rating in rotten tomatoes is 92% which the movie doesn’t deserve. May be it is the stature of the director?
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GODZ
July 23, 2017
@BR.The Visuals are immersive and I could say this is a more VR experience without wearing any goggles. Its as if you are so near to the action whether its in Land or Air or Water. But having said that, I felt the movie a bit boring. I have zero emotional engagement with anything happening on the screen. I Felt more like watching a documentary in a history museum without narration. One cannot ever compare Saving Private Ryan or Hacksaw Ridge or Full metal jacket to this movie. In Saving Private Ryan, When a Character takes the bullet, I can feel the pain, I can the burden, I can feel everything..In hacksaw Ridge, I can feel the resolve of Desmond Doss. I can feel his faith. I can Root for him. In Full metal jacket, Even now the words “Sir Yes Sir” Rings in my ears like a Song. Here absolutely Nothing. I don’t know..To sum it up. Thanks Nolan for making an $150 million dollar Documentary
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brangan
July 23, 2017
Wanted to add that the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan already did a lot of what this film does. It did not introduce any characters, so we just saw unnamed, unfamiliar people being massacred — and that was total, bloody chaos. That was an abstraction as well.
But then, a narrative began to cohere. And it built and it built, and then we got the final battle.
Look how beautifully the screenplay builds:
(i) So the opening stretch shows us what the stakes where. (“Oh man, so this is how brutal it is out there.”)
(ii) Then we get the mission statement. (“Oh fuck, they have to go out there in this mess and find ONE guy?”)
(iii) Then we get the moral conundrum. (“Is it worth bringing one guy back home if so many others are killed?”)
(iv) And then, the final battle. (“So THIS is what it took to get that one guy back home.”)
You get the immersive experience of being in battle PLUS a great, resonant, inspiring narrative.
PS: One of the most annoying things I find in a lot of reviews is people randomly dropping names like Kubrick and Tarkovsky — half the time it appears that the writer just wants to show us he knows his cinema, and it’s embarrassingly transparent because this comparison is never substantiated.
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awkshwayrd
July 23, 2017
@BR: The Godfather analogy is so spot on – and also applies to so many of the studios-backed big budget ‘fan films’ we get nowadays. Thanks for the precise articulation.
This is maybe the first Nolan movie I don’t particularly feel like watching – and weirdly the reason was the IMAX trailers – the picture looks grainy, washed out and just blurry. Isn’t IMAX supposed to have sharper clearer picture?
I saw Dark Knight Rises in the large IMAX screen in Hyderabad – and at the end a relative turned to me and said “this wasn’t IMAX, it was all blurry and grainy.” And they were right.
So on the topic of film formats, I wish someone would explain to me the whole film vs digital debate? ‘Coz all the movies shot on film nowadays look TERRIBLE to me – even more so on the IMAX screen. And all the IMAX trailers of Dunkirk look exactly the same – I can’t see any detail at all and everything is dimly lit.
I don’t get if I’m missing something – but no matter how big the screen, IMAX or not, movies shot on film just cause a subconscious negative reaction in me as soon as the movie starts and I realize it was shot on film – I can’t see what’s going on during dimly lit scenes, there are grains all over actor’s faces, and while scenes set in bright daylight are visible, they have this weird washed out high contrast quality.
The worst was in Ron Howard’s recent Inferno where Europe and Istanbul are rendered as if viewed on an old Zee Cinema VHS tape. But Wonder Woman suffered from this as well – in 3D film gives no clarity at all. By contrast Rogue One, GotG V2, Doctor Strange all looked beautiful shot in digital – I saw them all in IMAX.
And yet Nolan, Tarantino, et. all would have me believe film is the superior format. Do they have some magic screens? Are all projectionists in India incompetent? The big comparison point is MI:Ghost Protocol shot on digital, and MI:Rogue Nation shot on film. Cruise hanging off the Burj on a regular size screen was breath-taking, but even on the IMAX screen, Cruise hanging off a plane shot on film left me cold. ‘Coz in that wide shot, film grain is covering Cruise’s face, and the background is blurred out so there’s no depth perception of how high that plane is. That scene literally looks better in the trailer on your regular HD TV.
The weird thing is when these same movies transferred to digital BluRay, the resolution magically becomes 100x better when viewed at home. What gives?
Hope you had a better visual experience in IMAX on Dunkirk.
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Nawaf Khan
July 23, 2017
SPOILER WARNING
I did have my reservations about the film, but found the overall experience quite exhilarating. The beach portions were very repetitive. Climb one boat, abandon ship, climb another, abandon ship, and so on. Nolan probably wanted to convey the utter futility of these attempts at survival, but a little diversity would have helped.
What actually took my breath away were the aerial dogfights. Some of the best I have ever seen. I was surprised that Nolan was able to pull this off because he is known to jumble up action scenes by tossing spatial dynamics out the window. But in this case, I had a clear understanding of what was happening up there. I was also impressed by the coordination by which these multiple plane movements were choreographed, conveying perfectly how difficult it is to hit a moving target from a plane. Not to mention the seat-shaking recoil when Tom Hardy shoots. You can feel the Spitfire vibrating. Remove those sequences and this would have been an utterly dull picture.
On a completely different note, do you feel the director’s previous shortcomings, which you are actively aware of while watching the movie, affect the movie-watching experience? Like ‘there’s Nolan again with his exposition’, or ‘look, Nolan trying to impress with unnecessary cross-cutting’. I genuinely believe that the movie would have been better received by those who hated it (even if they are few in number), if it had been made by a relative unknown, like say, Matt Reeves. Because we cannot list out his weaknesses as distinctly as we do Nolan’s. The fact that he hasn’t made enough movies also helps. In that case, the sheer audacity on display (at least in some parts) would have overshadowed the shortcomings. Just wanted to know your thoughts on this.
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tonks
July 23, 2017
Is this all Dunkirk is getting by way of a review 😔?
The movie was such a visual treat, and I mostly agree about the emotional detachment. (Spoilers ahead) However, having watched the movie without reading/knowing about the events that happened, I was moved by that scene where the motley civilian boats flock to save the day. What a lovely, heroic gesture.
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Prasad
July 23, 2017
Saw “Dunkirk”. Would agree with what BR mentioned above. Amazing and stunning visuals but we really want to know something about the charatcters before start caring for them. Character after character is introduced , Tension is there right throughout the movie but unfortunately even if someone dies not sure how we I would’ve felt. But this movie looked like more like an event happens and how people react to the event with. Definitely there’s no way people people can compare this with “Saving…” or a ” Full Metal Jacket”…..
Just some small point. Just take “The Salesman” ….the last 30 mins. The event is happening in just some old flat in Iran with some 60+ old guy and the hero. We dont even know who that old guy is ….but how much we cared for him even after we know what he did to the leading lady. That was the most thrilling 30 mins for me in a cinema in the recent times. Your heart is racing what one will do and how this is going to end! Master class from Asghar Farhadi.
Definitely for providing thrill you dont need planes, ship and 200 mn budget just a flesh and blood characters who we care is enough.
Having said that, I’am a fan of Nolan and Prestige , Memento and Batman Begins are my top favourites.
Anybody else saw Dunkirk? Views please.
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brangan
July 23, 2017
Nawaf Khan: What you say is true of every established director, music director, writer, actor… They can never make us watch a film with a blank slate.
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TheManWithTwonames
July 23, 2017
Is there a review in store for us? 🙂
Personally thought this was better than Dark Knight trilogy and interstellar mainly because we are spared of the philosophical crap and exposition of those films. He tried to make those films unnecessarily existential, devoid of humour and serious that we lost the fun and awe of watching a story unfold on a big screen. Dunkirk suits his ultra seriousness and the minimal dialogues which were a plus. Then again, his method of editing is very problematic. Cutting between three different threads in a movie is OK when the cutting is done during the set-up and conflict stages of those scenes. But, Nolan cuts during the pay-offs which is irritating, instead of letting them play out naturally. The audience are not allowed to register any emotion such as shock, awe or relief, the emotional rewards for watching the film. This isn’t being cold, this is being inconsiderate.
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sanjay2706
July 24, 2017
@GODZ – I saw your question on Interstellar. I thought I can pitch in. We humans and creatures on Earth are prisoners of the three dimensions and TIME (the 4th dimension). We are constantly moving through Space and time, but the only difference being while we can move forward, back and in any direction across the 3 dimensions, we are always bound by time dimension, where we can only move forward. There is no way for us to move back or in any other direction. However, assume that you are in a higher dimension, such as the Tesseract where Cooper falls into. TIME becomes another normal dimension for us. Think of it as your FB Timeline. You can scroll up and see your baby picture, and you can scroll down and see yourself on your death bed. In other words, “You are always being born, you are always being dead”. There is no concept of past, present and future. Cooper is in Tesseract where he faces the same thing. He can only see the Bookshelf in space, but he has the entire timeline from which he can choose when to look. He can move around and see the millions and millions of events that are happening through time in his daughter’s room.
He tries to stop himself from going but then realizes that he can save himself and Humanity by communicating through the Tesseract. He is the GHOST, he is the one who has been helping himself all along.
He gets the co-ordinates from TARS (it’s in the scene) and communicates it through Gravity. He then uses the Data from the Black Hole to feed into the clocks of the watch. Do check out KIP THORNE articles and books. He is a scientist who worked with Nolan in Interstellar.
Also, ARRIVAL is a great movie which touches upon the concept of TIME.
We know very little about TIME, and about the UNIVERSE. 🙂
Hope this helps 🙂
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GODZ
July 24, 2017
Thanks for the response.Just to understand, HE gets coordinates from TARS but he met TARS originally in NASA through the information he received through gravity during the start of the movie. But that’s because he met TARS through the coordinates he received from TARS. I understand it’s more like all sequences are parallel in the fourth dimension. But the sequence of Cooper Meeting TARS itself is initiated by the Future Cooper and TARS. Is that not a paradox. Does it mean it’s a pre-determined destiny that Cooper will reach NASA and so the Future Cooper passed the info from TARS to Cooper in the past?
Cooper(P1) —> Gets Coordinates from Gravity from Cooper(F1) —> Goes to NASA –> events—> Cooper(F1)Passes the co-ordinates to P1 cooper through Tessaract from TARS
But Future Cooper happens only if Past Cooper meets TARS rite..How did that happen?
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Raj Balakrishnan
July 24, 2017
@GODZ, the other paradox is the placement of the worm hole near Saturn by the future humans. For that, they should have colonized the planet in the other galaxy first. In order to reach the planet in the other galaxy they should have passed through the worm hole first.
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Vivek
July 25, 2017
Baddy, you wrote “This is like saying “I want to make The Godfather. But I won’t tell you who Don Corelone is, who Michael is, who Sonny is…..”. I surely do not question your wisdom but would like to know what you think of the following.
The Godfather is a work of fiction, hence it requires protagonists and antagonists. Dunkirk is the story of a real evacuation in a real war. Sure, it could have been injected with moments like Saving Private Ryan but it seemed like the lack of drama and character building was intentional.
In the opening sequence, Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) runs through the town and his comrades are picked out by enemy fire. A short while later, he is on the beach, on the ground and many more of his comrades are picked out from the air. Saving Private Ryan made an extended opening sequence just dramatizing similar sequences, dwelling on the agony of the solders.
In Dunkirk, all we see is that Tommy wants to run to the next safer spot (and that is pretty much all he does for the entire movie). He is one of the 400,000 soldiers trying to get home.
We see the dangers he faces, and how he is constantly keeping a way out the way he stands close to the door (in the first rescue ship) is why he manages to come out. Similarly, in second ship (target practice), he is again below the escape hatch.
Take the Rylance character. He simply says, to a soldier, “there is no turning away from this, son”. It is the typical understated British grit, not the flamboyant American version. But it was powerful, nonetheless. It tells you that he is a patriot, doesn’t believe that only soldiers need to fight.
To me, one of the hallmarks of this movie was to create that sense of fear/dread without visible bloodshed or without showing the enemy or even mentioning the name. It seemed like Nolan so wanted the evacuation effort to be central that he made a film (almost) devoid of drama.
Having said this, “The Sea” sequence was possibly the most drama we got. I liked the character of Peter (Rylance’s son) and the Rylance character. The scene where Peter says that George will be fine, to Cillian Murphy, is particularly touching, given the circumstances.
Note that the music is also devoid of drama. The music builds only a simmering tension but never tugs your heart. I think this was the feel that Nolan was exactly aiming for and he got it. To say, this is the greatest war film ever made is probably a step too far but it is probably one of the few realistic war movies we will ever get to see. I am personally a bit surprised that Warner Bros did not ask for more drama but then Nolan, these days, is the director they want. So, I think they gave him a free rein.
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brangan
July 25, 2017
Vivek: It doesn’t matter whether the source is fiction or real. At the end, it’s all a “story” to be put on screen, and with the Godfather example, I was trying to illustrate how that story would come across if done the Dunkirk way — without character development.
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Anuj
July 25, 2017
Equating Dunkirk with Saving Private Ryan is as preposterous as it gets. The lack of character building and lack of depth in characters and corresponding emotional quotient is something intentional and very un-Nolan like for a change. Dunkirk is the story of a real evacuation of 400,000 men where each and every one of those 400000 is equally significant and relevant to the theme. Hence, in depth character building is not a possibility here, something that an “experienced” reviewer like Rangan should have kept in mind imo.
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sree1824
July 25, 2017
I guess even Anuj would agree that Kubrick and Nolan are not equals, albeit for totally different reasons.
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sree1824
July 25, 2017
Dunkirk was such an underwhelming experience for me. Being a fan of almost all his other works, I desperately wanted to like the film but all it all just felt so empty. Not sure if I missed something but I felt none of the fear, tension and claustrophobia that Nolan has intended to put on screen. The film was so devoid of emotion that I feel the only few who could relate to it are people like the WWII veteran who’d have felt the above mentioned fear etc., that even a shot of that place would have brought back a lot of memories. That said, I’m definitely glad I watched it in IMAX for the stunning visuals.
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sanjay2706
July 25, 2017
Band of Brothers >> Saving Private Ryan >> The Pacific >> 5 other WW2 films you can think of >> Dunkirk.
Enough said! A technically superior Tour de Dull by Christopher Nolan!
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Nawaf Khan
July 25, 2017
What we have to remember is that the Dunkirk evacuation went on for a week. And in that week, is it not possible that any of the 400,000 men stranded showed a hint of character, not by speaking about their past, but by their actions? I found Tom Hardy’s role a bit like that. It showed character. A tiny bit of it. But it helped.
It’s entirely a different matter about what the director intended. What matters is whether it’s working for the movie. Any justification is purely a sign of wanting really hard to love the film. Because many people found it cold and distant and they say so before adding, “oh but that was intended and its the situation that demands it.” But that doesn’t mean we can excuse this almost movie-killing shortcoming. The closest analogy I can make is with certain post-apocalyptic movies, where you get to see some individuals take lead, get a hold of the situation, make plans and so on. We initially know nothing about them. Still they work. Those actions themselves make the character. The way they speak, their attitude, and their repartee with other characters. Even without backstories we can believe that these characters are flesh and blood. If any backstories are revealed, we find that this gentleman who is now killing in cold blood, or that one who is making plans for survival against zombies, was actually a janitor. So what made the character?
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sid
July 25, 2017
Strangely enough, this is the first time film critics in the US have been united in their praise for a Nolan film – and it’s the Nolan fanboys who’re expressing disappointment.
For me, this was one of his strongest films because it’s free from his usual weaknesses (clunky exposition, badly written female characters) and plays almost completely to his strengths (ingenious structure, constantly mounting tension). I can’t agree with those who weren’t moved by it (I think it’s immensely moving, without being emotionally manipulative).
Can’t say I agree with the consensus here for Saving Private Ryan here either, that’s a film with a phenomenal 30 minute opening (and a memorable scene or two in the later half), but the rest of it is does little that’s different from a usual war film. It did not help that Terrence Malick made a far superior and infinitely more profound war film in the same year.
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sree1824
July 25, 2017
Though I had grown tired of the usual Nolan tropes by Interstellar, I definitely wouldn’t have minded one or two here as it’d have given the actor performing on screen some kind of character. Now I feel it’s just a bunch of perfectly choreographed actors enacting some massive set pieces. Save for the air battle sequences, nothing really got my adrenaline pumping. And even this occasional rush is ruined by frequent cuts to the next scene and the non-linear structure, which I felt was totally unnecessary here.
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Reuben
July 25, 2017
I felt that not building strong individual characters was a plus for the film because the story is about communal heroism rather than individual heroism. Dunkirk evacuation is the story about how commoners got together to help their soldiers out of certain annihilation. And not showing even one German character in the film seemed to be a nod that it is not the German soldiers but the war that is the adversary.
Would like to know your view on Hans Zimmer’s score for the movie.
I felt it kind of elevated the visuals and heightened the tension. Was thinking how as a German, Hans Zimmer must have felt while scoring for the movie
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brangan
July 25, 2017
Nawaf Khan: It’s entirely a different matter about what the director intended. What matters is whether it’s working for the movie. Any justification is purely a sign of wanting really hard to love the film.
Great point. But that said, one can only say if the movie worked or did not work for oneself. Maybe the raves are from those who genuinely responded to the film (as opposed to saying “Nolan did it, so it must have meaning”).
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Vivek
July 26, 2017
Baddy, thanks for being the moderator and great point that what works or not is very subjective.. 🙂
I think many of us genuinely responded to the movie. I didn’t care much for Interstellar (not just saying it). So, what I am writing below are things that worked for me.
Few examples in Dunkirk: The scene inside the boat that the enemy uses for target practice is genuinely chilling (to me, at least). See how they cower on the beach when they hear the enemy aircraft, see their faces, it doesn’t express courage, rather anguish. In a typical war movie, you will hear lots of shouted orders, shouted actions, an inevitable act of courage. Not here. The soldiers take cover and wait it out. That’s all they can do. Remember, they are surrounded from all sides and have no cover.
To Nawaf Khan’s point, the characters do show emotion – maybe not the kind of emotion that Nawaf is looking for. The emotions here are all about survival – battle weary soldiers who can “practically see home” and yet find it so far away. And remember, we are talking about the English here. We are never going to see that chest-thumping patriotism or hero-worshipping as we see from the Americans.
Speaking of the non-linear narrative, I think it helped in creating a more detailed perspective for the land, sea, and air sequences. We could dwell on each of these angles for a fair bit of time without starting to feel tired. If this film had been linear, I think it would have been even slower because a bulk of the film would follow the land evacuation and some moments would not have been so effective. For e.g. when Tom Hardy’s fellow pilot ditches into the water and Hardy waves a “see you later” sign, I did not know what was going to happen to that pilot. In a linear narrative, we would know it immediately (and I suspect a lot of people would have said perhaps a non-linear narrative would have been better).
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brangan
July 26, 2017
Also, I think Saving Private Ryan is the victim of an opinion that just stuck, that its two big battles apart it’s just a cornball war movie — and I think it’s time for a re-look. Yes, the bonding between the men is an old-fashioned device, but their journey and the incident with the French child and so on… There’s a lot here that you don’t find in the average war film, which is far more jingoistic. I mean, this film actually questions a lot of the things it is about.
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Nawaf Khan
July 26, 2017
Vivek: I am not talking about the actors showing emotions, but an emotional connect with the characters. Those are two different things. One example off the top of my head is Tom Hardy (again!) in Mad Max: Fury Road. What emotions does he show throughout the movie? If grunting was an emotion, then maybe that would be it. But I still rooted for him. So the question is, what was it that made this character memorable and made me connect with him? I hadn’t seen previous Mad Max films so I didnt know his backstory. I believe it is the culmination of the character as written on paper, the director’s own interpretation of the character, his direction of said actor, and finally, the actor’s performance. Of course, there is much more to it, but this is the basic explanation. I am disappointed to say that Nolan failed on every account in this regard.
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GODZ
July 26, 2017
May be I should say Genuinely over responded. When you see Most of the reviews, you could easily find the words “one of the greatest war movie ever made”. Nolan is Goooooood of cinema..Come on. First, allow something to age and allow it to pass the test of time. If it’s Michael Bay, the same reviewers say no Character development, it’s all action etc. IF Nolan does it, they call experiment and great film making. I am not comparing Bay and Nolan. But Its like “Hey guys..It needs tons of Brains to understand Nolan. You deserve…” It’s this Blah Blah that’s irritating most of the times. Honestly, I slept in the movie for 15 minutes.Thanks to Hans Zimmer, he woke me up occasionally with his tick track. It’s that boring. Not because There is no action or like the usual war stuff. It’s because there is nothing interesting that’s going on screen. The action sequences are incoherent, monotonous repetition of imagery and more over, Forget about the emotions, British are the cleanest soldiers I have ever seen in a war movie, Great..A character in a movie does not need to be human, It could be anything even a non living thing.Even the beach seems lifeless. I see this as more as a documentary or as If Nolan went back in time and captured live all that happened. Yes, it’s an experimentation in film making but a failed one for me. No body goes to movies to see found footages except the geeky Nolan fans
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KayKay
July 26, 2017
In Nolan I trust. With that unabashed fanboy gush out of the way, I’m seeing it this weekend. On IMAX. I gotta respect a director who confidently strides across the Blockbuster Arena without the safety net of a reboot, reimagining, sequel, prequel or adaptation of an 80’s show to prop him up. No doubt the Dark Knight trilogy gave him that creative check he’s now cashing, but the man’s choosing to serve interesting Fusion Cuisine in a neighborhood proliferating with greasy diners and burger joints.
Much respect.
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Anuj
July 26, 2017
First the Jagga Jasoos thread and now this particular one once again proves that this blog is an ideal opportunity for folk who find it fashionable to go against the trend and criticise something or someone that hugely popular just for the sake of criticising, perhaps because the reviewer himself is one among them. I loved this movie and was rooting for every single character, even the one’s with blink and miss appearances. No filmmaker in modern day cinema involves the audience the way Nolan does and his admiration worldwide among both, the critic as well as the movie going public across the world is testimony to this fact. As for the one’s who wanna criticise his films with absurd analogies and pompous usage of the English vocabulary, you’re most welcome to carry on with your pointless rants as this forum is the best place for you to satisfy your “going against the norm” fetish.
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sid
July 26, 2017
@BR: Agree that SPR questions a lot of things that it’s about (or even the entire “war” genre is about) – but that’s sort of my problem with it. It doesn’t take this sentiment till the end, as if Spielberg wasn’t 100% confident of how it’ll play with audiences. I still think it’s a good film, but flawed enough that I can’t agree with the “masterpiece” tag many have given it. Here’s the perfect encapsulation of what my problem with this film is, from an otherwise mostly positive review:
“Spielberg executes another astonishing battle sequence toward the film’s end, but here we must finally discuss Saving Private Ryan’s most off-putting and unnecessary feature, which is the opening and closing scenes set in the American Cemetery in Normandy. An elderly veteran and his family walk through the acres of tombstones, which themselves are an eloquent and doleful index of the amount of loss experienced by our nation during World War II. What Spielberg is equally interested in stressing in these scenes, however, is the heroism and honor achieved by those Americans who died in or who lived through the war. It’s an important message that deserves reiteration but—did he forget?—he has just shown us a movie that for more than two hours spoke with exquisite force and articulation to that very tradition of honor, that very importance of remembering the men and women who gave their lives.
Either because he does not trust his own clarity of expression, or because he misjudges our own sensitivity as an audience to the ideas he has set forth, Spielberg tacks on this closing epiphany of one man’s sorrow, his grappling with history, and his family’s belief in his own heroicism. Steven, we get it. It will be a major breakthrough for this director to effectively and unobtrusively end one of his dramas, and finally quit the cloying pattern by which he clumsily announces the “meaning” of his pictures rather than trusting our own abilities to think and feel. For all of Saving Private Ryan’s tribute to the survival of American values, it is much more a dictatorial project than a democratic one, since we are finally forced to accept a pre-packaged “conclusion” rather than invited to witness a terrible, epic spectacle and derive our own meanings.
I wish Saving Private Ryan didn’t end on such a maddening note, and I wish that Spielberg occasionally chose a project whose morals and messages were open to some subjective vision, or else were not loud-speakered from the mouth of an angel in the final reel. He encloses his films in an envelope of incontestability that would be fatal if, his own cultivated righteousness aside, they were not such well-orchestrated and visually involving events.”
Full review: http://www.nicksflickpicks.com/savpvt.html
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Rahini David
July 26, 2017
BR: Honest Question. If a meta-story is a story about stories and a meta-movie is a movie about movies, what do you call this whole going against the norm in a place that is going against the norm? Does it have a name? Do psychologists study this? What does one do when encountering a situation like this? What is the norm? Do we look away? What do I do to become super meta by going against the norm of this situation.
Inputs appreciated.
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brangan
July 26, 2017
sid: I agree. The last breakdown is overly manipulative — but the scene is a necessary one. There’s a sense of “morality” in this. Without this closing scene, it’s just Hanks — while dying — telling Matt Damon to “Earn this.” Translation: The life you lead better be fuckin’ worth all this sacrifice.
So there’s a “rightness” in the old Matt Damn questioning his family if he has indeed earned this — because he hasn’t cured cancer or anything, he’s just a normal, decent man, who raised good children (we know this because they are all around him). Is this enough? Is a simple, decent, ordinary life worth what Hanks and Co. went through? Or was that too high a price tag for an unremarkable life?
That’s the moral question we are left with — though I completely agree that this could have been done in a less manipulative manner,
But give the shattering experience the film is, I don’t find this a grievous fault.
PS: It’s also probably that I grew up with Indian cinema, so my tolerance for sentimentality (when not egregiously misplaced) is higher than that of US critics.
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sanjay2706
July 26, 2017
@Anuj – Isn’t it fashionable and convenient to refer to any film of Nolan as “Masterpiece” and talk about technicalities of film-making that makes one look very knowledgable?
I notice that you use terms like “Left” and “Liberals” in this thread and the other. This topic has nothing to do with “Left” or “Right”, Liberal or Conservative. We aren’t talking about “minimal government” vs “govt intrusion” here. We aren’t debating “free market” vs “regulation” here. If you liked the film, good for you! It doesn’t mean that whoever didnt like it is a pseudo-intellectual or whatever. I didn’t like the movie and I backing it up with reasons and justifications, which is what others are doing here.
So it isn’t about “Left” or “Right”! I see it as a difference in opinion between people who judge a movie as per what they saw vs people who judge a movie as per the intention of the film-maker. In this case, I must say you are very “liberal” here as you respect and admire the intention of the film-maker, but intention doesn’t amount anything as far as I am concerned.
Happy to have a “left” vs “right” discussion on Economics, Politics and other things!
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Raj Balakrishnan
July 26, 2017
@Sid, note the piece you have posted on the last scene of Saving Private Ryan. I am not ashamed to admit that I broke down when I saw that scene the first time.
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Anuj
July 26, 2017
Not only the intention, but even the execution is next to flawless imo! As for opinions, its funny that 90% of the commentators on every BR thread seem to end up either partially or completely agreeing to whatever he has to say, more like yes men and cronies. And yes, i don’t think i need to add that petty so called opinions desperately aimed at going against the popular norm makes 2 hoots of a difference to the Nolan brand of film making which only challenges and outshines itself with every film of his.
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GODZ
July 26, 2017
Ok Here we go..It seems Rational Analysis does not seem to be trait of some of the Nolan fans here rather than diversion tactics. Lets keep this simple. Anyone Reading this thread can read Comments on Nepotism Thread and see for yourself whether commentators on this specific thread are in 10 or 90%. So Clearly Some of the Opinions are just mindless Rant, immature fact less opinion and baby crying Against People who are rational enough to go against the Herd mentality and who have every right to have their own Opinions after all no body Sponsors their ticket and its their own money. Nolan is definitely one of few Film makers Who makes movies So people come and see it in theaters as an Experience. Remove the aerial images and IMAX component, their is nothing greatest about it if not great. I wonder if some Nolan fans can develop some rationality in them so that they can see any things without this intellectual romantic emotional bias towards Nolan.
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Vivek
July 26, 2017
Nawaf: To each, his own! 🙂 The emotional connect is what each of us makes, so I don’t deny your disconnect, in this case. I could relate to the overwhelming odds these soldiers were facing. Like Anuj has also stated, this is not about one person. It is the story of a large-scale effort. I am really not sure why this has to be compared with SPR, and not to mention SPR was fiction.
Some have compared Dunkirk to a documentary and that seems too harsh. There is everything in this movie, just restrained. In terms of recreating a real war-story, it is as good as it gets, and it gets its facts accurately too. If this was coated with emotional backstories about certain people, I am sure there would be critics pointing out to the syrupy bits too.
Filmmakers have it tough, to conform or not is the question! 🙂
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KayKay
July 26, 2017
B, I’ll refrain on comments about Dunkirk specifically until I’ve seen it and can contribute to the discourse effectively. I’m interested in this comment you made above:
“I’m not saying genre cannot coexist with Big Ideas. But you need to be a Kubrick to pull it off, and while I certainly admire Nolan for wanting to reach higher, he lets himself down by overexplaining everything to the point of tedium”
The comparisons to Kubrick is hardly apples to apples is it?
I think what needs to be stressed is that Kubrick could operate on a far more cerebral and abstract plane compared to Nolan, being an auteur in the pre-Blockbuster Era ( I can only really think of one POPULAR hit in the Kubrick oeuvre which is Spartacus. The rest vacillated between Critical Darlings and Cult Hits).
Nolan strictly plays within the boundaries (at least from Batman Begins onwards) of a Summer Tentpole/100 million budget/PG-13 Crowd Pleaser. And my admiration for the man comes from him being able to give you some pretty challenging [purely from a narrative perspective] fare within these admittedly severe restrictions.
Let’s look at what he sandwiched in between the Dark Knight Trilogies (what he brought to the Batman Saga deserves another long post of its own):
A handsome Period Piece about dueling magicians that turns increasingly nasty.Honestly, I love The Prestige but upon each view, I’m gob smacked by how bleak it is and how Nolan snuck this Twisty and Vicious Thriller by the Summer Popcorn crowd, with 2 A-Listers whose characters remain sworn enemies until the bitter end.
A Corporate Espionage Thriller and Bond-like actioner operating across 4 layers of the subconscious.
A father-daughter relationship drama playing out across a galaxy-spanning, time-hopping sci fi quest. On that note, I’m bemused at the hate among some circles that Interstellar gets. I mean, the same people who castigated Nolan over his “cold and calculated” approach to thrillers like Memento, Inception and The Prestige also raked him over the coals when he unleashed the sort of lachrymose melodrama in Interstellar that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Bhim Singh flick in the ’70s. The man can’t win!
Remove these restrictions under which Nolan is operating and you’d probably remove a lot of the flaws his movies are accused of having.
He could stop the exposition dumps and give you abstract constructs, which would bring him closer to Kubrick
He could slow the narrative down to a moody, languid pace exploring characters which would make him another Ang Lee.
He could choose to ditch the PG-13 rating and go apeshit on the violence, and be a less crazy Mel Gibson and a more sophisticated Tarantino.
But NONE of the above would make him the most successful A-List directors working today delivering consistent back to back hits of ORIGINAL material.
I too balk at the comparisons to Kubrick, Tarkovsky etc etc.
They play in far different sandboxes.
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Rahul
July 26, 2017
sanjay2706 and others, Anuj is an idiot. Engage him at the risk of wasting your time and derailing the thread.
BR, I know, FOE and all, but I will request you again to remove comments of users who consistently engage in ad hominem.
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brangan
July 26, 2017
KayKay: I did not make the Kubrick comparison. In the sense that the comment above was coming from an exasperation with reviews that did make that comparison. I do not doubt for a minute that with all his limitations, Nolan is a very interesting mainstream filmmaker.
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jayasoorya0304
July 27, 2017
@Dagalti Why do you think choice renders identity inauthentic, or that is what Nolan is trying to say?
To me, it felt like (in the prestige) the two characters were making organically authentic choices, and meet their organic ends, all in heavy sentimental/melodramatic fashion.
Their willingness to meet the natural progression of their choices head-on seemed to Grant and signal authenticity to their motives and their identities.
The prestige to me though (the book itself) seems too contrived, inorganic and gimmicky for me to rate it as Nolan’s best, but that is me.
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brangan
July 27, 2017
A Guardian piece:
“Don’t be silly, the reviewers groan: it is the horror of war as never before. OK, got that, another stab at war-is-hell. Except that Dunkirk is no such thing. It is a 12A effort that avoids blood and guts as thoroughly as it avoids so much else. In the film, people hit by bombs die discreetly, with no unseemly dismemberment. Even abandoning a torpedoed ship doesn’t seem too unpleasant. So the movie doesn’t, as claimed, make you feel the terror of those it depicts. Why not?”
https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2017/jul/26/bloodless-boring-empty-christopher-nolan-dunkirk-left-me-cold
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praneshp
July 27, 2017
@Vivek et al: was the see you later a general reaction, or a reaction to the downed pilot waving his hand out from the small opening in the cockpit? I read it as the latter, and was wondering if anyone else thought so.
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Drunken Monkey
July 27, 2017
Very OT question:
Indha vellakaara pasanga ellan nammaku venaam saar. I seriously want to know is there one indian war film that worked for you? one single cross-border war film that a south Indian can relate to?
P.S: Please don’t tell Border. Sunny deol, sunil shetty all i know only from jetty vilambaram.
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theartofexpressions
July 27, 2017
http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/dunkirk-why-india-cant-watch-christopher-nolans-imax-war-epic-the-way-he-intended-3856921.html
Please read this why indian critics have issue with Dunkrik.
People who questions image quality of movie, should question qualities of their multiplex
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theartofexpressions
July 27, 2017
https://thewire.in/160244/dunkirk-review-christopher-nolan/
A very good review of Dunkrik
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theartofexpressions
July 27, 2017
Just saw Dunkrik and really liked it. I was crying in the end and I think this is first time I did that for a Nolan movie.
Its ok if some people couldn’t connect with it. But to say he should have done this and that is totally unfair. It felt he intended at making this way, someone couldn’t connect that is also ok. But that someone should not say that he should have done character development blah blah..
I mean first you see the movie in a intended format in a proper theatre and then complain about movie.
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Vivek
July 27, 2017
@praneshp: I think it was purely a symbolic, good luck gesture towards his friend. I don’t think his friend could have seen him wave.
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Anuj
July 27, 2017
So now we have dirty rotten rats like Rahul indulging in direct name calling & trying desperately to convince other not to indulge in discussion because he himself is incapable of doing so. Excellent! Just what I expected from the “crony brigade”. As for the one’s talking about rational, I guess Nolan is one of the few film makers who actually introduced logic and rational into the art of story telling in a manner very few have done before. Whether it is a simple story of a self inflicted personal loss transformed into a brain teasing non linear narrative, whether its about telling the world that superheros & super villains can be “normal” people with normal emotions instead of being one’s from outer space, whether it is taking a concept of dreams and dreaming and transforming it into an edge of the seat “what next” thriller or whether it is introducing us to the concepts of astrophysics like none of our school textbooks did, Nolan is a film maker who challenges himself and mostly outdoes himself with every film. Critics and folks who wanna criticise just for the sake of “standing out in a crowd” are the last souls on earth to be talking of rationality. Anyhow, such critics of the great film maker are very and far between, more like ants and cockroaches in a world which has accepted him as one of the finest film makers of our generation and one who definitely does not need certificates from “going against the norm under the garb of personal opinion” morons. Nolan’s popularity and cult is not about his online fan clubs. Its about how his films perform at the box office, the kind of viewership and discussion they generate and how his films are watched by one and all across the world, irrespective of the theme, content and genre.
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brangan
July 27, 2017
Anuj: I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ban you from this site. The question isn’t that you differ in opinion. That’s a good thing. But your relentless personal attacks on the people who think differently from you are exhausting, very negative-energy inducing, and frankly, pointless.
You can make your points without snidely insulting everyone, but you refuse to do so. I cannot ask you to change, but I can ensure that these comments aren’t around anymore in a site where people genuinely like to discuss cinema.
Have a good life. Cheers.
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KayKay
July 27, 2017
“I did not make the Kubrick comparison. In the sense that the comment above was coming from an exasperation with reviews that did make that comparison”
Fair enough, B. Was merely stressing the point that within the limited boundaries I mentioned, Nolan’s about the only film maker today putting out interesting and original work.
I have no doubt that should he ever go back to his low budget indie days of Following and Memento without the pressure to deliver a Summer Blockbuster appealing to the widest possible demographic, then he’d face serious competition as you have several interesting filmmakers operating on that spectrum. In fact, on that score, I consider Denis Villeneuve to be a far more interesting film-maker and about the only reason to look forward to Blade Runner 2049
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"Original" Venkatesh
July 27, 2017
Wait, what in the name of hell’s bean happened here.!
Why is Anuj thrown out ? Surely he didnt cross the line at least not by my reading however hey i am not the blog owner/moderator.
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KayKay
July 27, 2017
“Surely he didnt cross the line at least not by my reading”
You have a lot of reading to catch up on, then hehehehehe
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brangan
July 27, 2017
theartofexpressions: I mean first you see the movie in a intended format in a proper theatre and then complain about movie.
I don’t get this “intended format” spiel at all. Lawrence of Arabia works gloriously on the big screen, and when the train goes off the track, it’s a matchless experience. But even when you see it on your computer, the story beats work.
Format can certainly enhance one’s experience of a film, but it cannot “change” one’s perception of the screenplay etc.
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"Original" Venkatesh
July 27, 2017
@KayKay : “You have a lot of reading to catch up on, then hehehehehe” — enna ba..
I did read the whole thread , he seems to be his usual muddled “rebellious” self, same as always is what i thought.
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Rahini David
July 27, 2017
Honest raj: then you did read the “barking” comment in the other thread which was quite frankly… barking.
He has been the same for atleast a couple of years but you know about the final straw on the back of a camel may not be significant by itself. But in this case, the last straw was as heavy as a log, imo.
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Rahini David
July 27, 2017
Sorry, not honest raj, original venkatesh.
Btw, did you read the jagga jasoos thread?
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"Original" venkatesh)
July 28, 2017
@Rahini David: “then you did read the “barking” comment in the other thread which was quite frankly… barking” … hmm no … where is this?
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Rahini David
July 28, 2017
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sid
July 28, 2017
Wow, Anuj is exactly the kind of Nolan fanboy who critics complained about way back in 2008. I remember the critics who put forward the first negative reviews of The Dark Knight were abused all over the internet and social media by these “fans” (the same thing happened when Inception and Interstellar came out as well!).
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theartofexpressions
July 28, 2017
@brangan If i look at screenplay of Dunkrik, I think its not extraordinary by any mean. But I felt the way Nolan intended it to more of immersive experience. As he says its VR without google.. Thats where he intended.
And that happens if you see movie in a proper format. Its not a film where you are going to connect to a character or the story itself, Probably you are going to love the experience of watching the movie, you are going to get thrill out of the sound and cinematography and that thrill will connect you with the movie in a way that you will clap when tom hardy shoots at enemy’s plane because you were really tensed about will he be able to save them.. and you were tensed because you could feel the intensity and that intensity depends on format in this case.
See if i watch Bahubali in laptop i may find it just ok. I will still appreciate the fight scene and other scene and I would say scenes are good. But If I watch it in theatre then I end up liking it more. Obviously you are going to say that but you could still connect with the bahubali even if you are watching on laptop.. and that is correct.. coz it has story, dance, character.
Dunkrik doesn’t have all of this [not that Noaln wanted it]. But he relies on a different medium to connect with us, He relies on experience.
See you saw it and you had some complaints and I saw it and I liked it. But I am not sure if I can be honest with a movie if I haven’t watched the movie in intended format.
If i watch Raincoat it doesn’t matter where I see it. But in case of Avtar it might matter. There also experience was everything not the story.
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"Original" Venkatesh
July 28, 2017
@Rahini David : You owe me at least 3 hours of my time , not to mention the bleach i had to put on my brain post reading that 🙂
Generally, I reflexively reach out on the side of Free Speech., even though this blog is not really a free and open platform. Its BR’s blog and he is the dictator here.
Having said that, God that guy was corrosive ,good riddance to bad rubbish.
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brangan
July 28, 2017
We all are for free speech, which is why these bans — how sadly dictatorial that sounds — happen so rarely. But at some point one has to weigh free speech versus allowing the spirit of discussion to get hijacked into a different zone.
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Honest Raj (formerly 'V'enkatesh)
July 28, 2017
Sometimes, I wonder why people become highly energetic when it comes to feeding the trolls – I have nothing against them (or Anuj) though. Btw, is apex banned? Or, he voluntarily chose to drop out?
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TheManWithTwonames
July 28, 2017
Curious Question: Is it normal for the projection to feel a bit washed out and grainy in normal non-Imax screens? Or is it just the bad projection in my local theatre?
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sanjana
July 28, 2017
If the film is to be seen in a certain format, then it loses out allround appreciation. It is not the fault of the audience or critics. How many of us got the time and money to go in search of the best theatre experience?
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theartofexpressions
July 29, 2017
@sanjana
Correct. I didn’t say that its your fault you didn’t like the movie or didn’t watch in correct format, neither its director’s as he obviously didn’t care about how regular people are going to watch it.
But what I am trying to say is I am not being 100% honest about my complain for the movie like Dunkrik or avatar if I haven’t seen it in correct format.
Again this happens when a movie is intended to be a visual or immersive experience or relying on the visuals and sound to connect with audience and not on the story.
I watched Avtar on laptop and couldn’t understand why so much noise about the movie and then one of my friend said to me that people were throwing up in the theater because of all 3D effects and all [may be he exaggerated ]. I realized that may be I was wrong.
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theartofexpressions
July 29, 2017
I think I am going to write a post about how a theatre can affect your movie experience. For ex. I am pretty sure Swades, Raincoat or Rocket Singh can’t work in a theatre as these movies are bit slow, they work excellently on Laptop. But in theatre people might get restless because of slowness.
On the other hand Bahubali, Star Wars work in theatre more than laptop.
Again viewer always will be get connected with a good movie whether he/she watches in theatre or laptop. But sometime difference in the theatre and laptop experience can make huge difference that you end up just liking the movie or really liking the movie.
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tonks
July 29, 2017
To be sure, more than 300,000 British troops were evacuated from Dunkirk, and the number of troops of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps in Dunkirk amounted to a few hundred. But as John Broich, who teaches history at Case Western Reserve University in the US, pointed out recently in Slate: “There were also four (Indian) companies … on those beaches. Observers said they were particularly cool under fire and well organized during the retreat. They weren’t large in number … but their appearance in the film would have provided a good reminder of how utterly central the role of the Indian Army was in the war. Their service meant the difference between victory and defeat. In fact, while Britain and other allies were licking their wounds after Dunkirk, the Indian Army picked up the slack in North Africa and the Middle East.”
During the Dunkirk evacuation, John Ashdown, a British army officer, managed to get many of his Indian troops on the last ship before the jetty was bombed. In doing this, he disobeyed an order from one of his superiors to abandon his Indian troops. He was later court-martialled, but the judgement against him was ultimately thrown out, and Ashdown ended the war as a colonel. Ashdown’s son Paddy, who would become a Marine captain and lead the Liberal Democrats in British politics, said in an interview with The Guardian in 2000: “My father thought simply that these were his men, he was responsible for them, and he must bring them back.”
http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/YAke6pEMeev8AfP8vKA76H/Dunkirk-and-the-delusions-of-empire.html
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tonks
July 29, 2017
About the over-explaining in Nolan’s works, I do not remember him doing that in Memento (which I love best among all his movies). He admittedly perhaps did spell it out in Prestige and Inception, but I’m sure that unless he had done that, he might have left a lot of us viewers foggy about what exactly was going on.
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brangan
July 29, 2017
theartofexpressions: No one is denying anything you say. I know a lot of people who’ll read a review of mine and then watch the film on a tablet and say, “Oh, it wasn’t that great.” That’s why many foreign publications have a review for the film when it first comes out and then another review when it comes out on DVD. So an Avatar may be an A in the former but a C in the latter.
But I disagree with you here: I am not being 100% honest about my complain for the movie like Dunkrik or avatar if I haven’t seen it in correct format
A review is a statement of one’s experience of a film at that point in time, not a classification for eternity. So my “experience” of Dunkirk is that from the centre seat in a large theatre with a 70mm screen. But without IMAX.
Like any film, my review is a function of the theatre I saw it in, the mood I was in when I saw the film, the things on my mind then, my age, how much sleep I got the previous night… It’s not just the “theatre.”
And like any review, I am not saying Dunkirk IS a problematic film. All I am saying is that IN MY OPINION, it’s not very impressive. This is true of all film reviews. I don’t see why Nolan has to be an exception, and why just in Nolan’s case my review is “dishonest.”
For that matter, I watched Avatar in a 70mm theatre with 3D and I wasn’t impressed at all.
“The visuals are expectedly eye-popping, especially in 3-D, but couldn’t they have diverted a few dollars more towards the script?”
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brangan
July 29, 2017
tonks: But that’s unfair, no? A filmmaker has the right to choose the story, the angle he or she wants. He/she is not obliged to be faithful to history. At the end of the day, we are still watching a kind of fiction — not a documentary.
This is like castigating Sofia Coppola for not having that black character in her version of The Beguiled. It’s the way she saw the story. You cannot force people to tell the story YOU want to see on screen (or YOU think is politically correct).
Of course, it’s important that these things are pointed out, so we become aware of the circumstances of the time and the larger story, but one cannot fault a film for these things.
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tonks
July 29, 2017
BR, not faulting the film or Nolan at all. I just found that link and the point they make about the invisibility of brown skin, interesting. I liked the movie, as I’ve liked all of Nolan’s movies. I just wish that I’d had the chance of seeing it in an IMAX screen. What a pity that there’s not one such theatre in the whole of India now.
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Rohit Sathish Nair
July 29, 2017
Not a movie review of Dunkirk
Why you shouldn’t read it:
It’s a little too tentative and not very well constructed
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Pavlova
July 29, 2017
Re: Sofia Coppola and The Beguiled
http://www.indiewire.com/2017/07/sofia-coppola-the-beguiled-backlash-response-1201855684/
She is far more intelligent than people give her credit for.
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sravishanker1401gmailcom
July 29, 2017
Pavlova : Many Thanks for the link. This girl IS articulate. AS articulate as her father, the great seducer of Hollywood, Francis F C
https://thezolazone.wordpress.com/2017/07/27/cartoon-tamilnadus-sweetheart/
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KayKay
July 30, 2017
Christopher Nolan’s 10th feature film is pure visual poetry, especially when watched on an IMAX screen.
It’s also, interestingly enough, his most experimental.
Dunkirk begins like someone chopped off the first 2 acts in a traditional narrative and dropped you straight into the third. It’s a war movie with no set-up nor build-up. It’s a Climax played out over 90 minutes.
I love Nolan’s movies, but I’m glad Dunkirk is his shortest to date, as 90 minutes of bombings, drownings, planes crashing, ships capsizing and heavy gunfire not to mention Hans Zimmer’s buzzing, droning, ominous score can leave your nerve ends frayed.
It’s NOT a conventional War Movie. There are no character build-up,back story, romance sub-plot or scenes of soldiers bonding under fire, stock tropes of a war flick.
Dunkirk is a War Movie in it’s purest, most visceral form.
It’s a little strange. But it’s never less than amazing!
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GODZ
August 2, 2017
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/01/indian-african-dunkirk-history-whitewash-attitudes
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dagalti (@dagalti)
August 3, 2017
@jayasoorya0304
// Why do you think choice renders identity inauthentic, or that is what Nolan is trying to say?
….signal authenticity to their motives and their identities.//
Borden/Fallon’s choice is to make their trick authentic. That makes their personal lives fall short.
It isn’t my reading as much as Borden actually saying it in words to Angier in the last scene.
Of course this a long-running theme (Oscar Wilde :”I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works”), that artists have captured in so many ways. For instance, life acting as a ‘mere’ source of art comes again and again in so many different shades in Woody Allen’s works.
In this film, the art is question is precisely of a nature that imposes limits on the nature of the most intimate relationship the artist can have.
The artist here chooses the authenticity of his art even if it meant not giving his wife a feeling of full authenticity of their relationship.
In Inception it is the other-way round. That is what I was trying to point out.
Dom achieved artistic pinnacle. He has the option / temptation of going back to that perfection of his art and living with his wife – a life lived to old age many times over. And yet rejects that to choose the imperfect reality than his flawless creation.
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vishal yogin
August 3, 2017
I watched Dunkirk finally, and um this was my first Nolan movie (no havent seen interstellar, etc yet). It felt just average, and didnt feel very imax worthy to me, as was Baahubali. And at the moment, I cant fathom why this is so, but it is so. A partial reason could be that there was no coherent story running throughout, it felt like mini incidents stitched together.
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theartofexpressions
August 5, 2017
@ brangan
I never said your review is dishonest. I said I am not sure if I would be.
And I think what I wanted to us is the word Fair instead of honest. In my opinion I am not sure if I would be fair to a movie if I haven’t watched the movie in correct format and I am finding a movie problematic Again that just me. I am not sure if I can discuss my complain regarding movie to its director if the format was not correct.
I did say that its bit wrong to complain about the movie when you didn’t watch it in the correct format. But that was a wrong statement from my side. Sure you can complain. Only thing is If I were you, I wouldn’t be sure if I am being fair to the movie. Again the fairness is bit subjective. Telling lie at home might be fair to parents for some people or unfair for some people.
Though I would add one more thing which i think I am repeating – Dunkrik is a different movie then all the other movies as it doesn’t have much of story. Its like you are watching a real life evacuation plan like how it happened or what it feels like to be in war. Its like watching 26/11 video using footage from outside as well as inside of Taj hotel. Now in order to engage audience either you do fictional things like terrorist is looking for you and you are just hiding behind the door or you put your audience in the middle of it or you make it completely like a documentary movie with interviews and real life footage etc.
Since it doesn’t have story, it relies on experience to engage audience. It tries to immerse its viewers and that may not be happening on a normal screen and that why your problems couldn’t convince me.
And thats why I think I wont be fair to a movie if I had headache or crowd was distracting or theatre wasn’t good enough and find issue with the movie. Thats all I wanted to say. Again that just me.
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blurb
August 6, 2017
I wish that it hadn’t resulted in a ban.
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blurb
August 6, 2017
I got a bit confused… I’m catching up with the blog after a few weeks. I seem to have double posted the same content in multiple threads. Sorry.
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Amit Joki
December 11, 2017
Dunkirk felt all action no emotion no? I just sat through it. There was no exhilarating goosebump climax as in Apollo 13. I’d say Saving Private Ryan > Hacksaw Ridge > Dunkirk. Don’t know why it was so celebrated on its release. Apart from its visual brilliance, there wasn’t much on screen. I wasn’t rooting for anyone to be saved at all.
The only goosebump moment I had was when the guy that dies gets mentioned in the paper as the Hero of the Dunkirk, but apart from that, it was not a Nolan-experience I was used to.
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