“Dunkirk” is Undeniably Over-rated
By Nabil Bakri
Well, as usual, I’m going to start
with my own story. I love movies, I really love movies but I don’t really like
movie theatres. I go to cinema, occasionally, but I’m fine not going to one for
a full year. Usually, it has to be something special or my friends ‘forcing’ me
to watch certain movies together in cinema, but mostly I just watch movies in
my home. So, I heard about Dunkirk and my friends praise the movie, critics
seem to love it, it’s playing good at the box office, awards are coming, and so
on, it’s a classic story of a successful film. But still, I didn’t go to cinema
mostly because there are lots of films that I had to watch in my own movie
archive. But knowing that Dunkirk is directed by Christopher Nolan and it won
the hearts of people including critics, I decided to buy it on blu-ray the
moment it came to the store. I know that the film is supposed to be enjoyed in
big IMAX screen, but I can see through the screen the way I enjoy movies that
supposed to be enjoyed in 3D, but I can still enjoy and embrace the scenes of
those movies in plain 2D. And predictably, I could enjoy the cinematography and
special effects of Dunkirk and I praise the film for these two aspects. But
that’s it, that’s all. Dunkirk left me stunned in front of my screen, waiting
for something to happen, something. The film has beautiful scenes but there’s
no story in it. And that’s a problem for me.
STORY
When
you watch a movie, you can’t expect deeper narration and meaning than books,
because movies are not books, if you want some extra deep understanding of
something, don’t watch movies but read books. Movies are here to take us on a
journey outside our world, to bend reality and make us smile or maintain our
feeling in a flow alongside the situations depicted in the movies. But that
does not mean neglecting the aspect of storytelling in movies. Heck, it is
actually the most important point of a movie. We can still enjoy Chaplin’s The Great Dictator or hey, City Lights that clearly does not have
dialogue with sound as Norma Desmond (Sunset
Boulevard) says that they sell faces and expressions instead of ‘talking
and talking’, why, that’s because there’s a story there. We could not care less
about how ugly the monsters from old movies, that first King Kong looks like a puppet that has been crushed by your dad’s
car, there are clearly people inside Godzilla
suits in old Godzilla movies, and you
can see the shark’s mouth bends like a pillow in Jaws, and many other things, but that doesn’t really matter because
we all care about the story.
Dunkirk
has beautiful shots and amazing effects, of course, that’s a benefit for the
film to convey a story. But unfortunately, I found a void of emptiness in the
movie. What is the story? A bunch of soldier trying to get the hell out of a
place and sympathetic patriotic citizens willingly helping them? That’s not a
story, that’s a fact. That is the main problem, but what do you want to do with
that basic and broad problem? Similar to the day you establish your thesis, you
got to find a problem then find a more specific one, choose one, and based on
your questions and objectives, you can analyse the selected problem. The
historical background of Dunkirk is extremely broad with almost countless
stories to tell from each survivor. Actually, you can choose a topic and try to
tell everything, but that’d make your project a documentary and although it’s
informative, it has no deep meaning that the audience can relate to their own
lives. I saw a documentary of the Vietnam War, Vietnam in HD. It was a great documentary, it’s fascinating, but
that’s it. I know more about the war, but there’s nothing I can relate to. It,
no matter how touching and comprehensive the presentation, is just a bunch of
information curated into one full-length documentary, it’s there to provide you
information about history. Even so, the documentary Vietnam in HD, at least chooses few key persons, and elaborate
their contributions, involvements, even their private lives before the war.
What
happens in Nolan’s Dunkirk? A film should engage the audience, to put them to a
subjective level that they care about the characters. But there are too many
characters for the audience to focus on and we barely know a thing about any of
them, so how can we relate ourselves to them and subjectively care about them
thus we feel involved with the story? Sure, the effects of both the moving
pictures and soundtracks are good thus able to transport you to a film. But no
matter how advanced the current technology is, it will be surpassed by future
technology and people in the future will be able to tell the lacks quite easily
and without a strong narrative to help it, it will be forgotten by time, also
quite easily. When a film is created to look really good in IMAX or 3D, that’s
okay, but that does not mean you will only make movies that look good in IMAX and
not in any other screens. IMAX is a benefit, but that’s not the point of the
movie. Technology is not the ‘currency’ for films’ longevity, it’s the story. Dunkirk
is unbelievably simple and soulless. It has no specific complexity to make it
memorable, because there’s nothing in the story that is relatable to us. What
can we learn from the movie? That we should become a coward? We should hide
from the face of war immediately? We should help people although we know
nothing about them? The acts of the people in Dunkirk are great, but what we
need is not MERELY what they do, but what propels them to do such thing. An
action or a situation will inevitably create a chain reaction, and the process
of the continuation of the chain reaction is what we need to know.
Aren’t
there any chain reactions in Dunkirk? Yes, an action affect another, but instead
of showing us a specific chain reaction, it mashes up so many results of chain
reactions to build another chain reactions. What does that mean? What happen to
those soldiers in that point when they are desperate to get help, are the
results of individual chain reactions that happened to each character. Since we
have no idea about what happened to any of them before the happening in
Dunkirk, the situation is already a pile up of chain reactions of the lives of
those soldiers, and the story goes on by adding new chain reactions based on
the existing pile of chain reactions. In other words, we know nothing about the
back story of the characters or at least their motivation. Thus, what happens
in the whole movie seems to be plain because we see no specific intention and
we do not witness the changing situation based on a motive or the change in
chain reaction. It feels like the movie
is a chapter from a cookbook presenting the steps to make an apple pie,
with numbers to guide us to the next step, similar to what happen in the film,
scenes after scenes are just following the previous scenes in an arranged
number that guide us how to watch Dunkirk from the beginning to the end. In the
end, I was speechless but I could ask this question, “Is that it?” because I feel
that there must be something more than just what I have seen. It’s not that the
movie is super awful or anything, but seriously, that’s all? What? Then what?
Tell me!
CHARACTERS
I
know the fact that how the movie looks is intentional and that fact can easily
be used to attack critics who negatively criticize Dunkirk by saying, “Owh,
that’s intentional, Dude!” but that does not justify the film’s claim to be a
film. With the lack of story, it should be a documentary (The Amazing Bulk looks like ‘that’
because it’s the director’s intention who said it himself, Avatar: The Legend of Aang the live action looks like ‘that’
because Syamalan intended it to be like ‘that’, there, the director’s intention
does not equal a good movie or a good idea, do not become soft simply because
it’s Christopher Nolan and not Syamalan). Indeed we say that
being so true to history is the best thing to do, but again, we have to
understand that the project is created by all means to be a film. In a film, it
is normal and logical to use creative licence, because we know from day one
that a film is limited to many things and in order to deliver a story, we need
to take an artistic liberty as long as it is not too far from the fact, if it
is based on a true story. Thus, it is more suitable for you to say “it’s
intentional” to defend Disney’s Pocahontas or Titanic which clearly has two
fictional main characters, but it’s intentional and at least there’s our main
characters.
I
think Dunkirk is more of a docudrama than a ‘war film’. It focuses more to the
event than to specific invented characters, which, that’s the very intention
for Cameron to add Jack and Rose, to avoid the film from being a docudrama. But
that doesn’t mean it is a good docudrama. Since I’ve talked about Titanic, I’m
going to use a related example, A Night to Remember. The film is about the
sinking of Titanic, it received positive receptions from critics and general
audience, and the film is a popular selection of the Criterion Collection.
Unlike Cameron’s Titanic, A Night to Remember focuses heavily on the historical
perspective and shows us the whole aspects of the tragedy, even from the day
the ship launched to the technical aspects of the tragedy which includes people
from different ships. Dunkirk certainly fits to that criteria, but even in a
praised docudrama such as A Night to Remember, there is, still, a main
character portrayed by Kenneth Moore as Officer Lightoller. Even though we do
not know much more about all other historical characters, we know the main
character that we can relate to. When the ship starts sinking, we want to know
what happen to the main character and how he handles the situation. There is,
still, a story in the docudrama. Whether Nolan (or his team) says that it’s not
about characters or winning a war, or it’s about survival and what happen to
people in the face of war, or it was meant to be realistic, does not justify
all the praise for its story-telling. By detaching the audience to the
characters, the audience are unable to feel what they feel and based on my
viewing experience, I do not feel it to be realistic because it’s too obvious
that what happen in an actual war (war-time, in an actual war, in the frontline,
not during the preparation or the days back in the camp) is way more
frightening and depressing. By eliminating the connection between me and any
character in the movie, I am unable to understand how it feels based on the
character’s actions. If we care about the character, we care about what he
feels, thus he is able to translate the sense of distress that the film tries
to convey to us the audience.
What
motivates him? Why him? Why he does that? Why he deserves to survive? Why he
doesn’t kill himself? Why he’s so appealing? Why? Why? The film stands as if
Nolan is selling me a bag but he just say “This is a bag, you should buy one”,
and because he is NOLAN, most people are going to believe that the bag is good,
“Oh, it’s Nolan, it must be good! Why there’s a hole in this bag? Oh, its
Nolan, it must be intentional!” But as I said, it’s like Nolan selling me a bag
by just saying that it is a bag without saying what’s special about the bag,
like, “Here, it’s made from Corinthian leather, the zipper is pure gold, you
can fit your house in it, bla, bla.” Is the movie extra bad because of that? It’s
bad, but not extra, but it certainly is not good enough to gain such praise,
you better keep the praise for something else. And you have to know that I
wrote this review in 2018, which is, quite a long gap between Dunkirk’s release
date and the birth of this review, but what I see is that the talks of Dunkirk
diminishes as fast as it gained the praise, it’s just another form of hype. I’m
afraid that there will be more movies propelled by hype thus won’t stand the
test of time…
I think most of you already know the
positive praises for Dunkirk, I read a bunch of them myself and I too praise its
brilliant cinematography and effects, but I think you should also know some
peoples’ negative opinions about Dunkirk as these points are not illogical…and,
these statements end my review…
***
(BY NIKOLA)
In few decades we will know which
directors and movies are good. Currently there is too much social pressure
created by media to like the Nolan brand and his films.
Nolan made some good and
very entertaining films (the main purpose of a film) like Insomnia. With
Interstellar the business engine started relying a lot on advertising but the
film still could justify the adverts up to a point. Dunkirk is a moment when Nolan's
film as a product completely detached from the advertising. Product (the film)
is one thing while advertising is another. And the audience believes the
advertising.
Dunkirk is a storyless and
characterless film which is an experiment in filming techniques. It focuses on
filming methods and not on what audience needs — emotional experience.
At the same time Dunkirk, like
Interstellar, is sold by PR and advertising as genius, epic, etc. Without the
hype, which was perfected with Interstellar, and without the Nolan brand
Dunkirk would be a boring unpopular film.
As with contemporary art, values of
abstract products such as films can be drastically increased by media. Is
Damien Hirst a great artist or an opportunity to make lots of quick cash with
PR? What about Jeff Koons? What about Nolan?
We will know much later when the
effect of advertising disappears. However, I think that it is overrated.
***
(All 'Dunkirk' Photos belong to WB)
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