Cast: Fionn
Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard, James
D'Arcy, Barry Keoghan, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy.
Directed by: Christopher
Nolan.
A retelling of
the Dunkirk evacuation - a crucial episode in the early years of the World War
II. Allied soldiers fight for survival against seemingly insurmountable odds as
German forces close in.
Dunkirk
has been touted to be the movie of the year, not without reason of
course, it's not every day that a Christopher Nolan movie hits the
screens. Some have already hailed it as the greatest war film ever.
Coming
three Years after Interstellar and seven years after Inception,
expectations are rather lofty and I for one am glad for the subject,
mostly because Dunkirk isn't the third of the "mindf*ck trilogy". I
had to watch Inception twice in order to ‘get’ it, and with Interstellar, I
stopped trying.
Thankfully,
Dunkirk follows a far more conventional plot, and even though we are shown the
story from three separate timelines that sometimes criss-cross but truly
converge towards the end, it is not very difficult to follow after a while.
No
twists, no Ta-Da or a-ha moments, but all through its 106 minutes, you can’t
help but be at the edge of your seat thanks to the tight screenplay, taut editing, and
brilliant visuals and sounds.
There
is no background story or introduction here, the movie starts off by dropping
us in the midst of a war-zone, and we barely get time to dust ourselves off as
the almost nameless and always faceless enemy strikes, regularly and
unflinchingly.
This
is Nolan's most ‘different’ film yet and credit to the director for
pulling it off superbly.
What
is his biggest achievement is the fact that in this age of
excessive CGI and visual effects where we have gotten used to
watching buildings and planets being destroyed by aliens and cowboys, how
amazingly real and painful the sequences appear. The sound of a single bullet
hitting metal is enough to jolt us and make us panic for the unnamed soldiers
whose lives are in danger.
There
is no single protagonist here, and very little dialogue is spoken during the
length of the film, and this adds to the effectiveness of the plot. Almost
all the actors are flawless in their performances and the emotions are subtle
and not shoved down our throats; Bollywood would do well to take a leaf out of
Nolan's page and abandon the jingoism we reserve for our war films (Lakshya
being a rare exception).
Is
the movie perfect? Not really, Nolan being Nolan, some questions, while not
left unanswered, kept me bugging well into the second half of the movie, and
that felt a bit unnecessary, given the larger context. Also, the separate
timelines, while they contribute positively to the film, take
some time to get used to, particularly because of the abrupt cut-scenes.
But
this is nitpicking of the connoisseur kind.
Watch
Dunkirk, not because of the 'Kids watch Game
of Thrones, and legends watch Dunkirk' memes, not because of Harry
Styles (fine performer and at par with the rest of the cast except for the
train scene), watch it for the horrors and the little victories of war, watch
it to realise how good film-making can sometimes transcend the boundaries of the
medium, and become something else altogether.
And
yes, watch it because you don't have to see it more than once to figure it
out.
RATING: 4/5.
Image taken from here.
I have not yet watched it , but after reading about it and its reviwes and i cant wait myself to watch it. once i watch it i will surely post my review about it.
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