What Christopher Nolan sacrificed to make 'Dunkirk'

Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” was amazing, it clearly showed how ambitious Nolan is. I love the way he put the story piece by piece with what seemed like a messy timeline and concluded in the end. It really reminds me of 'Memento'. Both had almost the same style, but in 'Memento', the story was being told backward.

I also love how he made viewers feel like we’re on the beach, in the sea, and on the plane all at once, each time trying to survive. He forced us to be there, to become the character, to have the same experience. This was made by the amazing shots he took of simply the beach, the ocean, and the sky. I was amazed by the view.

The tension was definitely created by the sounds. As if that’s not enough, the score by Mr. Hans Zimmer also supported the ambiance of a war zone. Simply put, I think the editing was great, both images and sounds.

Unfortunately though, to achieve all of those, Nolan had to sacrifice the other elements. And those are the character developments and the emotion. Pretty much substantial.

We understand that unlike his other movies - where he created the story himself - he couldn’t play around that much with 'Dunkirk' because this was based on history. 'Dunkirk' is about the deliverance of 400,000 men in Dunkirk, France, during WWII back to England. Nolan had to make this one event into the duration of a feature film. So, how did he do that?

He was playing with it. He was playing with the duration of the film by making it in 3 points of view, by crisscrossing the scenes, repeating some parts, and making each of them a puzzle piece you need to collect. To help him with that, the sound editing and mixing were amazing. Even the scoring was supporting the sounds, it gave us a more intense feeling Nolan wanted us to experience. Too bad, though. Hans Zimmer couldn't provide what was missing in 'Dunkirk', and that was the character's emotion, his work was to support Nolan’s vision of creating tension.

Nolan gave away the character developments, we couldn’t really relate to all of them. He forced us into the war zone without any introduction. Made us learn by experience, but so little we knew about the characters. We learned one or two things from the short dialogs given but still, we couldn’t really sympathize with them. At least not enough to make them memorable except for the interesting choices of casting.

I couldn’t help but to compare it with Joe Wright’s 'Atonement'. This movie had only 5 minutes of the scene in Dunkirk but it was enough to let you feel everything. The single-take with so many details; the horse killings, car engines being destroyed, soldiers singing a hymn in harmony, those are enough to make you feel the hopelessness, the desperation made by the war, and the need to come home. And the wonderful music, 'An Elegy of Dunkirk', by Dario Marianelli intensified that. One of many reasons why I think 'Atonement' is a great movie.

That long take of Joe Wright’s Dunkirk scene is what Christopher Nolan missed in his 2 hours of 'Dunkirk'.

But maybe that was not Nolan’s intention. Maybe his only objective was to make us have the experience.

What I think is amazing in this movie was somehow Nolan showed us that editing was not just a technique to stick every scene together in the end, it’s also a way of telling a story. He used it very well. He might as well be the master of it. We can see very well the effort he put into this movie. It was huge, definitely.

'Dunkirk' was still a great movie though, but everything goes back to us as the audience. He may have amazed us with the great techniques used, but did he successfully steal our hearts with the story and the acting performances given?

This may not be the best of Nolan, or at least not my favorite, but still, I enjoyed watching 'Dunkirk'.

'Dunkirk' is directed by Christopher Nolan, starring Harry Styles, Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Cillian Murphy, Kenneth Branagh, Jack Lowden, and Fionn Whitehead.