Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
- DarkImbecile
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
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That is Cillian Murphy's character towing the central Mole characters back to shore; we don't see what happens to him in the interim between that scene and his rescue by Mark Rylance in the Sea portion, which I think is a great choice.
- aox
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
DamnDarkImbecile wrote:SpoilerShowThat is Cillian Murphy's character towing the central Mole characters back to shore; we don't see what happens to him in the interim between that scene and his rescue by Mark Rylance in the Sea portion, which I think is a great choice.
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Now the timeline is really screwed up for me. He's on Rylance's yacht throughout this I thought. And, it never shows the ship he boards that is inevitably sunk (he is found sitting on the hull near the propeller).
- Ribs
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
The timeline's pretty simple: action taking place halfway through in the land segment would be taking place about halfway through the week leading up to the conclusion, therefore about two days before the sea section starts.aox wrote:DamnDarkImbecile wrote:SpoilerShowThat is Cillian Murphy's character towing the central Mole characters back to shore; we don't see what happens to him in the interim between that scene and his rescue by Mark Rylance in the Sea portion, which I think is a great choice.
SpoilerShowNow the timeline is really screwed up for me. He's on Rylance's yacht throughout this I thought. And, it never shows the ship he boards that is inevitably sunk (he is found sitting on the hull near the propeller).
- HitchcockLang
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
I don't know how accurate it is to describe the timeline as "simple."Ribs wrote: The timeline's pretty simple: action taking place halfway through in the land segment would be taking place about halfway through the week leading up to the conclusion, therefore about two days before the sea section starts.
- Ribs
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
The timeline is very simple - they converge at the end. They each start a week before, a day before, and an hour beforehand, and proceed linearly from there. It's only complicated in the sense that they're intercut - I expect there'll be a good handful of horrible fanedits turning the film into a proper triptych or doing a really crazily organized chronological version.
- mfunk9786
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
Gimme a break with "very simple," but yes, it is made clear in the film.
- Big Ben
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
I would use the word simple only in comparison to his other films in a certain context. I mean one needs only look at the run times and amount of dialogue to see an objective difference there. Perhaps simplification or stream-lined would be a better word to use at least in some context. However simplification/streamlined does not equate to less nuance in my mind. I think the film is incredibly effective at what it does. It didn't need a long run-time or lots of (possibly even meme worthy) dialogue to get the point across.
- Ribs
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
I mean, the notion I raise of a chronological version highlights why the film would be viewed as linearly complicated; it basically runs along for maybe thirty minutes, then there's another forty minutes intercutting those characters with parallel action on boats with new characters, and then there's another twenty minutes in the air with new characters all the while intercutting with the others (albeit with less frequency). If using all the footage assembled in the final film in a strictly linear order, it would create a war film that is, all the same, still structured totally unlike anything else I can think of. The intercutting is just a method of doing that without the audience actively thinking about how it's doing that. But maybe I'm just talking nonsense.
- warren oates
- Joined: Fri Mar 02, 2012 12:16 pm
Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
I've seen it twice now in IMAX and I agree with all the praise this film has gotten. I'm Nolan fan, and, for me, this is easily his best film, playing to all of his strengths and not just viscerally thrilling and suspenseful as I find much of his work to be but genuinely mature and moving on a whole new level.
I'm especially impressed with the many organic and compelling ways Nolan found to work various "ticking clocks" -- that horary cliche of conventional Hollywood storytelling -- into the narrative: the tides, the airplane fuel, the urgency of the increasingly besieged evacuation itself, even the sound of his own pocketwatch tick-tocking in the score. Speaking of the score, here's a really good explanation of the psychoacoustic trick Nolan and Zimmer have built into the score to ratchet up the tension, the so-called Shepard Tone.
I agree with some of the other comments, especially from aox, about Nolan's very strong decision to focus the story on survival, to preempt one of the big potential pitfalls of war films -- inevitable caricature of the other sides' soldiers -- by not showing them at all. The further step -- of not even referring to the Germans verbally as "Germans" or "Nazis" was something Nolan got from Mark Rylance, who told him he thought that the 17 mentions of "Germans" in the dialogue of an earlier draft of the script he read were counter to the purpose Nolan said he was striving for. On Rylance's sage advice, Nolan cut 16 of those out, substituting "enemy" instead for every instance except
The interview in the published Dunkirk screenplay where Nolan mentions this astute Rylance note also features a nod to the Criterion Collection -- Nolan cites the James Jones essay "Phony War Films" in the Criterion booklet for The Thin Red Line as a major influence on the development of Dunkirk, particularly on the common pitfalls and cliches of war films he was hoping to avoid, as well as on the arbitrariness of an individual's fate in war.
I'm especially impressed with the many organic and compelling ways Nolan found to work various "ticking clocks" -- that horary cliche of conventional Hollywood storytelling -- into the narrative: the tides, the airplane fuel, the urgency of the increasingly besieged evacuation itself, even the sound of his own pocketwatch tick-tocking in the score. Speaking of the score, here's a really good explanation of the psychoacoustic trick Nolan and Zimmer have built into the score to ratchet up the tension, the so-called Shepard Tone.
I agree with some of the other comments, especially from aox, about Nolan's very strong decision to focus the story on survival, to preempt one of the big potential pitfalls of war films -- inevitable caricature of the other sides' soldiers -- by not showing them at all. The further step -- of not even referring to the Germans verbally as "Germans" or "Nazis" was something Nolan got from Mark Rylance, who told him he thought that the 17 mentions of "Germans" in the dialogue of an earlier draft of the script he read were counter to the purpose Nolan said he was striving for. On Rylance's sage advice, Nolan cut 16 of those out, substituting "enemy" instead for every instance except
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the moment inside of the hold of the Dutch ship where Alex accuses Gibson first of being a "Jerry" and "German spy" and then of being a "frog coward," once it's established that Gibson is actually French. It's all the more effective in this one moment because it illustrates in the microcosm how easy it is to use language to dehumanize the other in a war setting. And what a slippery slope this dehumanization process is. Oh, he's actually not a "Jerry"? Well, "frog" will do.
James Jones wrote:Most deaths in infantry combat are due to arbitrary chance, a totally random selection by which an unknown enemy drops a mortar shell onto a man he has never seen -- and perhaps will never see! Such a death is totally reasonless and pointless from the point of view of the individual because it might as well have been the man next to him... And for that reason it is much more terrifying to the individual soldier and to an audience seeking "meaning."
- The Elegant Dandy Fop
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
Yeah, you are. On virtue that it took you one complicated and slightly convoluted paragraph to (barely) sum up the structure of the film shows how complicated the structure is. But Nolan handles it so artfully with careful scripting and precision editing that a casual movie-goer can decipher the narrative without much confusion. There's absolutely nothing simple about that. There's real talent and thought behind it.Ribs wrote:But maybe I'm just talking nonsense.
Last edited by The Elegant Dandy Fop on Tue Aug 15, 2017 12:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
- Mr Sausage
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
I assumed what he was saying was that, while the narrative is very complicated, the story is simple and straightforward.
- colinr0380
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
Where would you say it fit in this chart?
- Ribs
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
I may have put it poorly but I was just expressing that I don't feel, within the logic of how the film presents thing, it's meant to leave the viewer in any way confused. It's ultimately just the last hour of Inception again, but without an hour building up explaining it - the car chase is a few minutes, the hotel extending that into a few hours, the alpines stretching that further, all of which are happening at the same time. It's not Arrival, it's never trying to convince or fool you that one thing is happening at any time other than when it did.
- mfunk9786
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
It's supposed to leave the viewer disoriented rather than confused, but disorientation isn't typically the mark of a simple story simply told. That said, I had a Facebook friend post "man, that must have been a big gas tank in that plane for it to have two days worth of fuel in it!" - so there are definitely people who will walk away confused, too.
- knives
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
Though that is only because they didn't remember the explanatory title. I think that is a major aid to keep in mind though most probably wouldn't realize that on first viewing.
- mfunk9786
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
It definitely is, although just seeing the titles isn't a huge tip-off to what the film is doing in and of itself, until you realize for yourself what the film is doing. Or at least, that was my experience.
- aox
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
Absolutely. I just couldn't recall it an hour into my first screening when I needed it. And, I couldn't ponder too much because I was still watching a movie that was moving along quite quickly. Looking forward to a second viewing.knives wrote:Though that is only because they didn't remember the explanatory title. I think that is a major aid to keep in mind though most probably wouldn't realize that on first viewing.
- warren oates
- Joined: Fri Mar 02, 2012 12:16 pm
Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
So long as we're getting into the weeds of the film's structure, I want to ask about the precise choice of one of the three separate section-identifying superimposed titles. Why is it "1. The Mole: one week," "2. The Sea: one day," and "The Air: one hour." Why "the mole" and not "the beach" or "the land," both of which would be more accurate for the arena of action we see play out in the film and more congruent with the two other supertitles? What's the artistic or storytelling value added from using this term -- "mole" -- specifically in the supertitle? Especially given that it's a not so common term of nautical art and has already demonstrably caused confusion in some viewers, some of whom have interpreted "mole" in the more common sense of "spy" or "infiltrator." I wasn't confused by this, but some people were. So why even go there when Nolan could have made a simpler, cleaner choice?
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I suppose you could ultimately look at both Tommy and Gibson in a broader sense of the word, given the various feints they engage in to try and get off the beach.
- movielocke
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
Yes, I assumed until Branagh described the long rock thingy jutting out into the water as "the mole" that the kid the film starts on was a spy (and is labeled as "one week: the mole"
this left me baffled for a really long time (especially as he behaves so sneakily trying to get on the medical ship. and he also meets up with someone stealing a british soldier's clothes (whom he seems to know), which further implies spy. I was baffled because I was trying to figure out why the germans would bother putting a spy into a death trap.
this left me baffled for a really long time (especially as he behaves so sneakily trying to get on the medical ship. and he also meets up with someone stealing a british soldier's clothes (whom he seems to know), which further implies spy. I was baffled because I was trying to figure out why the germans would bother putting a spy into a death trap.
- Altair
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- Ribs
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
Yes, we know that, but "The Pier" or "The Land" or "The Beach" is a much clearer way of describing it without confusing the audience (like literally the second line of the movie is somebody saying "get to the mole!" and pointing at the mole, though I guess some people might have not followed). I imagine the double meaning has to be deliberate, because it just doesn't really make sense in the sense that land/sea/air is so clearly the words you would use when grouped together.
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
That could be the reason right there - Nolan wanted to avoid the cliché of "land, sea, air" so chose a more specific identification.Ribs wrote:...because it just doesn't really make sense in the sense that land/sea/air is so clearly the words you would use when grouped together.
- NABOB OF NOWHERE
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
môle is the french word for a jetty
- htom
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
One thing I did question was
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While we're told the time frame on the mole was one week, following a very small set of soldiers that way did not suggest to me we saw anywhere near seven days of events for them. The point where all three perspectives converge (the shooting down of the bomber/the civilian boat picking up the soldiers escaping the burning sea) is uncertain to me: the setup implies Mr. Dawson's boat was among the first to pick up soldiers. But the last scene has Tommy(?) reading Churchill's famous speech of June 4, which was the last day of the operation.
Someone else mentioned what appeared to be a lack of scale in the film in that no sequence showed the large number of soldiers finally evacuated from the beach. I felt the size of the beach would preclude that in any single shot, any more than a wider shot of the aerial dogfights would have given any feeling of either excitement or verisimilitude.
Someone else mentioned what appeared to be a lack of scale in the film in that no sequence showed the large number of soldiers finally evacuated from the beach. I felt the size of the beach would preclude that in any single shot, any more than a wider shot of the aerial dogfights would have given any feeling of either excitement or verisimilitude.
- knives
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Re: Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)
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I think the closing events of the mole take place a day or two after their rescue.