A blockbuster arrives
The reviews for the movie Dunkirk which is released in Britain this Friday (21st July) – written, co-produced and directed by Christopher Nolan – are currently cascading across the newspaper pages, television and radio outlets and all across social media presumably to the delight of all concerned for they are almost uniformly positive and laudatory.
Nolan, a British-American who will turn 47 at the end of the month, is one of the biggest-grossing directors of all time and regarded as one of the great film-makers of the 21st Century after making his directorial debut in 1998 with Following, then a run of Memento (2000), Insomnia (2002), The Prestige (2006), the Dark Knights Trilogy (2005-2012), Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014). His nine films in all have so far grossed US$4.2 billion worldwide and amassed a total of 27 Oscar nominations and 7 wins.
(I ought to mention here that I have never heard of him previously but have been doing my internet research. I have also never watched any of Mr Nolan’s films and doubt I ever will because of my aversion to going to the cinema unless, that is, perhaps the razzamatazz surrounding Dunkirk at some point makes it irresistible to me for fear otherwise of ‘missing out’ upon something really special. I should add that simply being heckled by friends and family alike for being an out of date fuddy-duddy – as I undoubtedly will be – is unlikely have material effect upon me because I already embrace that jibe with counter-intuitive relish).
As a representative example of the critics’ reviews of Dunkirk – for those that may not have read, seen or heard several already – I would present to Rust readers that by Robbie Collin of the Daily Telegraph, which appeared yesterday upon the website of that newspaper, giving the movie 5 stars our of 5 – see here – DAILY TELEGRAPH
What I would like to do here – and not in any way to ‘pick away’ at the quality of either Nolan’s undoubtedly prodigious film-making ability or indeed the movie itself, as if applying some Big Brother, BBC public service-type attempt to appear balanced and/or impartial – is to refer today to another of yesterday’s reviews: that of Kevin Maher of The Times newspaper.
I do so because it is noteworthy in being the only one I have come across that does not lay out a red carpet covered in strewn rose petals of undiluted praise in the path of the all-conquering Christopher Nolan (well okay, ‘undiluted praise’ perhaps bar the odd tiny quibble in the context of the whole 106-minutes’ worth of ‘knock you back in your seat’ sweep and brilliance of what unfolds on the screen).
In short, Maher hits the page from his hidden silo firing a metaphorical Tomahawk cruise missile that shoots down Dunkirk as a disappointing ‘two stars out of five’ failed attempt to achieve status as an all-time great WW2 movie, notwithstanding the fact that more than one UK radio station invited its listeners yesterday – on the back of Dunkirk’s release – to play the game of nominating their own ‘Top Tens’ of said genre.
At this point I must apologise for not simply providing a link to Mr Maher’s review and letting my readers read it – and form their opinions – for themselves.
I am unable to do so because Mr Murdoch’s newspapers The Times and The Sunday Times (which I personally buy daily and on Sundays anyway) do not allow visitors access to their website without paying a subscription, which I decline to do both on principle and also because I buy these newspapers anyway and therefore don’t see why I should.
Accordingly, here I am obliged not only to provide a potted summary of Mr Mather’s effort but also apologise in advance to Rusters who are in the habit of buying The Times.
Anyway …
Mr Mather’s blunt thesis is that although the Dunkirk evacuation is long overdue a classic film interpretation, Christopher Nolan’s version is definitely not it.
Instead it is simply a bombastic piece of filmic spectacle and scale (65mm cameras and best viewed in an IMAX cinema) that fails to deliver the single most important element of all great movies: a proper story – i.e. that of a dramatic narrative tale that hooks the onlooker.
I can do no better than to quote the final paragraph of Mr Maher’s tour de force, opening with a comment upon the work of the music composer Hans Zimmer whose score elsewhere receives consistent great praise from other critics. After mentioning the performances of one or two actors, Maher goes on to say that these get lost in the noise …
“And there is a lot of noise. The cacophonous score by Hans Zimmer can best be described as an express train full of cutlery crashing into an explosive factory. It provides an extra layer of sensory chaos to a film that appears to abdicate all dramatic responsibilities in favour of being (what the Dunkirk marketing people are calling) an ‘immersive’ experience. You’re there. You’re on the beach. Character and plot don’t matter because you’re there, in the thick of things. It’s just like – you guessed it – a video game. And that, ultimately is the colossal disappointment at the heart of this movie. They were clearly aiming for The Longest Day but what they gave us was Call Of Duty: Dunkirk Edition.”
I’ve already mentioned that I don’t watch films much (effectively these days not at all) but I can sense where Mr Mather is coming from.
In his recent post on this website What’s Real And What Is Not my colleague Tom Hollingsworth discussed the various difficulties that confront makers of sporting movies, not least the depiction of sporting action – elite or not – within a dramatic narrative.
In passing he commented upon an issue that confronts all true-life sporting biographical movies and – when you think about it – all ‘real event’ wartime movies too. It’s the unavoidable fact that the audience – unless they’re too young or thick – know the basic outcome, good or bad, in advance.
I can speak from personal experience here to a small extent since I once spent a year and a half developing a movie script from scratch – based upon the life story of a sporting hero killed in WW1 – that eventually went nowhere.
The right – sorry, better – way around is undoubtedly to create or devise a dramatic story that works well as a piece in itself. And then, if you wish, set it in a ‘real life event’ historical context, e.g. in order to bring out or highlight some external intensities or pressures that will enhance or expand its essence for benefit of the viewer.
Rather than, if you see what I mean, taking a brief (for example) “Word War Two [or the Vietnam War]: create me a dramatic story that works in that context”. It’s quite possible to do, of course, if you’re talented an inventive enough. But, generally speaking, novels and movies probably work most effectively when you get the ‘narrative’ and story right first … and then set it in whatever circumstances or historical time you wish.
Further, you might argue that – in general – sporting biographies are best made as documentaries.
When you have a story which de facto amounts to little more that “Well-connected, nice young man goes through a gilded life as a sporting prodigy and general all-round good egg, and then dies on the Western Front shortly after getting there …” you haven’t really got much to work with as regards creating a gripping, compelling dramatic story.
Or, if you look at it another way – if you’ve inventive and bold enough for the challenge of creating something from the above rather unpromising truth – you could take the view that your task is simply to begin with a completely blank piece of paper and then create exactly whatever dramatic story you wish.
However, whether the resulting piece bears any resemblance to the actual course of history – one might take the Oscar-winning Chariots Of Fire (the 1981 movie produced by David Puttnam and directed by Hugh Hudson) as a case very much on point – is entirely a matter for conjecture.
The same perhaps goes for war films.
It will be interesting to see in twenty years’ time (for those who live that long) what the lenses of perspective and hindsight do to the enduring reputation of Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk.
