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Dunkirk
During world war 2 ,British army was sent to help the allied forces into France. But once France was flooded with germans British army decided to retreat back into England to protect their island nation. Germans took advantage of this situation and started attacking the retreating enemy using air strike on the beaches of Dunkirk. This story follows a young soldier's journey through this extraordinary circumstances.
What makes Christopher Nolan different from other directors is that his movies have just the right amount of smartness to let the audience in on the secret and make them think he is clever. There are tons of movies which are very hard to get into and which are very smart. But if the audience are not in on the smartness of the movie, they feel dumb and left out.A friend of mine compared it to this question " by drawing a single line, make this equation true 1+1+1 = 142"...the answer to that is make one of "+" number 4 and you make the equation true. This question if you have never heard before will make you feel smart and in exactly the same way you like Nolan for making you feel that way. The key here is its not too complicated. Even for a person with no college degree, this thing is super simple. You do that enough times and then you make a movie like interstellar and try and break it down with examples, so that layman can understand and people will be willing to take the ride with you. Thats a gift. Its not something a director can come up with in fluke. Something like Annihilation has much less action and motion and kinetic energy to it that even the high concepts sort of make people not want to watch it in cinema.
I have never had any hope that any other filmmaker can occupy the same space as Nolan in terms of pushing those emotional buttons with their movies that Nolan does so often, until I saw Logan by James Mangold. Even though it lacked in perceived complexity of a typical Nolan film, nonetheless it is a very impressive piece of filmmaking.Some themes that kind of reminded me of a Nolan film are the dementia of professor X or the dour dark mental state of Logan. All those are extremely reminiscent of a Nolan film but not too much to the point of copying a Nolan film. Thats very important because critics can easily sniff out if a filmmaker is inspired by or copying or doing his own thing with a movie. Thats the very reason I am super excited for the ford v Ferrari movie by James Mangold because its a movie about winning at the expense of lives. People die left and right until Ford is able to make the fastest car that can beat Ferrari. The pure nature of racing doesn't leave any room for faking the victory. So the cerebral quality that the story lends itself to need a strong hand at helm to direct the movie and I think James Mangold can do it.
Coming back to Dunkirk , the most fascinating thing about it is there is a sense of gloom and fear and real horror that is captured in the movie. The sight of thousands of soldiers on the beach knowing that its not a drill and all of them know that its not safe for them there is kind of interesting cinematically. People say that the movie is about war and that it captured the essence of what its like being in war and its not about characters to the point of some people mocking saving private saying "you don't have long speeches of soldiers telling about their kids back home" but the there has to be a different way in sync with the tone of this movie to convey those emotions. Lot of movies ask you to care for characters just by showing the position they are in with no character background but for some reason we don't give them a pass where as we do for a movie by Christopher Nolan. How about this , don't give me character backgrounds but at least make me care for them. Thats your duty as director to do that and if you don't like back ground sob stories. But there is too much chaos in the movie that is not cinematic. Audience are selling themselves and their logic the movie by rationalizing. As a cherry on top Nolan puts his time intercutting style mesh on the movie , so it doesn't feel like Nolan is pandering to Oscar voters for an Oscar. He still stuck to his signature directing style . All in all its a good movie but not great and this is the first time the time intercutting felt like a gimmick as opposed to many of his other movies where it was much more cohesive.
During world war 2 ,British army was sent to help the allied forces into France. But once France was flooded with germans British army decided to retreat back into England to protect their island nation. Germans took advantage of this situation and started attacking the retreating enemy using air strike on the beaches of Dunkirk. This story follows a young soldier's journey through this extraordinary circumstances.
What makes Christopher Nolan different from other directors is that his movies have just the right amount of smartness to let the audience in on the secret and make them think he is clever. There are tons of movies which are very hard to get into and which are very smart. But if the audience are not in on the smartness of the movie, they feel dumb and left out.A friend of mine compared it to this question " by drawing a single line, make this equation true 1+1+1 = 142"...the answer to that is make one of "+" number 4 and you make the equation true. This question if you have never heard before will make you feel smart and in exactly the same way you like Nolan for making you feel that way. The key here is its not too complicated. Even for a person with no college degree, this thing is super simple. You do that enough times and then you make a movie like interstellar and try and break it down with examples, so that layman can understand and people will be willing to take the ride with you. Thats a gift. Its not something a director can come up with in fluke. Something like Annihilation has much less action and motion and kinetic energy to it that even the high concepts sort of make people not want to watch it in cinema.
I have never had any hope that any other filmmaker can occupy the same space as Nolan in terms of pushing those emotional buttons with their movies that Nolan does so often, until I saw Logan by James Mangold. Even though it lacked in perceived complexity of a typical Nolan film, nonetheless it is a very impressive piece of filmmaking.Some themes that kind of reminded me of a Nolan film are the dementia of professor X or the dour dark mental state of Logan. All those are extremely reminiscent of a Nolan film but not too much to the point of copying a Nolan film. Thats very important because critics can easily sniff out if a filmmaker is inspired by or copying or doing his own thing with a movie. Thats the very reason I am super excited for the ford v Ferrari movie by James Mangold because its a movie about winning at the expense of lives. People die left and right until Ford is able to make the fastest car that can beat Ferrari. The pure nature of racing doesn't leave any room for faking the victory. So the cerebral quality that the story lends itself to need a strong hand at helm to direct the movie and I think James Mangold can do it.
Coming back to Dunkirk , the most fascinating thing about it is there is a sense of gloom and fear and real horror that is captured in the movie. The sight of thousands of soldiers on the beach knowing that its not a drill and all of them know that its not safe for them there is kind of interesting cinematically. People say that the movie is about war and that it captured the essence of what its like being in war and its not about characters to the point of some people mocking saving private saying "you don't have long speeches of soldiers telling about their kids back home" but the there has to be a different way in sync with the tone of this movie to convey those emotions. Lot of movies ask you to care for characters just by showing the position they are in with no character background but for some reason we don't give them a pass where as we do for a movie by Christopher Nolan. How about this , don't give me character backgrounds but at least make me care for them. Thats your duty as director to do that and if you don't like back ground sob stories. But there is too much chaos in the movie that is not cinematic. Audience are selling themselves and their logic the movie by rationalizing. As a cherry on top Nolan puts his time intercutting style mesh on the movie , so it doesn't feel like Nolan is pandering to Oscar voters for an Oscar. He still stuck to his signature directing style . All in all its a good movie but not great and this is the first time the time intercutting felt like a gimmick as opposed to many of his other movies where it was much more cohesive.