My review of Dunkirk: In my personal opinion, Dunkirk is the best film I have yet seen in my life, my attachment to everyone in the films was deep and profound. I have always been a major history geek, 7 years now I have studied the Second World War as my hobby, and nothing, NOTHING, has come close to what this movie made me feel, not even the first 27 minutes of SPR. What this movie made me feel is honestly indescribable. Young men, no more than 20, in sheer terror as they are defenseless against the unseen enemy bombers and submarines which they can not see, moments of silence interrupted violently by bullets and bombs while men fear for their lives, only trying to survive. Men abandoning all morals and ethics to survive, going to their basic human instincts and surviving for themselves in any way they know how. The aerial scenes were also breath-taking in every way. The quiet, beautiful nature of the sky and the beauty of the plane ripped apart by the sounds of machine guns and the rain of destruction being laid upon by these beautiful machines. The most exhilarating and beautiful transition I have ever seen in film, quiet transition between chaos on the ground and beauty in the air immediately interrupted by sheer chaos of machine gun fire, and the soundtrack plays a huge role in this. The movie is simply beautiful, and there is possibly no words in our dictionary that can describe what I felt after watching the film. This is not about Nolan, or IMAX, or soundtracks or CGI or about anything else. It is simply, about humans surviving no matter the cost, about a miracle that no one had thought be possible, on a scale unimaginable by anyone, shot beautifully with the perfect sound to go along. It is not a story of Dunkirk, nor is it about the political environment, nor even the military situation, nor the Germans (which Nolan intentionally does not show, only in blur and shadow at the end) it is about none of that, it is about 400,000 men on Dunkirk beach, and how they try and survive in the face of overwhelming odds, no matter the cost, not about bravery or cowardice, honour nor glory, but simply the story of men in an impossible situation, trying to survive. If I had to choose 1 word to describe the movie, it would simply be: Visceral. That's just me though. :)
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