Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan)

[Sinbad]

Ugh, shifting ARs are the worst. :dodgy:

And the heck with you, WB; digital copies may absolutely be resold on eBay or elsewhere! You sell 'em, you don't own 'em!

^ Full agreement with both of these points. 

I tried selling some of my digital codes in the past, and eBay threatened to close my account. It's bullshit.

Another hater of switching AR's here too, only time it didnt bother me was Catching Fire the way it was used there. If you are gonna do it, just do it once, incidentally I've sold dozens of codes on ebay never had a problem.

Dunkirk did suffer from Nolans cgiphobia, normally I would applaud doing everything for real but Dunkirk really would have benefited from some tasteful cgi to convey the scale of the operation.

 

[DigModiFicaTion]

I haven't seen it yet, but isn't it often more real if we experience it through realistic limitations? There is something tangible in viewing practical applications.

 

[Sinbad]

I haven't seen it yet, but isn't it often more real if we experience it through realistic limitations? There is something tangible in viewing practical applications.

I kind of agree it has an authenticity to it that would be lost if it had big CGI spectacle like every other big movie nowadays, I just didn't get a sense of what a huge operation the Dunkirk evacuation was and I think some minimal sparingly used CGI could have solved that.  I' looking forward to seeing it again when it releases next month on BR its still a very good film.

 

[Gaith]

So... no Dunkirk edits yet? I'd totally do one, if I had the tools for HD.

Wikipedia describes the plot chronologically, rather than following the non-linear narrative of the movie itself, and as such provides a fairly handy summary of a potential chronological edit. (For reference, here's a text timeline of the theatrical non-linear plot, a rough chart of the same, and a very large chronological plot chart.) Apart from that re-arrangement, my fan editing preference would be to cut the sequence of the Brits holing up in the abandoned trawler that gets shot up, floats to sea, and sinks. My reasoning is twofold: one, I think the sequence was dramatically unnecessary and questionably written (how stupid would one have to be to think a body or two would make the difference between a boat of that size sinking or floating), and two, given the tragic real-life sacrifice of the French army discussed below, but almost entirely ignored in the film, to have the only French character be a solitary guy who's stolen a dead Brit's uniform is more than a little insulting. I don't think it at all unreasonable to leave those same soldiers in Cillian Murphy's rowboat at night, and next see them swimming toward the destroyer that gets sunk. Also, I think some trims to redundant action in the aerial sequence (once arranged chronologically) would be in order also, bringing the 106-minute theatrical cut to a, say, ~80-minute edit (just a guess).

Here's an interesting video that describes a few of the movie's inaccuracies, from the trivial (the yellow paint on the German planes) to the significant (the pristine town, the general omission of the French, and the severe downplaying of the Royal Navy's role in the evacuation):

 

[Gaith]

A balanced, thoughtful review that gives Atonement the attention it deserves!

 

[RogueVader1996]

So I received the Blu-Ray of this movie as a gift and went to sit down to watch it today. The changing screen ratios was incredibly distracting, and the timeline so confusing that I pulled the disc out, unable to sit through this movie.

I'm no stranger to Nolan's changing aspect ratios, but movies like The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar had a lot of nighttime or space scenes where the change wasn't that noticeable. But in Dunkirk, most scenes were in broad daylight where each change of aspect ratio was so noticeable it took me out of the movie. That definitely needs to be changed.

For the rest, I don't know if it's a good idea to rearrange everything to make it chronologically. As mentioned before, this would put all the airplane scenes at the end, which wouldn't make a pleasant viewing experience.

My suggestion would be to crop everything to 1,85:1 format, or 1920x1040. It's a compromise between the 16:9 of the IMAX scenes and the 2,2:1 of the rest.