Dunkirk

I really enjoy Christopher Nolan films, but I do find his over-reliance on background music bloody annoying. I think music in films should be used to enhance what’s happening on screen, not be there to force you to feel a certain way or to make up for any shortcomings in the mise-en-scene.

Maybe it’s just a personal preference, but wouldn’t those wonderful sky-bound dogfighting shots in ‘Dunkirk’ be just as wonderful without the constant music underscoring it? Wouldn’t the tension of the men stuck in the hull of the boat be just as tense without Hans Zimmer’s composed efforts filling every available second?

Having said all that, I found it a remarkable piece of filmmaking.

On a similar, and yet dissimilar, note I watched ‘Furious 7’ last night. I was tired and needed to switch off from the real world, it happened to be on ITV2, and I simply couldn’t be bothered to pick up the remote control and turn over to something else. I hate myself for admitting this, but I actually enjoyed it. Let’s be honest here, it ain’t ‘Citizen Kane’ but then it wasn’t trying to be. I’ve always sneered at what I call ‘popcorn cinema’ which is completely unreal to the point of being embarrassing, but maybe I should give it more of a chance. If you go along with the ridiculousness (such as someone jumping from one car to another while they’re speeding in opposite directions, with no physical aftermath) then it’s quite good fun. I didn’t learn anything, it didn’t click any cultural buttons, it wasn’t well-made in any technical sense, the acting was awful, the script could have been written by a stoned 10-year-old and Vin Diesel is the least expressive human ever to appear in a movie, but so what? It made me smile and it took me away from my own thoughts for a couple of hours, so it did more than I could have hoped for.

RC 3-8-19