The helmer's World War II epic opens in theaters next month and is one of the most anticipated movies of summer. In a summer chock-o-block with event films running north of two hours, Christopher Nolan's World War II action-drama Dunkirk stands apart in running approximately one hour and 47 minutes — the shortest movie of his career after his first film, 1998's Following , insiders confirm. That's 62 minutes less than Interstellar , the acclaimed director's previous movie. Interstellar , released in November 2014, was his longest film with a running time of two hours and 49 minutes. Dunkirk is also substantially shorter than fellow 2017 summer movie, Michael Bay's Transformers: The Last Knight , which opens Wednesday and runs a hefty two hours and 29 minutes.
I think two hours is the perfect length, provided it's actually compelling. Shorter and it feels like it doesn't have enough development, longer and it just starts to drag. Granted, what matters is that the movie is actually enjoyable to watch the whole way through, so that you don't start to feel bored with it.
Leo Lee
> there are people who compare length of movie to other movies of same director to write about like it's some important or interesting news And i thought i was autistic
Evan Johnson
I prefer 5 to 8 minutes
Kayden Morris
I hope this means Nolan is restraining himself this time.
Brayden Robinson
>I think two hours is the perfect length Suicide Squad was 2 hours and it felt so short with how much was cut out. If you have a good story and lots of characters, 3 hours is better
Nolan Gonzalez
I'm glad, fuck long movies
Luke Russell
>war movie in the summer >war movie about a defeat >war movie not about americans
it's gonna bomb so hard
Alexander Cooper
>Literally the exact running time of the Mummy Since Dunkirk takes place in 1 location throughout I guess it makes sense. But for a movie like the Mummy that is multiple locations: 1 hour and 40 + minutes is way too short
Matthew Sanchez
I like the 1.75 to 2.25 hour length for films. Anything pushing 3 hours should have an intermission.
William Young
>One Direction singer is main lead Nolan knows what he's doing
Speaking of One Direction, I really like this song off their new album cos it isn't just a love ballad: youtube.com/watch?v=csEncUCLPLA
Elijah Barnes
>>One Direction singer is main lead
pls have him killed off in the opening minutes
never mind, I'm not going to see this anyway
Adrian Reed
My attention span is ruined so shorter films are all I can take
Isaac Wright
>insist on only bong actors >expect America to give a shit.
Studio should have just filmed a mountain of cash on fire. I'd watch that over this turd.
Asher Thomas
Interstellar should have been longer. Not enough MUUURRPPHHH
Alexander Jenkins
I can actually watch a short generic WW2 movie. Still, fuck off Nolan, I expected much more
Ian Martin
Makes sense I guess.
It didn't take long for the Brits to abandon their allies, why should the movie be long.
Jack Harris
>1.75 >.75 >.75 hours
You fucking maniac
Jonathan Hughes
this we could have 4 hour movies with intermissions
Tyler Davis
impling american market still matters
Dominic Wood
LWL: You told members of the crew to watch Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line before making the movie. Did you feel that this was a more impressionistic mode of filmmaking than you're used to?
Nolan: To be perfectly honest, it's not the case. I'm a huge fan of the film. n dyes, we screened a print of it for the crew. There's a timeless quality to the film that we wanted to aim for. But beyond that… The Thine Red Line is a very poetic film, and that' one of those thing I love about it. And yes, it's impressionistic to the point of skirting the abstract. Yet we wound up going a very different direction with his film.
LWL: How so? Nolan: This is actually a very grounded, concrete film about physical processes. It's what I call a 'present tense narrative.' It throws you into the moment. It goes you very little extraneous information. It engages you in physical dilemmas. How do you carry a stretcher between a bombed out gap in the mole, which in this marine structure — like a jetty — that boats were pulling up to? Can you escape from a sinking vessel? It's being in the moment. It's very suspenseful. There's almost a thriller quality to the sense of time and the enemy closing in. It's people in life or death situations.
LWL interview
Andrew Hall
>LWL: What did Warner Bros. think about a film which de-emphasises characters and context?
Nolan: The studio were in fact very supportive of the visceral nature of this type of storytelling. While the subject matter is obviously completely different, and there had to be a real reverence for reality, they have had great success with films like Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity and George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road — these are narratives that just throw you into a situation. They create tension and suspense through he concept of immediacy. So in that sense, they had a strong frame of reference for the type of grammar I wanted to use for this film. We tried to be very true to a subjective POV. I felt if we could give the audience the sensation of being there and seeing the things that they would have seen and having the information that they would have had, that get very important for the way we were trying to tell the story. This is sensory cinema. This is about being on the beach, not back in the offices in Whitehall watching Generals pushing things around a map. It's experiential storytelling.
>LWL: Have you found that withholding information is the essence of screen suspense?
Nolan: One of the most frightening things about being involved in the Dunkirk evacuations was not knowing what's going on, not knowing if there was a plan, not knowing if you could ever get back home. to be out there in a line suffering attacks or being bombed by stukas, it's another thing if you know there's a a very definite moment when you're going to get picked up and sent to safety. It's all the more daunting and nightmarish to have no idea — to be lost. There are areas on the beach where the hierarchies broke down, and there were others where it was extremely important in helping everyone to maintain focus. That inability of the individual soldier to have an impression of wha tis going on around them is extremely important, and you have to give the audience that same sense.
Isaiah Smith
dunkirk sounds too much like cuck
i just cant
Michael Lopez
That's because Nolan put almost no dialogue in the movie, which is most of the times just a shitload of exposition anyways. Unironically looking forward to this, might be an actual great experience.
Blake Johnson
It's always great to see anglos die
Mason Green
...
Ryan James
>UK >no black people
heh..wow
Brandon Evans
Won't watch this film at the cinema desu. I'm bored of WW2 movies and he didn't even pick an interesting part of WW2. I commend him for not choosing a cliché part of the war like the D Day but still, the Dunkirk event is cool in a history book but it sound really boring as a movie
Logan Allen
I like em short
Kayden Morales
Movie set in UK, no Muslims in it. Alteast try to make the movie realistic.
Aiden Anderson
I saw that 7 minute IMAX prologue in the theater recently and it was pretty fucking intense. Try to get some noise cancelling earphones because the sound was so loud it felt like the damn Stukas were actually hitting me with every shot.