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Post #1092600

Author
canofhumdingers
Parent topic
Last movie seen
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1092600/action/topic#1092600
Date created
25-Jul-2017, 11:24 AM

DUNKIRK - in IMAX laser at the Texas State History Museum in Austin.

Wow! This felt less like a movie and more like a historical experience. Despite the massive scale of the evacuation, it felt very personal and gave you true insight into what it must have been like to be a soldier on that beach, a spitfire pilot, and a civilian in one of the rescue boats. It all looked and felt so real.

I had the good fortune to see this in a massive IMAX laser theater, which is one of only two ways you could see the entire 1.43:1 image of the film (the other way being actual IMAX 70mm film). It disappoints me that so few theaters are available to show this film in its proper format because it was VERY impressive. And the VAST majority of the film was shot on IMAX film and therefore filled the entire screen. In fact, so much of the film was in true IMAX it felt kind of pointless for the few shots here and there that were in scope. I actually wish that they had abandoned the changing aspect ratio for this film. I understand that some shots may have needed to be shot on 35mm for technical or budgetary reasons, but I would’ve preferred them to be filmed at academy ratio (1.37:1) and then very modestly cropped vertically to fit the IMAX 1.43:1 screen. Then, while you’d still notice the slight drop in image clarity in the occasional 35mm segments, you would at least maintain the entire giant screen being filled with the image instead of reverting to this narrow band of the scope image across the center of this massive screen. Of course, choosing that method would’ve resulted in a lower quality image for all the non “true” IMAX theaters.

Now I have to spent a minute talking about the aerial sequences. They used real WW2 Spitfires, Me109’s, and He111’s for most of the shots, and it was AWESOME seeing these beautiful antique warbirds on this massive format! Spitfires are my single favorite airplane (I gave a little internal cheer when one character has a line about the spitfire being the greatest plane ever built). I was incredibly blessed to see four of them fly in person at the Duxford air show several years ago and flying one myself is a top-of-the-bucket-list goal I’ve had for years and hope to achieve some day. The way Nolan presents the aircraft and pilots is magnificent. Even with over a decade working in aviation and a lifetime pouring over books, visiting museums, and attending air shows; I’ve never felt like I had a better sense of what it was REALLY like to be a ww2 fighter pilot as I did after watching this film. Sure there’s some leeway given for artistic license (that one spitfire sure had an awful lot of ammo, and man could it glide a long long way…). But the actual job of being a fighter pilot, flying the plane, navigating, managing the systems and the fuel, all while strategizing with your wingmen and then actually having to fight and defend yourself are presented in truly magnificent fashion. I particularly loved the scene where he had to manually pump his landing gear down. Most people don’t even know you can do that. But even modern jet liners have ways to manually pump or crank the landing gear down if the normal system fails. And it’s usually just as much of a pain the rear as it was in that spitfire.

Tl;dr -

if you have any interest in WW2 history GO SEE THIS MOVIE

If you have any interest in WW2 aviation, or really any interest in aerial combat GO SEE THIS MOVIE

If you have any interest in history and learning about the harrowing experiences of others GO SEE THIS MOVIE

And see it at the biggest, best theater you can get to. I didn’t mention it before, but the sound design is also SUPERB.

If you have the chance to see this on IMAX 70mm or laser, DONT MISS IT!!!