'I was looking at the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock'
'Alfred Hitchcock'
'Hitchcock'
'Hitchcock obviously'
'This is Alfred Hitchcock speaking...'
We might have ended the last video with this quote from Hitchcock:
But he has much more to say on the subject of clarity.
For example:
But clarify Christopher Nolan does not.
Just look at the way he establishes one of his key locations in the film.
Even the film is split into three distinct strands,
these are not evenly weighted
and The Mole is given the most screen time.
So how it is set-up is important.
And with that in mind,
The Mole is introduces as both a location
and a goal
with a shot-reverse shot from Tommy's P.O.V.
And that sets up what is it,
but not *where* it is.
And as Bordwell & Thompson say in 'Film Art'
But here we're given no sense of location or geography.
We don't know Tommy is in relation to The Mole.
None of the shots leading up to this exchange tell us,
except to say they are nowhere near.
And this becomes problematic when you consider that this shot is close one.
As that gives the impression that the structure
is actually quite near.
Its size in the frame,
when taken in conjunction
with the soldiers dirtying the shot in the corner
- who are in relative proportion to Tommy -
implies that all three elements are within
reasonable distance of each other.
We get this impression because of the nature of the eyeline match,
which is at its core,
and that makes sense, because
So the size of an object in a P.O.V has to be proportional
to the distance between it and the looker,
unless we are given a clear reason why it would be bigger -
such as in this scene from 'Rear Window',
wherein Jeff has to change the size of his lens to get a closer look at Thorwald.
But that is not what is happening in this shot.
As we've previously seen,
The Mole has already been shown to be indistinguishable from the horizon
when Tommy lands on the beach.
So when I asked,
this shot is actually deliberately giving us misinformation.
And this is a problem because the suspense of the sequence that follows
is entirely dependent upon the distance between Tommy and The Mole.
Nolan: 'Getting from A to B.
Can they find a way off this beach alive'
We know the motivation is,
the boat is about to leave.
Solider: 'It's about to leave'
This horn blast cues us into that.
Which is visual storytelling, right?
But glibness aside,
this scenario is a prototypical example of Nolan's vision for the film.
Nolan: 'Because Dunkirk is a great ticking clock story'
But the imperative behind it is lost
because the distance they have to run has never clearly been established.
What would provide that information would be a shot of the two objects in frame together at the same time.
So then we could gage the distance.
And we do get one,
but only after they've
already arrived at The Mole.
So when it is narratively redundant.
As Hitchcock said:
What would be helpful would be a shot that
put all the relevant information into context,
like an aerial shot or a bird's eye P.O.V.
Exactly like this one,
except one that didn't come twenty six minutes into the film.
After the structure has already been set-up;
after the first bombing raid;
and after Tommy has already made his way on to The Mole,
and then gotten off again.
This sequence with Tommy is particularly troublesome
when you compare it to this scene on the boar, the Moonstone.
This shot uses all three fields of depth,
with an active middle and foreground -
and a dormant background that is activated when the shot reframes,
which pushes the foreground
into its own single,
but brings the characters in the back into the drama.
And it does that with these two shots.
But they also serve to reaffirm the spatial
relationship
between the entrance to the hull
and the interior of the wheelhouse.
So later on in the film, when useless George falls down the stairs,
we don't actually need to see him fall
because the space was established earlier and we know where he's gone.
And this is what is so frustrating.
Nolan can show us a drama that takes place
in a visually cohesive space,
but he picks and chooses when he does that.
And that is to the detriment of the suspense he's trying to build.
But its not just location.
The suspense is also undermined by the film's approach to character,
which despite the largely positive reception
was one of the more prominent
criticisms it received.
For example, Christian Lorentzen of the New Republic, pointed out that:
Whilst Richard Brody complained in 
The New Yorker, that:
Slant.com was more ambivalent,
initially praising
this approach, saying:
The focus of all 
of these criticisms
was on Dunkirk's rejection of the idea
that the motivation behind character behaviour
should be informed by backstory.
Thomas Wayne: 'Why do we fall Bruce?
So we can learn to pick ourselves back up'
Bruce Wayne: 'I wanted to save Gotham.
I failed'
Alfred: 'Why do we fall, sir?
So that we can learn to pick ourselves back up'
And obviously this was part of Nolan's plan.
Nolan's: 'It's not about backstory.
It's about in the moment.
It's about meeting people right then, there'
Of course backstory is not an essential element.
Just look at one of Dunkirk's major influences.
Nolan: 'Clouzot's 'Wages of Fear''
Which is about a group of desperate men
who take on a ridiculously dangerous job
in order to get enough money to leave the dead-end
town they're stranded in.
O'Brien: 'It's a real tough job.
I've got to get a tonne of nitroglycerine to derrick 16'
The film gives us plenty of motivation,
but we're never told why these men are stuck there in the first place.
And that's because we don't need to know.
So there are clearly similarities with 'Dunkirk' here,
but the problem with this approach in Nolan's film
is simply one of poor execution.
In 'The Wages of Fear', for example,
the characters are clearly distinct.
Just look consider how different these men look from one another.
In 'Dunkirk', that is not the case.
And that's the problem.
Each of Clouzot's protagonists are clearly individuated.
Nolan's are not.
This lack of individuality be well intentional,
but as the critic Matt Zoller Seitz points out,
in his otherwise admiring review:
And this confusion is wholly visual.
None of the characters are individuated enough
to be able to tell them apart at a glance,
because Nolan fails to give us the visual
cues to be able to individuate them.
This is not a problem when the camera is locked to one character,
like it is with Tommy on the beach at the beginning.
But when the film is dark, as it often is,
and it cuts between various characters,
it can become difficult to differentiate them
especially when the images are unclear and indistinct
such as scene that involves soldiers in water.
And because it's difficult to tell the characters apart,
it can be challenging to follow the action.
And this undermines Nolan's own remit of empathy through turmoil.
Nolan: 'you're looking at the physical situation,
you're looking at the task they're faced with
physically.
The film is dragging you into an empathetic
relationship with them
through the openness of their expressions
and the genuiness of their reaction.
And you're being dragged along on their journey.
You want them to succeed by virtue of the fact
that you're empathising with another
human being'
'The film is dragging you into an empathetic
relationship with them
through the openness of their expression
through the openness of their expression
through the openness of their expression
through the openness of their expression'
For that to work, we have to be able to see
their expressions
and we can't do that if we don't recognise
them.
We can't be concerned about them,
if we don't know who they are.
Which brings us back to Hitchcock's contention:
And that might seem absurd at first, but consider this sequence.
The reason this is so hard to follow
is because the characters are impossible to differentiate.
Both the protagonists and those attacking them are dressed in white,
which is a ridiculous decision
given that they're being filmed against snow.
Yes, the assailants are wearing black masks
and have markings on their suit,
but this is only really apparent in the close-ups.
In the wide shots, where there is motion blur
and trees muddying the image
this visual distinction gets lost
amongst the imprecise camerawork and chaotic editing.
So whilst it's perfectly rational within the film
for the characters to want to camouflage themselves
that doesn't help the audience.
And its the same problem with 'Dunkirk'.
Now I know the obvious rebuttal to this point
is
historial accuracy
or rather historical authenticity
they're soldiers,
so of course they all wear
the same uniform
have the same haircut
and of course they're all white
so therefore its going to be hard to differentiate between them
and therefore that is a concession we're just
going to have to make
but I say no,
there are ways around it -
you can still provide people with visual cues
even when the characters are designed to be anonymous.
And Nolan knows this.
Nolan: 'We did not go for authenticity at
the expense of clarity for the audience.
So there are decisions that were made.
For example,
the enemy planes, the enemy 109 has a yellow nose
and people who really know their stuff their stuff,
know that it wasn't painted yellow until two months after these events.
But trying to give people visual cues
to distinguish between German planes and Spitfires
particularly for people unfamiliar with the
history'
It just seems he got his priorities confused.
