Audiences may not have been too enamored with the idea of heading out to their local multiplex to see Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, which has so far pulled in over $320 million at the box office. While that’s hardly a poor showing, especially given the circumstances surrounding the industry, there were hopes that the mega budget mind-bending thriller could be the movie to bring people back to theaters in their droves.
Unfortunately, however, a lot of folks just weren’t sold on the idea of checking out the acclaimed filmmaker’s work on the big screen, but his back catalogue has certainly been proving popular on Netflix. The Dark Knight recently cracked the streaming service’s Top 10 most-watched list despite everyone having seen it at least a handful of times before, and now his World War II drama Dunkirk, starring Tom Hardy, Fionn Whitehead, Barry Keoghan, Mark Rylance and more, has been dominating the platform’s chart all week.
Instead of a straightforward war flick, Dunkirk adopts a unique narrative structure that follows three distinct story threads to create a singular and incredibly immersive experience. A critical and commercial juggernaut, the $150 million epic raked in over $525 million at the box office to become the highest-grossing World War II movie in history, and also scooped eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Director, ultimately winning three in the technical categories.
Nolan is hardly known for straightforward or linear narratives, and Dunkirk applies this formula to the evacuation of the titular beach. Each strand of the plot focuses on land, sea and air, with sparse dialogue enhancing the atmosphere in what essentially amounts to experimental cinema on a massive scale, which is something that very few directors in the industry would be handed either the budget or creative control to accomplish.
Published: Oct 17, 2020 09:37 am