I was really looking forward to Dunkirk, but I thought it was an effort that tried to do too much and ended up doing too little. Darkest Hour made up for it, though.
Dunkirk is one of the best "better on a second watch" films I have ever seen. I had a similar reaction in theaters, but then I made my wife watch it with me on a nice screen at home and... it blew me away the second time. Yes, it appears simple, but that just makes you appreciate how realistic this looks as a war film, the interlocking of the plot, and the subtle acting within it, relying on the actors' eyes and body language and not words.
These are things you notice on the second time around.
I gained a lot more appreciation for it, too, when I learned that the yacht subplot actually happened to quite the fascinating figure in his own right --
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lightoller#Second_World_War
The character played by Mark Rylance was the real story of Charles Lightoller, who was the Second Officer of the
RMS Titanic and the most senior officer to survive its sinking. When you imagine that character with the life story described on
Wikipedia, watching that character takes on another level of profundity and interest in him.
Darkest Hour is 125 minutes.
Dunkirk is 106 minutes.
= 231, or 3 hours and 51 minutes
That is not short, but there are definitely more indulgent films out there.
I have kind of wanted to take a day on a weekend sometime to watch both, chart them out, and make a super-cut between the two. It is fascinating we had two great films about the same event in the same year, one telling the story of the political situation in London while the other handles the military situation in France and the Channel.
Plus, both of them have Mark Rylance, even if opposite characters -- the
Dunkirk adaptation of Lightoller is heroic, while Halifax in
Darkest Hour is essentially the antagonist of the film arguing for accommodation of the Germans. I think watching the two of them together would be quite a good deal of fun if I ever went about doing it.
