Dunkirk Film Analysis

The concept of time, and how it can be used to alter the structure and story of a film has intrigued filmmakers for years. Whereas time's rules are usually unflinching, the creation of film has allowed these rules to be bent and broken in previously unseen ways. Stories with a non-linear structure can now be told fluently and dramatically, such as Christopher Nolan's ‘Dunkirk', or instead complex story arcs can be explored, utilising time in a unique way, like in Shane Carruth's ‘Primer' in which time-travel and all its scientific complexities are explored. With further advancements in post-production techniques, directors must no longer stick to basic editing conventions and traditionally linear sequences can be completely reordered or intentionally …show more content…
It has been edited to give the illusion that certain scenes are happening linearly. We, as an audience aren't given any reason to expect otherwise. As the film progresses it becomes abundantly clear that some scenes take place prior to those that have come before it; for example, the very first scene with Jules and Vincent is repeated from a different perspective much later in the film. In addition, by this point in the film we've already seen Butch murder Vincent, so for them to circle back and continue Vincent's would be jarring, but due to the fact that we're picking up from an already familiar point makes the jump back in time fluent, and adds to the circular narrative Tarantino was attempting to create. When an audience watches a film, they assume that it will follow basic editing conventions and that any call back to a previous point in the film will be to explain something that's just happened. However, ‘Pulp Fiction' makes you think that it has broken that convention as the scene immediately before ‘The Bonnie Situation' is ‘The Gold Watch', and apart from Vincent dying, it has no relevance or future impact from the events of ‘The Bonnie Situation'. It isn't until the epilogue of the movie that you realise the reason we'd been taken back in time was to explain the prologue which up until that point, was completely out of place and had no bearing on the rest of the film. Therefore, by the …show more content…
During passive scenes, with no action or intensity, the characters in the movie very rarely talk about the present events and are usually discussing something they've done, an interesting story they've heard, or something they're planning on doing. This is an effective technique to draw your attention away from the otherwise boring scene that is, walking into an elevator or sitting in a diner and instead force you to imagine something else, like someone being thrown out of a window or robbing a bank with a telephone. This is a subversion on the common rule ‘show don't tell' and it's only when the action within the scene requires your undivided attention that the dialogue will draw the audience to the events occurring. However, rather than having the characters discuss events that have no weight on the overall narrative, Tarantino uses prolepsis to foreshadow future scenes and conversations between characters. For example, in the same conversation, Vince and Jules discuss how Vince has to look after Marsellus' wife for an evening whilst he's away, and they also discuss how Marsellus threw someone out of a 4 story window for giving his wife a foot-rub. There is a payoff later in the film for both of these conversations both visually, as we see Vince take out Marsellus'