Or, rather, the battle to stay awake during the war movies.
You kind of expect that when you go to watch a movie about a pivotal battle that it's going to be exciting. When you go into a movie that you know is about a moment where the course of history hinged on the outcome, you expect it to be engaging, thrilling, on-the-edge-of-your-seat, even though you already know who won. You don't expect confusion, characters you can't relate to, or to keep checking the time.
Last weekend, Jason and I watched Darkest Hour.
If you know me at all, you know I'm a big history enthusiast. When I heard that Gary Oldman was playing Winston Churchill, I said, "dude, I have to see this movie!" I didn't realize Churchill was a mumbler. I didn't realize a lot of his peers were also mumblers. I knew that King George VI had a speech impediment... but I didn't realize the actor playing him in The King's Speech spoke more clearly in a movie about a man overcoming a speech impediment than the actor playing him in Darkest Hour. But maybe they were going for an accurate portrayal of a bunch of rich mumblers. (Churchill's secretary, on the other hand, speaks more clearly than any of the men in the film.)
I also hadn't realized that Darkest Hour was going to pretty much just be about the bureaucracy of getting the Dunkirk evacuation off the ground. The majority of the movie consists of Churchill arguing with other politicians in locked rooms of various sizes.
I wanted to like Darkest Hour more than I did. Then this weekend we watched Dunkirk. And now I like Darkest Hour more by comparison.
The evacuation of Dunkirk: I knew, and had refreshed for me in Darkest Hour, that the Nazis swiftly invaded Belgium and France, giving the United Kingdom the nasty wake-up call that the enemy could very soon be knocking on their door. This would be a bad situation even without the added predicament that the majority of the British army was now stuck in France with Germany rapidly closing in and no viable means of escape.
*Cue rousing music and Every-man boaters taking to the seas with cries of "we're going to rescue our boys!"*
Or not. The above was what I expected. It was not what was delivered. What was delivered was almost 2 hours of confusing story line that didn't focus on anyone long enough to connect or relate to them (and even if you did, most of them you didn't know their names anyway), grating music, and long, long shots of nearly-black and white scenery that seem more fitting for an art gallery than a war film. Plus, starved and desperate soldiers standing neatly in lines with less urgency and motion than The March of the Penguins.
As Jason put it, we spent much of the movie waiting for it to "start." Yes, you had action from the get go, but the actual understanding of what was going on, who these people were, was slow in coming (if at all). It reminded me (unfavorably) of 2001 a Space Odyssey. It actually had a very Kubrickian feel (and, again, not in a good way) to both the cinematography and the soundtrack. After watching the film, I wondered if the intention was to confuse the audience and put them on edge, so that we would better relate to to confused, on-edge soldiers in the film.
I hate to deliver such scathing reviews of films of such an important event... but that's just it. It was a MAJOR, pivotal moment in the course of modern history and I feel that it was most definitely NOT given its due.
On a side note, the best war movie I've seen in the past year? Rogue One.