The war film Quentin Tarantino called an “artistic experience”
Most people would trust the opinion of Quentin Tarantino when it comes to acknowledging films with high levels of cinematic artistry. The iconic director is an utter cinephile and always has been, leading to several excellent films of his own that pay homage to one genre or another.
It may come as some surprise to learn that Tarantino looks to be a great admirer of war films, though, seeing as he has never really explored the subject in the way typical war films do. Of course, there was Inglorious Basterds, but that focused on the behind-the-scenes nuances of World War II rather than on epic battle scenes.
One war film that Tarantino seemingly adores, however, is Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. He had previously stated that he was blown away by the “spectacle” of the film upon first seeing it. A few years later, he admitted to watching it a third time and considered it his second favourite film of the 2010s.
“I found myself watching a bunch of stuff a second time or a third time that I hadn’t watched in years and pitting the movies against each other,” he explained on the Rewatchables podcast. Tarantino was compiling his favourite movies of the decade, and after watching Dunkirk again, it jumped from a “preliminary seven” to number two.
Tarantino admires Nolan’s “virtuosity” as he moved away from previous projects like The Dark Knight and took on a real-life topic instead. “This is where he dealt himself in, aside from Gotham City, and aside from science fiction, and the San Diego Comic-Con crowd, to being a great filmmaker,” he said.
As for the particular scenes that stood out for the Kill Bill director, he added, “He has about four or five great shots of an artist of a great director. Whether it’s like when the ships are tilting, and the weird angle he gets shows the ship titling and the water rushing in. I mean, he just keeps doing that all the time. He keeps making it an artistic experience.”
Tarantino then compared Dunkirk to another iconic modern war film, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, and Nolan’s film came out on time. “Even with something like Saving Private Ryan, all the great shots that blow you away are all in that opening section, which is just amazing,” he said. “But I don’t remember any shots afterwards. They’re just telling the story from that point on.” Whereas evidently, Dunkirk blew Tarantino away from start to finish.
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