If you’re going to watch Dunkirk, watch it in theaters. Or at the very least, with really good headphones.

It’s all about the sound.

I mean, the deftly interwoven plots adds a layer of complexity to an otherwise standard story, and the cinematography is so artful that it seems out of place for a war movie, so there’s plenty going on that was visually and thematically beautiful.

To me, Dunkirk feels like a tone poem, or a meditation. It’s the examination of a multitude of perspectives on one theme, each meandering around and building off each other. Each character has his own view of the evacuation, elucidated to us by the three overlapping time periods but misunderstood by other characters within the story. It’s intriguing and complex; I want to watch it again.

But that sound tho.

The background noise becomes rhythmic, which becomes music, which builds in dissonant layers to create an atmosphere of suspense, and then suddenly it drops away into silence.

There is not a lot of music, per se, but the sounds from the war machines blends with tones from trumpet and strings. The sound grows from a watch ticking, or the reverberations of metal hitting metal underwater, or the spinning of a propeller. It dances meticulously through the pacing of the scenes, through the way that the disparate time elements were edited together: sound uniting themes across time.

There is minimal dialogue to distract you into thinking about words.

You are there in the firefight, in the sky, flying.

You are there, underwater, feeling the force of it push you around.

And when a melody of sorts starts to build, finally, out of the waves and the wind and the chaos, and emerges into a spare but heroic theme you are focused on it. The fleet of small craft is secondary; sonic chaos has built into order. The emotional and aural climax of the film arrives with the fleet of boats.

It is beautiful.