Why Does Christopher Nolan Call 2001: a Space Odyssey Punk Rock?

David Senra, reading the book's account, says Christopher Nolan calls 2001: A Space Odyssey the punk rock of movies because the film does not acknowledge that there are any rules.

Nolan's line is not that the film breaks the rules. It is a film that never admits the rules exist. Stanley Kubrick's film, which Senra places in 1968, is one of Nolan's favorites, and Nolan builds Dunkirk the same way. Dunkirk is a war movie in a known genre. He wanted pure present tense and pure climax: no shots of generals pushing boats across a map, no Churchill, and no politics. From the first sequence the choice is survive or die. What he stripped away was the backstory. The movie is a product defined by what it does not have.

The crew also left out the devices that usually sell war to an audience: lots of quick cuts, lots of activity, lots of smoke, lots of fire, and debris in the air. Dunkirk is entirely about the absence of those devices.