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“Dunkirk,” Christopher Nolan’s World War II epic, is both lean and ambitious, unsentimental and bombastic, and overwhelmingly male-centric. It exemplifies the best and worst of the director’s tendencies in equal measure. Whenever you think back on an experience, the best memories stand out and the worst fade away — provided, of course, that you want to remember “Dunkirk,” a film that is intended to be grueling and succeeds in doing so. Described as less of a war film and more of a disaster (or survival) film, this ensemble piece follows the evacuation of British soldiers who were trapped in the harbor and on the beaches of Dunkirk, France, in late May and early June of 1940, with the Germans closing in for a final assault after having driven Allied forces practically out to sea.
Even if you were to make a list of every phobia you could think of, you’d have to cross a lot of them off after watching this film. Fear of heights, fire, drowning, confined spaces, darkness, abandonment, you name it, it’s all represented in the nightmarishly clear images captured by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema in this film. Furthermore, if you watch the film in one of the few theaters that are showing it in 70mm IMAX format, the experience will feel even more constricting and oppressive due to the unusual shape of the image. Its aspect ratio is similar to the old-fashioned “Academy” ratio that was common in films made during the early decades of cinema: squarish and tall instead of wide. The idea of “tunnel vision,” which has been expressed by many a disaster survivor, comes to life onscreen when you’re in the cockpit of a fighter diving towards the water, or running behind an infantryman dodging German snipers.
I doubt that the overall effect will be lessened by the fact that the film is shown in a wider format in most theaters: it is a pile-driver of a film, dropping one visual or aural bomb after another with barely a moment to consider what it has just shown you. To sit and watch it is to feel oppressed. In this period, German military power was on the rise, and the prospect of the United Kingdom’s survival was beginning to dwindle, as the world watched. In previous films, such as Leslie Norman’s same-titled 1958 feature, the story of Dunkirk has been told, and there has been no shortage of other films about battlefield rescues; however, this one feels different, primarily because of the way it was made.
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Nolan, who also wrote the script for the film, drops you right into the middle of the action from the first frame and keeps you there throughout the entire film. This is an ensemble movie that doesn’t just fail to delineate most of its characters through exposition but seems to take perverse pride in letting them scamper anonymously across the screen at flyspeck distance, getting lost amid crowds or merging with smoke or water. Scenes can go for minutes without any audible dialogue, which is unusual in commercial cinema made at this budget level; it’s even rarer in Nolan’s own films, which tend to clarify narrative through massive verbal exposition dumps. Nolan’s films are notable for their lack of audible dialogue. In some instances, Nolan and van Hoytema hold shots for longer periods of time than is customary for Nolan, allowing you to consider everything in the frame and decide where to focus your attention.
Dunkirk Quiz
Similarly to Terrence Malick’s “The Thin Red Line,” which infused the combat picture with Transcendental philosophy, or Robert Altman’s “Nashville” and “Short Cuts,” which treated every person on that beach and in assorted nearby planes and boats as part of a collective organism, less interesting for their biographical details than for their roles in the drama of history, “Dunkirk” treats every person on that beach and in assorted nearby planes and boats as part of a It is what I refer to as a “Ant Farm Picture” because it is a portrait of a society or a species that is fighting for its very existence in Dunkirk. Individuals’ plights aren’t particularly interesting to it, unless they’re attempting to save themselves or others from harm. If you find yourself getting a little confused about who’s who and what’s what from time to time, rest assured that this is a feature, not a bug, of Nolan’s approach (pun intended).
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German fighter pilots are being shot out of the sky by Tom Hardy’s character, who is trying to prevent them from strafing soldiers on the ground or sinking ships in the harbor. He only has a few lines and spends most of the film hidden behind a mask, as he did in his previous collaboration with Nolan, “The Dark Knight Rises,” but he makes a lasting impression by treating the character as the sum of his actions rather than as a series of isolated incidents. There are many of these self-appointed rescuers around Dunkirk, and their eventual organization into one of the twentieth century’s most daring non-military flotillas is as inspiring as you imagine it to be. Mark Rylance plays a civilian with teenage sons who is determined to pilot his small yacht to Dunkirk and rescue as many people as he can. In the film, a group of soldiers, one of whom is played by Harry Styles, rushes from town to the beach and onto a long dock that stretches into the ocean; this is the only way that large boats can get close enough to shore to rescue those who have become stranded on an island. Potential passengers pray that they can get onto a ship and out of the country before more German planes annihilate them with bullets or explosive bombs. Some of the characters, such as Hardy’s Farrier and Rylance’s Mark Dawson, as well as Kenneth Branagh’s Commander Bolton, the highest-ranking English officer on the scene, are given names, such as Farrier and Dawson. Cillian Murphy, known only as “Shivering Soldier,” is rescued from the icy sea by Rylance’s captain and strongly advises the crew to sail away from Dunkirk rather than toward it. Other characters are only identifiable by their general appearance or actions, such as Cillian Murphy, known only as “Shivering Soldier.”
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The film has its share of stumbling blocks. In one instance, the characters’ continued anonymity is an intentional part of the film’s design, and there are moments when you wonder whether treating them as more than glorified cannon fodder would have resulted in a film that is as emotionally powerful as it is viscerally overwhelming. One more blunder is the score, which is composed by Hans Zimmer and is comprised of booming drums, bum-vibrating synth chords, and cawing string effects that loses much of its impact by refusing to shut up, even when silence or ambient war noise would have been just as effective, if not more so. The overuse of Zimmer’s music has been a source of contention throughout Nolan’s career, and it is possible that it will become a topic of discussion here. Because the situations and images are so vivid, the score frequently appears to be attempting to save a film that doesn’t require its assistance.
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I was more ambivalent about the film’s intricate narrative construction, but it was there that my thoughts wandered after the film’s visceral impact had faded. “Dunkirk,” like most of Nolan’s films, is obsessed with the perception of time as it is experienced by different people. Lee Smith’s use of cross-cutting in this scene emphasizes this point. The editor has worked on every one of Christopher Nolan’s films since “Batman Begins,” including “Interstellar,” which is explicitly about the idea of time passing more quickly or slowly depending on where you are in the universe. We learn from the chapter-like opening titles that one major subplot takes place over a week, another takes place in a day, and another takes place in an hour when we watch “Dunkirk.” The film then jumps between them in a way that compresses and expands time for poetic effect, making, for example, a plane’s flight that probably took thirty seconds appear to take exactly as long as a sea rescue that took hours.
One could argue that this amounts to an over-intellectualization of a compelling and straightforward story. Then again, that has been Nolan’s approach from “Following” and “Memento” onward, and it would be lying if I said it didn’t fascinate me, even when a specific film isn’t doing much for me scene to scene. It has been said many times that trauma can cause one’s perception of time to become distorted. This is one of the few works that I can think of that takes that idea into consideration throughout the course of a whole feature film, rather than just in isolated sequences. (A ticking clock serves as the foundation of Zimmer’s score, which is appropriate.)
In the event that someone were to ask me if I enjoyed this film, I would respond negatively. There were parts of it that I despised, and others that I found repetitive or half-baked. In spite of this, and perhaps paradoxically, I admired it throughout and have been thinking about it on a constant basis since seeing it. Even the aspects of “Dunkirk” that didn’t sit well with me were all part of the overall picture for me. An epic-scale production, this is a film of vision and integrity that dramatizes a series of propositions through the use of machines and bodies, as well as seawater and fire. It is something that should be seen and discussed. Sadly, they are no longer made in this manner. I’ve never done it, to be honest.
For more personality quizzes check this: Despicable Me 3 Quiz.
