The main problem with movies
based on historical events, especially ones that have been so thoroughly combed
over like World War II, is that they always have a foregone conclusion. In the
case of Dunkirk, no one in the
audience who paid attention in history class gets brownie points for guessing
that the operation with a million to one chance of success manages to beat the
odds and ends up becoming one of the early major turning points of the war. The
main reason it’s so hard to adapt to film as opposed to other major battles is
because it was slow, messy, involved a lot of waiting and had a lot of separate
moving parts that would be difficult for most filmmakers to properly handle.
Thankfully, Christopher Nolan is not most filmmakers.
The Dunkirk Evacuation, AKA Operation
Dynamo, is a strategic retreat where 400,000 British, French and Belgian soldiers
were trapped on Dunkirk Beach in northern France by Nazi forces. With nowhere
to go, they had to wait for the Navy to send ships to pick them up. After being
stuck for a week, they were rescued by a fleet of war ships and civilian boats.
Our story follows three intercut narratives: “The Mole” centers on two young
soldiers (Fionn Whitehead and Damien Bonnard) trying to escape from the beach
by stowing away on different boats, “The Sea” involves a civilian (Mark Rylance)
from Dorset and his sons sailing their yacht across the English Channel to deliver
lifejackets who pick up a stranded, shell-shocked soldier (Cillian Murphy)
along the way, and “The Air” follows a fighter pilot (Tom Hardy) providing
cover fire from above and trying to stay airborne while running on fumes.
Since this was such a
complicated operation, this makes Nolan, a director lauded for is cerebral,
nonlinear storytelling and technical proficiency, the perfect man for the job. He's known for playing around with the flexibility of time in the past, like making a movie told in reverse order, having narratives told on different levels of the subconscious,
or messing with the passing of time on different planets. This time, he’s juggling multiple
plot threads that are all compressed into different lengths of time and don’t
converge until the end. “The Mole” takes place over the course of a week, “The
Sea” takes place over a day, and “The Air” only covers an hour. Despite
handling all these interwoven plot threads, this is probably the most straightforward and minimalist movie Nolan has ever made. It never gets confusing, the different compressions
of time make way for some clever foreshadowing, and it pays off spectacularly
when they all come together in a big blowout in the last 20 minutes, all
condensed into an economical 107.
Needless to say, Dunkirk is one of the most gorgeous
movies of the year, with its bleak, steely color palette, frenetic cinematography
and editing, tense, staccato score courtesy of Hans Zimmer, and incredible
sound mixing. That last one is especially important since this movie was made
specifically for IMAX, which I didn’t get to see it in, unfortunately. Which is
a shame because considering the movie’s brilliant use of sound and occasional
shots in tight, claustrophobic spots, often filling up with water, I imagine it
would’ve been like a VR experience without the headset. I also have to commend
the movie’s use of practical effects, not just because they’re rarely used as much anymore, but because of how seamless they were. Apparently, those lines of
men along the beach in the wide shots were cardboard cutouts. Who would be
crazy enough to do that? Someone who’s also crazy enough to rig a bulky IMAX
camera to the wing of a working spitfire plane, that’s who.
There is one problem I have
with it, though, and it’s more of a shortcoming of Nolan himself than the movie;
he’s one of the greatest cinematic technicians working today, with all the
technically efficiency of a TI-89 calculator, and about the same emotional
understanding. He’s not as completely disconnected from humanity as people like to
say, but he’s much more concerned with the procedure and inner workings of the
mission than he is with the actual people pulling it off, and especially the
people they’re trying to save. One could argue that it’s for the better since
that’s not the main focus of the movie. The fact that they’re all stuck on the
beach with nowhere to go is motivation enough. But it would’ve been nice to
give us some reason for these characters to survive, especially since half of
them end up getting drowned or bombed. Most of them don’t even have the luxury
of having a name. If there was a Nolan movie that would’ve benefitted from
actual characters and not human-shaped expedition dispensers, it’s this one.
But then again, we’ve seen what happens when he tries to give his movies a heart.
That’s not to say the
performances were bad at all. Cillian Murphy does wonders as a shell-shocked
soldier, Kenneth Branagh as a commanding officer is the most understated he’s
ever been, Fionn Whitehead and Damien Bonnard are great despite not having much
dialogue, and Mark Rylance may as well have walked on set with an “I’m the
emotional center of the movie” T-shirt. And while the characters may be a bit
underdeveloped, there’s no denying Nolan’s investment in the subject and his
ability to convey its severity in little moments. The moments that will stay
with me are the boys watching as a fellow soldier hopelessly marches into the
sea, Kenneth Branagh staring across the horizon knowing that home is only a few
miles away, and waiting restlessly for Tom Hardy’s plane to touch down.
Overall, Dunkirk is a fantastic, proficiently made war movie. Say what you
will about Nolan’s shortcomings, but his filmmaking skills are second to none
and absolutely deserve to be seen on the big screen.
8/10
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