Dunkirk

I’ll start off by acknowledging a personal bias in that I believe Christopher Nolan can do no wrong as a director.  His ‘Dark Knight’ series set the standard for super-hero movies and films like ‘Memento’ and ‘Inception’ showed just how far he can push our abilities to comprehend the abstract.  Even box office disappointments like ‘Interstellar’ still showed his ability to tell well crafted stories and to pull incredible performances out of actors.  ‘Dunkirk’ is a welcome addition to his filmography and no less impressive.  It tells a story that most Americans know nothing about as it happened prior to our entry to the second World War.  Dunkirk is a city in Europe directly across the English Channel from England.  An estimated 400,000 allied forces from France, Belgium, and England are surrounded by the German army and desperately await to be evacuated from the beaches. The problem is the Allies did’t know how to do it and losing this many soldiers would surely change the tide of the War. The solution is to send a civilian fleet of private boats through U-boat infested waters to take troops back to English shores.

Nolan uses three interweaved stories to tell the tale, but interestingly enough, these overlapping stories take place over different periods of time.  ‘The Mole’ portion which follows an English platoon takes place over a week’s period, while ‘The Water’, involving the actual evacuation, takes place over a day.  The third and perhaps most dramatic story called ‘The Air’ is about a one hour air battle over the Channel where two English pilots attempt to protect the civilian armada from German dive bombers.  It’s a bit disorienting at first as, I stated, the events intermix even though they take place over different periods of time.  Chris Nolan’s skill is that disorientation quickly evolves into a poetry of storytelling.  Accompanied by Hans Zimmer’s music score, the images and events flow effortlessly together and slowly build to the crescendo of the troops leaving the beaches of Dunkirk.  I doubt few Directors have the skill to give us a montage about War that can seem both beautiful and riveting at the same time. 

Nolan favorite Tom Hardy is a highlight in this film as the British pilot and, much like in ‘Dark Knight Rises’, most of his performance is with his face covered.  It shows the extent of his talent as some of the film’s most powerful performances are from Hardy with only his eyes conveying the emotional content.  Much has been made of including boy band singer Harry Styles in this film, but Nolan compared it to his controversial choice of casting Heath Ledger as the Joker in ‘Dark Knight Rises’.  Nolan succeeds in his casting choice as is evidenced by how much Styles doesn’t stand out.  He gives a strong performance, but his celebrity isn’t distracting rather he is just another soldier in the platoon. Kenneth Branagh and Mark Rylance round out the well known actors giving us views of the events from entirely different vantage points.

I highly recommend this movie as a well crafted and powerfully poetic movie that gives the uninitiated a history lesson for good measure.  This isn’t your typical war movie as there is little blood (although some harrowing water scenes).  This is a film you can tell was important to Christopher Nolan to make, but it equally highlights his mastery of film making as anything else. ‘Dunkirk’ is like watching a symphony of images.  One feels from a soldier’s point of view what this historical event must have been like and I can think of no better tribute to the soldiers than to dramatize it in this way.  Another great creation from Christopher Nolan.

I give this film **** stars

Dunkirk Trailer