The Movie Lover’s Review: Dunkirk

Rick Williamson
Jul 24, 2017 · 7 min read

The Movie Lover’s A+ review of Dunkirk is here after fighting on the beaches, on the landing grounds, fighting in the fields and in the streets.

Courage and determination in the face of insurmountable fear and helplessness shall win the day.

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Christopher Nolan has always been someone who works the concept of time into the majority of his films. In Memento, time wasn’t only an enemy, it was an enigmatic cruz of storytelling. In The Dark Knight trilogy, time was always a ticking clock, be it to a bomb or to a heroes’ shelf-life. In Inception, time became layered, with seconds in one dream equalling minutes in another, which equaled hours in another, so on and so forth. Finally, in Interstellar, time was a commodity in space travel, much like oxygen and water, it was something that needed to be respected and conserved. With Dunkirk, time is warped even further, this time acting as an enemy, a ticking clock all but running out on the allied efforts in France during WWII.

Dunkirk also uses time a storytelling device, weaving three separate fronts of the same battle together in what I can only describe as one of the more satisfying viewing experiences I’ve had this year. One story begins on land and covers one week, one on the sea and covers one day, and one in the air that covers one hour. Each of these stories is told by using a different increment of time, weaving in and out of one another, leaving small easter eggs such as a recognizable sinking boat seen from the air or a fighter jet seen from the sea. It’s a hell of a way to build a film, almost to help along the frantic nature of the story in general. The story of Dunkirk, for those unaware, is one of survival in the face of total annihilation. It is a piece of history where 400,000 British and French allied soldiers were left stranded on the beaches mere miles away from the shores of home, waiting for some hope of rescue as the enemy surrounded them.

Nolan never set out to make a war epic with Dunkirk. Instead, he’s pieced together a tense and relentless tribute to British fortitude and endurance in the face of abject fear and looming death. Under his masterful direction, it is a story of perseverance in the face of crippling fear, and I don’t think I’ve seen a war film depict that fear and perseverance in a way that Dunkirk does. Many other films have brought us the horrors of war, sure, but none as effectively intense and nearly unbearable as what Nolan does here. Nolan wisely almost never shows an enemy soldier, rather treating them as an unseen, unstoppable force of nature. Incoming enemy aircraft carry the same sense of unstoppable fear that the fin in Jaws did, and the desperate, repeated, failed attempts to leave the beach of Dunkirk act almost as a cruel reminder from fate itself that death cannot be escaped. Each of the three stories approach different versions of fear with different versions of endurance in a way that the audience is able to feel, viscerally, in their own hearts.

The first story, titled The Mole and told over the course of one week, follows young private Tommy, a private just trying to make it off the beach. His story takes him across the paths of privates Gibson and Alex , as well as officers Colonel Winnant and Commander Bolton. Tommy is the face of the soldier, a boy who’s squad is gunned down, leaving him desperate to get off the beach by any means. His many attempts at survival reach almost comical Charlie Brown levels of failure, with the beach acting like a cruel purgatory that cannot be escaped. The tension of these scenes is nearly unbearable, and Nolan ratchets up the increasing fear and stress in ways that had me gripping at the arm rests. In particularly, a scene that has a small group of soldiers hiding in the hull of a ship as they await high tide builds the stakes higher and higher until it quite literally cannot take anymore of it. The fear of men on the beach is a fear of death without any way to fight it, and their perseverance is found in their simple, biological will to survive.

The second front, titled The Sea, follows a single small civilian ship captained by Mr. Dawson and his teenaged son Peter, as well as Peter’s friend George, over the course of one day. When the Naval Destroyers are unable to help due to constant attacks from the U-boats in the sea and bombers from the air, civilians answered the call to make the quest across the Straight of Dover in an attempt to bring their boys back home to fight another day. Mark Rylance brings a soulful, wise, but none-the-less fearful performance as Mr. Dawson, with one scene in particular standing out as he argues with his son over going to save a downed pilot. His short but emotional outburst is a powerful reminder that even the hardest and steadiest of men can still have fear in their hearts. Despite that fear, Mr. Dawson persists, sighting duty to his people and his country even with the potentially violent opposition from a shell-shocked soldier played by Cillian Murphy, who is a wonderful example of how fear and war can ruin a man so quickly and completely. The fear expressed here is that of shell shock and the unknown, with the ability to press on found in the sense of duty to ones countrymen.

The last front is The Air, and it follows the three Royal Air Force planes tasked with keeping the skies of Dunkirk open during the most important single hour of the siege. Quickly cut down to two planes, pilots Farrier and Collins serve as the only air defense available to the helpless men on shore. Nolan takes another opportunity to put Tom Hardy behind a mask, but as with his performance as Bane, Hardy does so much acting with his eyes it’s almost unfair. The fear on display here is different than the others, being that it is a fear of not being able to complete the job. These pilots know that thousands of lives depend on their ability as airmen, and when the ability to do the job comes under fire, they seem more afraid about not being able to take down the bomber than being downed themselves. A broken fuel gauge and some award-worthy editing crank up the urgency of these scenes, as well as some fantastically photographed arial combat scenes that remind you just how hard it was to hit a moving fighter jet with gunfire.

Nolan’s direction is the driving force of this movie, to be sure, but his partnership with sound, and in particular composer Hans Zimmer, has never paid off more than it has with Dunkirk. Gunfire in the film is aggressively loud, unexpected, and terrifying. The way that bullets rip through wood and metal helps one imagine the carnage they lay on a human body without having to explicitly show us the gore that was no doubt involved with such warfare. The nightmarish buzz of divebombing planes sends soldiers scattering like roaches on the beach with no real place to hide, bringing a tension to the audience that I haven’t felt in a long time. Lastly, Zimmer’s score might not be his most poetic, but it is certainly one of his most relentless. Based around the ticking of a pocket watch, the music is as intense as the picture itself, perfectly matching the desperation on the screen and turning the tension up to 11.

Dunkirk has the unique factor of having no single lead character, rather splitting it’s story amongst several characters in different areas. That being said, the performers in each story serve to enhance the nature of their scenes. Unknowns Fionn Whitehead, Harry Styles (of One Direction fame!), and Aneuirn Barnard are all really good as the desperate and terrified soldiers on the beach. Mark Rylance and his cautious yet determined civilian captain play wonderfully against Cillian Murphy’s unnamed and frantic Shivering Soldier. Tom Hardy is the closest thing Dunkirk has to a true-blue hero, with his pilot Farrier having nerves of steel and the know-how to track his fuel despite the aforementioned broken gauge. He gets one of the best, most crowd pleasing moments in the film, aided by a couple of wonderful, nearly dialogue-free scenes from Kenneth Branagh. In these particular scenes, Branagh expertly conveys a litany of emotions with just his eyes, from hopelessness to excited relief to dawning dread. It’s an absolute joy to watch him as the resolute Commander of the evacuation.

Christopher Nolan is thought to be one of the best directors in filmmaking, and Dunkirk serves as proof that he is a master class filmmaker. His entire career has led to this film being a tightly woven thriller set on the cusp of one of the greatest and most valuable retreats in the history of warfare. His skill of intersecting the three story timelines with one another only to bring them all together for the finale is nothing short of breathtaking. One of my favorite moments of Dunkirk was when I realized the placement of the characters of Tommy, Mr. Dawson, and Farrier in relation to the action. Pay special attention to the boats, the planes, and even the actors in every shot, because you’ll find yourself picking up the intersections like yummy tidbits throughout the tension-filled mastery of Dunkirk.

The Final Grade
Dunkirk is Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece. With intersecting stories pieced together by tight, effective editing, and complimented by a punishing, relentless soundtrack, he weaves a powerful tale of ultimate fear and desperation met by the endurance and will of the British allied troops stranded at Dunkirk.
A+ (100%)

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