Movie Review: Dunkirk

Christopher Nolan lets his art flag fly

Evan Rindler
Jul 21, 2017 · 3 min read
Dunkirk attempts to address a damaging day in British history.

As an American, I learned a little about Dunkirk in school, but not much beyond the basics. Four hundred thousand British, French, Belgian, and Dutch soldiers were pushed to the sea and forced to evacuate in everything from naval ships to fishing boats and yachts piloted by private citizens.

It’s obvious after seeing Dunkirk the movie that Dunkirk the event resonates in British society much the same way that Pearl Harbor does to Americans. Just saying the name of the place is enough to conjure a thousand images of heroism and tragedy. The defeat marked a new low point for the Allies in the war, even as it demonstrated Britain’s valuable “can-do spirit.” The film doesn’t shy away from the contradictory outlooks with which to view the disaster. One of the trailer’s tag line reads “Survival is Victory,” a sad message that only comes clear after witnessing the visceral film.

I recognize these ideas because Nolan successfully translates complex historical context through the lens of an arty blockbuster. And with that knowledge, I can answer the crucial question of why Nolan made this his latest movie: Catharsis.

No, Dunkirk doesn’t fall in line with his prior high-concept, meta-textual narratives. The one *potential twist the film offers ends in an anti-climax. In addition, for all of it’s chronological trickery, the overall story is simple. It’s a war movie.

Luckily, Dunkirk is far from generic, even if it hews close to the traditional platitudes (War is hell!”) of the genre from time to time. If you want to know why Christopher Nolan made a simple war movie, you need only to look at details. Dunkirk isn’t a war movie about all conflict; it’s about a specific time when history changed for the Britons.

To achieve his master thesis on true heroism in battle, Nolan juggles three plot lines that are arranged to reflect three different, corresponding time frames. One thread follows a young solider and his desperate attempts to leave the beach over the course of a few days. Another is in the clouds with an RAF fighter for an hour. The third follows an English boat on its way across the channel to help the evacuation.

Each plot allows for individualized conflicts. For the soldier, he has to bluff his way onto a departing ship. For the pilot, it’s calculating his remaining fuel. For the boatman, it’s how to treat a shell-shocked sailor they encounter.

These detail driven affairs are the most effective and affecting scenes in the movie. It’s a shame that Nolan couldn’t dream up a few more. His thinly sketched characters come alive when they make active choices to solve these problems, rather than just react as anticipated. It’s not very illuminating to watch soldiers escape a sinking ship, no matter how harrowing it is to watch.

Nonetheless, extended set-pieces of violence fill most of the runtime. The shock-and-awe of the dive bombers, drowning, and dog fights gets old after a time. The runtime is a (relatively) scant 107 minutes, but it does suffer some sag due the repetitive conflicts. Historical accuracy aside, Nolan’s obsession with grand scale carnage comes to the forefront here. But sometimes, his tendencies lean into some fruitful directions.

The most exciting filmmaking comes from the ebb between the furious action scenes. There are a few meditative moments on the desolate beach or in the iron sky that portray magnificent beauty amidst the carnage. These enigmatic images are filmed with the same blockbuster majesty as swooping planes and bursting bombs; even more so than in his space epic Interstellar, Nolan finds the best use for his IMAX film stock.

It’s these moments that elevate Dunkirk from a finely made technical exercise. Nolan has made sentimental films before, but Dunkirk is his most sorrowful since Memento. The image of a broken plane gliding over thousands of soldiers feels different than the fun operatic solemnity of his Batman fare, even if it’s both operatic and solemn too. That’s what sticks with me after Dunkirk. Not the harrowing escapes, but the poetry of human history in action.

8.5/10

*Does anyone else feel like titling one plot The Mole was a half-developed idea? The mole refers to the breakwater on the water, but also has implications for the character in that sequence.

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Evan Rindler

Written by

Former child, part-time adult.

My Movie Life

Movie Musings

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