My Review of Dunkirk (2017)

Jeffrey Clemmons
Jul 22, 2017 · 6 min read

Victory sometimes looks a lot like losing, but it’s still victory.

Nolan’s last feature, Interstellar (2015), took us to the edge of space and time; with Dunkirk, Nolan brings us back down to earth, but on the edge of our existence, in a fantastic sense, life as we know it. The byline chosen “the event that changed history,” or similar effect, summarizes the film’s thesis. Nolan did not set out to direct another World War II feature — instead, he chose this narrative not only because it is a tale of heroism and courage, but because it is part of the axis of which history spins upon. In an alternate universe, Dunkirk is another battle at the end of Western civilization as we know it today. But it was not — it was the beginning of the end for the great destroyer, the Eagle, or, as Nolan puts it, the Enemy.

This is perhaps what makes the film so haunting. The film opens with no bombastic ensembles or exposition. Instead, there is a simple title card followed by the image of a band of soldiers walking along a street in the town of Dunkirk, while pamphlets (“WE SURROUND YOU!”) snow down around them, as they search for food and water. There is silence, save for the sound of their boots on the ground, their breath — distant wind.

Then artillery fire. Startling, thunderous, unrelenting artillery.

And they run, and we follow, and one by one, they fall.

Immediately, within minutes into the film, several men have gone down save one, who becomes the first protagonist of the film, that manages to escape to a barricade defended by Englishmen. Believing that all is safe now, instead Nolan pans over the flat white expanse of the beach outside of the town where, in lines stretching from the shore to the cliffs and hills behind, soldiers stand in wait of rescue.

They are surrounded, and the Enemy could attack at any moment.

This is the haunting air that pervades the entire film. Much like other auteurs of suspense — Hitchcock, in particular — Nolan builds much of the tension in Dunkirk on the fact that the enemy is relatively nameless, faceless, and vicious. As one pilot early in the film says, “They’re sitting ducks.” And so, it is perhaps strange to some that the battle defining World War II could be so much unlike a battle at all. This is where Nolan embraces time and how anxious waiting can be.

Thus, in typical Nolan fashion, the film is divided into three parts, each stacked on top of one another, and with different clocks ticking down. They are “The Mole (1 week),” “The Sea (1 day),” and “The Air (1 hour).” Additionally, there is only a vague way of telling where one begins and one ends. As the first scenes of the Mole close, the Sea begins, and then the air, each closer to the finale of the film than the first, but this doesn’t become clear until, well, the finale of the film. While it is not as mind-bending or overt as Nolan’s other efforts, how he uses time throughout the film keeps the viewer at the edge of the seat, despite the fact that they know exactly how the film ends. And for this matter, Dunkirk is not your traditional hero film.

In similar vain to Rogue One of 2016, where the audience knew that the characters were to die (per the premise of the film, being how Leia acquired the plans to the Death Star in the first place), Dunkirk doesn’t care that you know the Allies are about to turn the war around — what matters is that there is uncertainty, and more importantly, that it was not a total victory. Though as many soldiers escaped Dunkirk as died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the war (some 300,000), a great number still suffered, still died. Without going into the details, Nolan does not care about dispensing bodies. What makes Dunkirk a more powerful film than Rogue One, though — aside from the fact that this, you know, actually happened, and real people died — is that, unlike in the Star Wars universe, there is not already the built up value from previous films. Additionally, none of the characters are given much of a backstory outside the timeline of a film. Only one has a particular backstory from before the war that is told in brief, but otherwise, most things we learn about the characters we come to learn on screen.

And, in a way, this makes the film better. Rather than building up sap so the audience will cry with this or that character cries, Nolan wants you to care about their actions and not who they are. What matters is that they fought, not that maybe they were not the best people outside of the war; what matters is that they were strong and compassionate and brave in the moments when they mattered most. This film is not founded on a competition between egos of generals and politicians — the latter of which we see none, for as Mr. Dawson, who steers a yacht refashioned as a rescue boat to Dunkirk against the advice of the Navy, says in the film, “Old men dictate this war, old men should be allowed to fight it,” — but on the commitment to the men to each other, and their attempts to survival, which is about as much victory as they can hope for.

The other great feature of the film, from the subtle clocks at work, the fantastic acting from the whole cast, and Nolan’s script with almost sans dialogue, is absolutely how massive the film is. Nolan hoped to confound Hollywood standards of the war film — usually a pro-America, hoorah Rambo-esque fantasy — by producing a film that showed no American troops, did not include political intrigue, or very much gory violence, yet necessitated a grandscape of effects, cinematography, and technician. For this matter, Nolan fills the screen with haunting scenes of oblique whiteness out of a Carpenter film, the domestic vistas of some of his earlier work — like Inception — and gorgeous views of the sea and sky reminiscent of Luminist painting. As far as vision goes, Dunkirk is incredibly ambitious. And yet, no matter how large the film gets, it stays tight, intimate. Nolan creates fear and claustrophobia below the deck, where thew viewer, omniscient of the threat to come in many cases — but worryingly not in others, being just as startled as the soldiers on screen when gunshots blast through the sides of hollow boats — gets the impression that the soldiers are like anchovies in a tin waiting to be slaughtered. At the same time, the intimate close-up is not always pounding, but truly intimate. We watch as, in lingering shots, characters look out into the distance, the only clue as to what’s in front of them being their facial expressions. And thus the raw, human power of the film is unbridled. Nolan proves that it doesn’t take big explosions, bloody faces and torn off limbs for you to feel something — all it takes is a look in the eyes, a deep, gut-level look that makes you hold your seat a little tighter in anticipation. Or a smile that makes you laugh a sigh of relief and say, “I’ll be damned.”

Against all odds, Dunkirk is a success, and a great addition to the catalog of fantastic Nolan films.

Oh, and Harry Styles was good too.

Grade: A, a beautifully haunting film about little victories carried by big heroes against an unrelenting force bent on their destruction — a film that we desperately need today to remind everyone what is at stake when we pledge allegiance to a flag or dedicate ourselves a cause. It is death by the Enemy, unnamed, unrelenting, unseen.

The Unprofessionals

Relentlessly honest opinions on all things sports and entertainment.

Jeffrey Clemmons

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The Unprofessionals

Relentlessly honest opinions on all things sports and entertainment.

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