Dunkirk

Year Released: 2017

Total Runtime: 106 minutes

Directed: Christopher Nolan

Produced: Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas, et al.

Starring: Fionn Whitehead, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh, Harry Styles (kinda)

Oscars: Won: Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing. Nominated: Best Score, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design

IMDB Plot Summary: May/June 1940. Four hundred thousand British and French soldiers are surrounded in the French port of Dunkirk. The situation looks dire and, in desperation, Britain sends civilian boats in addition to its hard-pressed Navy to try to evacuate the beleaguered forces. This is that story, seen through the eyes of a soldier amongst those trapped forces, two Royal Air Force fighter pilots, and a group of civilians on their boat, part of the evacuation fleet.

Context, Context, Context: What Created Dunkirk, and Why It’s Still Relevant

The powerful true story. As a British filmmaker, the real events that took place at Dunkirk in May-June of 1940 have always felt more personal to Nolan than to the average American viewer. This was still a year and a half before Pearl Harbor, when the United States officially entered WWII – but to the British, Dunkirk’s evacuation is the defining moment at the beginning of the war and allowed them to defend themselves when Germany later attacked Britain directly. Many of the most important filmmakers of all time – including Kubrick and Spielberg – have tapped into the war genre for some of their most important work. Nolan has tapped into many genres in his time (superhero, science fiction, heist), but he finds original ways to upend every single one of them. Nolan also makes very personal movies. Before making Dunkirk, Nolan made Interstellar. It is a clear homage to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey; his favorite film by his favorite director, the one that inspired him to become a filmmaker – the two make original and groundbreaking films that also manage to fit within the mainstream. Beyond that, Nolan wanted the theme of fatherhood to be a critical theme of Interstellar, being a father himself. Within Dunkirk, Nolan taps into his British identity by bringing one of the most profoundly powerful events in their history to light. However, with all Nolan’s films, an audience not immediately familiar with what he is referencing – be it fatherhood, the War on Terror, or even recent British history – walks out of the theater feeling both connected to the film’s emotions and floored by the spectacle of what they’ve seen. And what a spectacle this film is, as with all Nolan’s films. Despite the praise they always receive from critics, they are always released as summer blockbusters, because Nolan creates events that are also some of the most artistically prestigious stuff around.

The (expected) legacy of Dunkirk. Typically, in this section, I cover the legacy of the movie, but this one was only released three years ago. That means I get to have some fun and try to predict the future! My first prediction is that giving Guillermo Del Toro the Oscar for Best Directing in The Shape of Water will not age well. Both Nolan and Del Toro are considered some of the best in the business today and have been actively making movies for about two decades now; this is a category that often goes to a “legacy” pick, or someone who was overlooked for a previous effort. I understand the academy going with Del Toro’s dark, emotional, and ultimately uplifting early 60’s sci-fi fairytale over Dunkirk for Best Picture, but with so few words or developed characters Dunkirk simply does not function without outstanding direction. My second prediction will be an injection of unique storytelling into genres that typically don’t experience it; 1917 unfolding in real time and constructed to look like one long take is an example of this. Being his most lauded take on a classic genre, I hope it will inspire others to follow in other genres.

The Story and its Characters

Anonymity. Nolan bucks war movie tradition to make this film. The first change is that virtually every character is nameless – the focus is not on the people, but on the event. In contrast to classic war films that retell events, where celebrities occupy real-life roles to re-enact battles and planning, the characters at Dunkirk don’t even have names. Aside from the opening text, the only text that Nolan provides to orient us to when any event on screen is taking place is introducing each of the plotlines and how long they take. Whenever we see a ship sink, we have no clue if it happened in real life. Nolan is more interested in the experience of Dunkirk from the perspectives of land, sea, and sky than a true retelling of what exactly happened and when. This is a bold storytelling choice and can be off-putting for audiences who have been conditioned with a certain type of war movie where we get to know the characters, experience their thoughts on war, and are heartbroken when they don’t all come home. By eliminating this aspect of the story, Nolan shows us the experience of a lost soldier wandering in a crowd of strangers on Dunkirk beach simply trying to survive; bravery be damned.

The structure. This is worthy of its own essay, but I’ll try to explain how the structure functions briefly. Nolan crafts three storylines: The Mole, which lasts a week, The Sea, which lasts a day, and The Air, which lasts an hour. Each of these three storylines have an increasingly intense series of climaxes, with small breaks in between. However, Nolan crosscuts between the three continuously, so that they are each having their progressive climaxes at the same time on the screen, but not the same time in the story. As the movie moves forward, we begin jumping forward and backwards in time. In the film’s true climax, all three plotlines converge; The Air’s hour is during The Sea’s day, which is at the end of The Mole’s week. As we draw nearer to this point, we see an early event in The Air’s plotline from the point of view of The Sea, but 60% into the film’s total runtime because the entirety of The Air’s hour is only one hour in the whole day of The Sea, and only one hour of The Mole’s week. Each of these plotlines could have made up its own film, but Nolan wanted to present the complete Dunkirk experience in the same amount of movie time, but that experience looked different each of these plotlines.

The performances. There’s honestly not much to say here. There are a few performances that stand out to give the film its emotional weight, but the emotion most at play is suspense. With that in mind, all the little-known actors on the beach are quite convincing, and Harry Styles holds his own. Cillian Murphy’s solider suffering from PTSD is well acted, especially when he’s allowed to be subtle and grapple with his mistakes. Kenneth Branagh has a great presence as the Admiral overseeing the evacuation from the dock, and Tom Hardy does a lot with a little – even stuck in an airplane wearing a mask, we see him process the decisions he has to make with dwindling fuel. However, Mark Rylance’s character piloting his personal boat to Dunkirk carries the film’s quiet moments. He exhibits terrific range and is the perfect vehicle for exploring the film’s rare but big questions about age, sacrifice, and duty. His character also functions as a great opposite to both Murphy’s traumatized soldier, and the young men on the beach who are only thinking to survive.

Technicalities

Nolan, Nolan, Nolan. Christopher Nolan is one of the last remaining shameless purists in Hollywood. He continues to shoot on film, not digital (even if that film is IMAX) and he believes movies are meant to be experienced as a community event. He also takes this pure approach to his filmmaking – if something can be filmed practically, he will. Inception’s famous hallway fight scene was filmed practically with a rotating set; real stuntmen jumped off of buildings in his Dark Knight trilogy; and for Dunkirk, Nolan filmed in the real location, with real ships in the water, and real planes flying overhead to a dazzling effect. The sound design, which one the Oscar, creates uniquely terrifying sounds for the German dive-bombers, and the editing jumps between plotlines perfectly. My favorite aspect, which is often my choice, is the camerawork. Nolan worked again with Hoyte van Hoytema from Interstellar, who does some great work with fixed camera in both films. In Interstellar, he “mounted” the cameras on the exterior of the spaceships to convey the relativity of motion in space and orient the viewer. In Dunkirk, the fixed cameras only further stress the viewer out. Occasionally they are stuck on the side of planes in a dogfight, occasionally on sinking and tilting ships, but every time they ratchet the tension up a notch.

John’s Highlight Reel

· Opening Sequence. The opening 15 minutes or so, before the crosscutting begins, sets the tone for the kind of experience the audience is in for; propaganda papers rain down on a squad, that is quickly mowed down with one survivor who stumbles to a beach full of strangers which gets divebombed culminating in one of the best shots of modern cinema: a close-up of our hero filling one half of the screen, and in the other half the bombs and explosions get ever closer.

· The Medical Ship. We’re introduced to the film’s masterful crosscutting techniques for the first time. The locations are: our soldier on the beach trying to carry a wounded man on a stretcher to a medical ship in order to get a spot for himself, losing the spot, the ship getting bombed and sinking; Mark Rylance taking his boat to Dunkirk, and young George staying onboard; and Tom Hardy’s plane squadron heading to Dunkirk and beginning to engage the enemy. The medical ship sinking is brutal and gut-wrenching, but treated very matter-of-factly, and the hopelessness of the situation has been upped.

· Dogfighting. There are a couple of sequences containing dogfights, but they are all magnificently filmed and absolutely thrilling without being disorienting or too shaky, which is a miracle in and of itself.

· Torpedo, Cillian Murphy. In an extremely claustrophobic scene, our unnamed beach soldier finally gets onboard a ship heading home, only for that ship to be torpedoed and being sinking while he is trapped below decks. He finds a way out, and encounters Cillian Murphy’s soldier, who we’ve seen The Sea plotline suffering from trauma. Here however, he is seen in control and commanding a group of soldiers rowing a boat, which saves our soldier. It’s both a great character moment for Cillian’s man, and an indication that Nolan is playing with time.

· Saving Collins. Here’s another instance of plotlines crossing over and claustrophobia. In an earlier scene in the film, Tom Hardy’s fellow pilot in The Air plotline was shot down and chose to land on the water. Now, 75% through the film’s runtime, we see this event again from the other pilot’s perspective. In THE most claustrophobic sequence in the film, he is unable to escape the cockpit since it won’t open and begins filling with water. At the last second, he is saved by Mark Rylance in both a satisfying “our characters met” moment and a “rescue moment”.

· Oil in the Water. Our plotlines have all converged for an extended sequence of action and tension that remains one of the best crafted sequences this side of Mad Max: Fury Road. This sequence culminates in an excellent feeling of satisfaction; not only have our plotlines converged, but we are finally feeling hopeful as the soldiers have been rescued.

· Epilogue. In classical Nolan fashion, each of the plotlines once again diverge for their separate wordless endings, over a moving score and voiceover; but he uses this technique in his films so often because it’s so damn satisfying. Our beach soldiers read Winston Churchill’s famous rallying cry to defend Britain rather than surrender; Mark Rylance’s son ensures that young George gets a posthumous mention in his local newspaper; and Tom Hardy lands his fuel-less plane on the beach after getting cheered by the British soldiers, sets fire to it, and gets captured – a decision he resigned himself to halfway through the film to ensure their survival.

Came for _____, Stayed for ______

The spectacle. When I first heard that Nolan’s next film after Interstellar would be a war film telling the story of Dunkirk, I anxiously awaited the result for a full year knowing I was in for something special. In terms of action and intensity, Nolan delivers without delving into the extremely graphic and maintaining an accessible, PG-13 rating. The stress, the incredible feeling, and the relief of rescue for the British soldiers was one of the most intense, awe-inspiring, and powerful movie theater experiences I’ve had.

Nolan’s plotting. Oh, what a fool I was when I first heard about this film, thinking I was in for a simply plotted war movie even though Nolan is behind the camera. But oh, how happy I am that it isn’t because this plotting works. The Mole, The Sea, and The Air had vastly different real-life experiences at Dunkirk, but Nolan was able to effectively capture them all in the same amount of movie time. Nolan takes it a step further by having the plotlines cross over multiple times, experience crescendos at the same movie time, and ultimately all converge. The spectacle and seeking to understand the plotting are two distinct but excellent reasons to give this film another look.