Dunkirk is a cold masterpiece
Director Christopher Nolan’s latest film is a technical marvel.
Dunkirk, from the director of Inception and The Dark Knight, is a great technical achievement.
Clocking in at a surprisingly taut 1 hr 50 minutes, Christopher Nolan’s film is not the typical war movie recap of historical events. It chooses instead to unspool the story of the massive evacuation from three very specific points of view: That of one ground soldier, one aviator and one civilian boater who answers the call.
It also messes around with its timeline in an ingenious way that builds the suspense and drives the narrative to a very effective climax. I won’t give it away here, but pay close attention to the information in the opening superscripts and the way events unfold in the three narratives and you’ll get it pretty quickly. (As Nolan was the filmmaker behind Memento, it’s no surprise he’s able to tweak the timeline of a movie for dramatic effect.)
Along the way, it fills in enough details to give you a sense of the enormity of the Dunkirk dilemma and its importance to Britain’s World War II effort.
Most of the film focuses on the peril of the U.K. forces trapped on the beach and the hazards facing those who are able to find their way off of it.
If there’s a problem with the movie, it’s that its technical skill undercuts its chosen method of storytelling. When you choose to focus on three individuals, you want to be able to connect to them in more than a superficial way.
But the film’s gloss keeps you at a remove from them, and its focus on the immediacy of its events robs you of any sense of their past. They remain ciphers for the most part.
Take the ground soldier, played by Fionn Whitehead. About all we know about him is that he survives several brushes with death and isn’t particularly noble. When he gets into the thick of the action, he meets several comrades, and it’s difficult at times to tell them apart (aside from the distractingly famous Harry Styles).
Similarly, we know almost nothing about the civilian boater (played by the redoubtable Mark Rylance) except that he’s stoic and dutiful. (His elder son, played by Tom Glynn-Carney, makes more of an impression.)
And the aviator, played by Tom Hardy, disappears behind his mask. He’s clearly heroic but spends most of his time worrying about his broken gas gauge.
The movie’s ultimate flaw may be its pure Britishness: It’s as self-effacing as its nonchalant heroes. One of my favorite scenes: When a downed aviator is finally rescued after nearly drowning, the only thing he can say to his rescuer is “Good afternoon.”
At the film’s end, one survivor remarks: “All we did was survive,” the response is: “That’s enough.” It may not be quite enough for an emotionally resonant film, though.
What did you think? Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments.
