Dunkirk is an
absolute masterpiece. Right from the very first
scene the viewer is sucked straight into the desperate escape of a group of young soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk as the allied armies collapsed
in the face of a massive Nazi onslaught in 1940 around them. From there it doesn't let up for a
second until the credits fall.
The film centres on
the escape of three soldiers, whose various attempts to escape the Dunkirk beach
enable the movie to explore multiple aspects of the evacuation. From the
spitfire pilots who tried to stave off the luftwaffe, to the small ships who
were integral to the rescue and the desperate acts of the Royal Navy through to the heroic last stand of the French army each plays a crucial role in the narrative. At the centre of it all are the escaping
soldiers, played brilliantly and silently by Jack Lowden, Aneurin Barnard and Harry Styles whose escape threads
to together these disparate narratives. To do this Nolan has to disjoint time and
show the same scene from different angles, as a device it could have been a
confusing mess, but Nolan just about keeps it together and it ends up working
rather well.
There are some real
bone curdling scenes of terror, the enduring image of soldiers standing in neat lines on the beach, 350,000 of them, as stuka dive bombers scream towards with
terrifying noise and arbitrarily killing really reinforce the senseless destruction
of war. No wonder soldiers lost their minds, something that Nolan is not afraid
to show and explore. Also fascinating is the sheer bravery of the
small ship captains, mainly civilians, who didn't hesitate to take the dangerous trip over the
English Channel to somehow save the lives of 350,000 men. Mark Rylance is terrific as the
stoic civilian captain who puts his personal tragedies to one side to help with
the evacuation.
To his credit Nolan
has in general not succumbed to overt Hollywoodisation or the re-writing of history, aside from a couple of
notable occasions particularly involving the Spitfire pilots, this is an exercise in trying to render reality. The flaws with the Spitfire stories is somewhat forgiven by the stunning cinematography of the air battles which are the best to
have been put to celluloid for many, many years. The apocalyptic depiction of
the beaches is also masterfully rendered, there hasn't been a movie since the Road that is as visually bleak as this one. The general sense of armageddon
is reinforced by Zimmer's memorably low key score. That is not a score that is
going to sell many albums, but it does manage to compliment the films themes perfectly.
This is not a film
about character, but about apocalyptic experience. Nolan is not interested
in individuals and their back stories but about the raw visceral imagery of the
moment. At times this makes the movie feel inhuman, but that to a certain extent is
the point, the aim here is try and visualise the terror of what those soldiers
went through and through ignoring character and to a large extent dialogue, it achieves
exactly that.
This won't be a
movie for everybody, if you don't like war films or you enjoy character and
dialogue then this probably isn't the film for you. If you want to get a feel
for what it was like for those soldiers at Dunkirk then this will get you
closer than anything else has. Go.
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