Release date: July 21, 2017
Genres: War
Director: Christopher Nolan
Writer: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Fionn Whitehead
Dunkirk is the latest film from writer/director Christopher Nolan and tells the story of the evacuation of trapped British forces from the Dunkirk beach in France. When the British navy stopped sending their warships to rescue the soldiers, a call went out to all civilian ships to journey to Dunkirk and save as many people from the beach as possible. This film is the story of the heroism of those everyday sailors, the story of the few pilots who provided air support during the rescue, and the survival of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers stranded on the beach.
Christopher Nolan breaks the story in three. One in the air, one at sea, and one on the beaches. The movie switches between air, sea, and land frequently, which is sometimes confusing as you see characters in different settings and the movie doesn’t always tell you when a switch between stories has occurred. The story doesn’t give you much time to catch up with events - it just goes. It also doesn’t give you any time to get attached to characters. All of the soldiers trapped on the beach in Dunkirk are young white men with black hair. It’s really difficult to tell them apart, and you never learn anything about their backstories either. There is never a moment when characters talk about what it’s like back home or what they’re looking forward to when they finally escape. They’re just men trapped together by the terrifying circumstances of this event - they have no time to get to know each other. If you’re used to war films that are more character-driven, this might be a little jarring. Nolan chooses to take the focus away from the characters and onto the event itself. You never get a sense of who the enemy is either because you almost never see an enemy soldier in this film - all you know is that someone is shooting at you.
This movie is incredibly suspenseful, even without characters to be attached to. What makes this film so suspenseful instead is just a combination of excellent sound design, Hans Zimmer’s clock-like score, and a sense of realism from the fantastic visual effects. I honestly couldn’t tell what was real and what was fake in this film. It looks like they filmed with real planes, they capsized real boats, and they had thousands of extras on the beach. I saw this film in the 70mm film format, which just made the aerial scenes look gorgeous and huge - I felt like I was actually there. Even with all of that, the sound effects were probably the most terrifying aspect of the film. When a gun is fired, the sound makes you jump.
Dunkirk works incredibly well on every level. It’s such a fantastic experience in that it just throws you into this situation without any characters to empathize with. The score, visuals, and sound design completely immerse you into this scary event with no easy escape. At the same time, the heroism of the everyday sailors coming to the rescue of the trapped soldiers is incredibly powerful. You won’t remember any of the characters, but you’ll definitely remember the experience.