Ambitious and
Harrowing, Christopher Nolanfs DunkirkIs a
Masterpiece
Director Christopher Nolan discusses his new film Dunkirk, which is already being hailed as one of the most important war movies ever made
Most days we appear to live in a world gone mad, a time and place in which ignorance of history is treated as a kind of virtuous purity. But sometimes, cosmically, the right movie arrives at just the right time: right now Christopher Nolanfs Dunkirk feels like a salve. Its visual and sound effects are elaborate and impressive. This is a grand spectacle, not an empty one, a rare example of the Hollywood blockbuster dollar well spent.Dunkirk is extraordinary not just because itfs ambitious and beautifully executed, but because Nolan, who both wrote and directed it, has put so much care into its emotional details—and has asked so much of, and trusted, his actors. As great filmmakers before him—Lewis Milestone, Sam Fuller, Brian De Palma—knew, you canft tell a story of war without faces. Faces carry history. Theyfre genetic maps, but theyfre vessels of spiritual memory too. Dunkirk, set against events that happened more than 75 years ago, is like a message from a lost world. If the setting feels unfamiliar to you, donft worry, trust the faces.
Dunkirk, in theaters July 21, is a
fictional story set amid real events of late May and early June 1940. The
capitulation of Belgium left Allied troops trapped between German forces and
the French coast. America, still in the grip of isolationism, would not enter
the Second World War until the following year. Driven back by the enemy, Allied
soldiers became stranded on the beaches of Dunkirk. And, against all odds, some
338,000 were rescued. The backbone of Operation Dynamo, as the mission was
called, was a flotilla of around 700 small fishing and pleasure boats, many of
them captained by their owners, private British citizens who made the
treacherous English Channel crossing to assist military vessels in bringing the
troops home. That rescue came to be known as the Miracle of Dunkirk.
Any historical event can take on a sheen of
nostalgic sentimentality with the passage of time, particularly when itfs
dramatized on the big screen. History demands a degree of shaping to make sense
on film. But if the Dunkirk evacuation is a sturdy, made-for-the-movies heroic
narrative, itfs also one thatfs both humble and humbling. This is a story of
regular people who took action without hesitation, joining forces, at great
personal risk, to form an invincible whole. These were big men in little boats.
Dunkirk is also the story of the soldiers
they rescued, young men who werenft prepared for the war theyfd just entered,
and not just because of their youth. Their training had been constructed around
the lessons Great Britain learned in World War I, when bayonets and trenches
dominated. Meanwhile, the German enemy had been aggressively and effectively
trained. The men Nolan shows us in Dunkirk have already been forced to
retreat—theyfre exhausted from a battle we never even see—and in the early
minutes of the film, theyfre lined up on the beach in impossibly large numbers.
A screen title tells us that theyfre ghoping for deliverance.h Another title
amends that with gfor a miracle.h
One of those men is Tommy, an English
soldier who, in the moviefs opening, narrowly escapes being killed by his own
countrymen, men so desperate theyfll shoot at anything that moves. (Tommy is
played by Fionn Whitehead, a new young actor who
gives a superb, nearly wordless performance.) He makes his way to the beach,
where he sees those throngs of exhausted, forsaken soldiers. Though the French
have been fighting side by side with the English, there are far too few
transports for so many men. Only the English soldiers will be evacuated; the
French will be left behind. On that beach, Tommy sees another soldier crouched
in the sand near a half-buried body. The exchange between them is a kind of mind¬reading, a language of quizzical glances and shrugs.
The other soldier (Aneurin Barnard) will come to be
called Gibson.
MORE: Director Christopher Nolan on Why He
Made DunkirkNow
Later, the two men run across the beach
together, each clinging to the handles of a stretcher bearing a wounded man. At
this point the music, by Hans Zimmer, is a virtual cricket field of violins,
the most anxious of all instruments. Nolan and his cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, shoot the men
and their stretcher from the back, from the side, from the front on the
diagonal—the sequence is jangly and kinetic, almost like an experimental minifilm about teamwork and animal survival.
Tommy, Gibson and their stretcher will
eventually make their way to, and across, the Mole, a long jetty stretching out
into the water. In real life, as in the movie, it was the somewhat
fragile-looking concrete and wood finger from which most of the Dunkirk men
were rescued. But if the soldiersf story, at this point, represents whatfs
happening on land, there are other stories unfolding in the air and on the
water, and Nolan connects them all with nearly invisible stitches. Mr. Dawson
(Mark Rylance, in one of the finest performances wefre likely to see this year)
sets out on his small, fine beauty of a boat, the Moonstone, the minute he
hears help is needed. His son Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney, looking, with his blond
forelock, like an English Troy Donahue) is with him, and a neighbor, George
(Barry Keoghan, whose eager, earnest face practically tears a gash in the movie),
hops aboard at the last minute, uninvited but welcome enough.
Rylance has the demeanor, the carriage and
even the wardrobe of a man who stands by whatfs right. When he boards his boat,
hefs wearing a full tweed suit, complete with waistcoat. But his sense of
whatfs right has nothing to do with propriety. It comes, simply, from the
heart. In one of the filmfs quietest, most astonishing moments, he confirms to
his son, with nothing more than a glance, that telling a lie can sometimes be
the right thing to do.
Of course, Dunkirk is an action movie.
Nolan calls it a gride,h the kind of cringe-¬inducing language encouraged by
marketing departments. But he clearly knows itfs more than that. The picture is
intense and harrowing in places. Those with fears of claustrophobia and
drowning should steel themselves. The movie is also at times assaultively loud, a feature that meshes with eyewitness
accounts. Yet itfs so carefully paced and shaped that it never feels like
punishment. It is also only 106 min. long—its very economy is an act of
boldness. Instead of shrinking from this world, you reach toward it. This is a
picture that needs to be seen big, in Imax if you can.
(That recommendation comes from a person who normally prefers dentistry to Imax.)
It also comes, by the way, from a person
who has gotten little enjoyment from most of Nolanfs movies, with the exception
of the observant and deeply affectionate 2015 documentary short Quay, about
experimental animators Stephen and Timothy Quay. Nolan is perhaps best known
for his trilogy of Batman films, particularly The Dark Knight (2008), which
characterizes the Gotham superhero as a reclusive, reluctant loner with a
bruised soul. But the moviefs alleged darkness is of the calculated sort. Like
most of Nolanfs pictures—especially the elaborate puzzle movie Inception(2010),
a densely plotted dazzler that adds up to nothing—itfs heavy on flashy
technique that strives to persuade us itfs great filmmaking.
Dunkirk, grand and ambitious as it is, is
different from any other Nolan movie. Itfs different from any other war movie,
period. Steven Spielbergfs Saving Private Ryan (1998) is often hailed as a great war picture, and its Normandy-invasion sequence is
brutally effective. But its intensity practically burns the rest of the story
away. Nolan sustains Dunkirkfs dramatic tension from start to finish. This is a
supreme achievement made from small strokes, a kind of Seurat painting
constructed with dark, glittering bits of history. Nolan filmed largely on
location, at Dunkirk Beach. (In certain scenes, a calm lake in the Netherlands
stood in for the bulldoggishly choppy English
Channel.) The flying scenes, taut and thrilling, feature real vintage
Spitfires. When the small boats arrive, many of them are the actual Dunkirk
Little Ships, venerable, elderly, lovingly preserved boats that were part of
the rescue in 1940. They have names like Elvin and Caronia, Endeavour and Mary
Jane. In a terrifying scene, soldiers traveling safely and happily on a large
transport ship, eating jam on bread and drinking mugs of tea as they look
forward to reaching home shores, suddenly and brutally face death by drowning.
One man struggles underwater, and the moment would be like any other
terror-at-sea image except for a staggering, barely glimpsed detail: he does
not let go of his tin mug.
Dunkirk is about both suffering and
bravery, about individuals who care less about themselves than about a greater
good. To them, isolationism would be an affront. One of the moviefs most heroic
faces is one we barely see: Tom Hardy plays RAF pilot Farrier. He spends most
of the movie with an aviator helmet clamped on his head and a mask drawn across
his mouth. The intensity of his performance is built almost completely with
gestures. He waves or nods to his colleagues as they skim by in their
Spitfires, and even when they seem too far away to possibly read his meaning,
youfre sure that they do. He casts an apprehensive glance at his busted fuel
gauge. (He makes chalk marks on the dashboard to keep track of how much juice
he has left.) Somehow his eyes, even though we canft always see them clearly,
betray worry for his colleagues but little for himself. We can read his mind,
even though itfs protected by layers of leather and shearling. And his ultimate
act is a doozy—no less than we expect from this man we hardly know.
The casting of Dunkirk is near perfect.
From Hardy to Keoghan, from Rylance to Harry Styles, the pop star who plays one
of the young soldiers, the picture is filled with great English faces. But to
call them characteristically English faces is wrong. Remember, theyfre supposed
to be the faces of men who lived more than 75 years ago. Today, the face of
England—like that of France or any other European country—is much more racially
mixed. Love of country comes with no color or birthplace attached. Nolan doesnft address that idea
directly—the story of Dunkirk is almost exclusively about white men, something
that canft be changed after the fact. But his approach opens out to it
implicitly. Late in the film, a British commander played by a stalwart Kenneth Branagh, knowing that nearly all of his own men have been
rescued, makes an executive pronouncement: He will not leave stranded French
soldiers behind. His England, even then, was part of a greater whole, and that
made him no less English.
If you see Dunkirk for no other reason, see it for its vision of the faces of men who took action, without having any idea what the world would become. All they knew was that they wanted the best for it.