REVIEW: Dunkirk

I've gotta say, I keep finding myself torn on Christopher Nolan. He's got undeniable talent as a director, but I tend to consider his work more hit or miss than the general public seems to. I'll never understand why everyone adored Inception as much as they did and I consider The Dark Knight Rises by far the weakest entry in his Batman trilogy. I love The Dark Knight as much as anyone, but I still think that, in terms of outright quality, he's yet to top The Prestige. The point I'm trying to make here is that, when I watch a Christopher Nolan film, I'm never quite sure what I'm going to get. It's a total coin-toss as to whether or not it'll sit well for me, which is one of the reasons I was so intrigued by his most recent film, Dunkirk. It was a subject matter that felt much more appropriate for a director like Clint Eastwood, so I was naturally curious to see what Nolan would bring to the table.

Taking place in 1940, after the Nazi invasion of France, the film tells the true story of the "Miracle of Dunkirk" (as Winston Churchill once put it). As the Nazis continue their march across Europe, Allied troops find themselves pushed back to the French city of Dunkirk, where they attempt to mount an evacuation. With the perimeter shrinking every day and Allied ships getting blown out of the water, the Royal Navy puts out a call to action, commandeering civilian boats to sail across the English Channel and assist in evacuating over 300,000 Allied troops. The film conveys all of this by way of three overlapping narratives; we have The Mole (following a small group of British troops attempting to escape the beach), The Sea (following an old man, his son, and their young deckhand as they sail their pleasurecraft across the Channel to assist in the evacuation), and The Air (following an RAF fighter pilot on a mission to provide air support, despite a damaged fuel gauge).

Implementing a nonlinear narrative like this is a risky move, especially in a film where the majority of the action takes place in only a small handful of locations, but the story itself remained coherent throughout (at least, moreso than a lot of other films that attempt this style of storytelling). However, my biggest issue with the film came from the near-total lack of any characterization. There's an interesting balance (or lack thereof) at play here, in which the film doubles-down on tone and atmosphere in place of character drama. This is a film that is much more about the event itself and the emotion surrounding it, rather than individual characters. Names and backgrounds are pushed to the sideline in favor of immersion; there are a handful of characters we focus on, but they're all more or less "everyman" types that could be swapped out with just about anyone else. 

The soldiers on the beach are all young men in identical uniforms, each about the same build with similar haircuts and accents. It's difficult to pick a single one out of the crowd, but it's fairly clear that this is the point. This isn't trying to be your run-of-the-mill war movie, where we follow a cadre of memorable heroes into danger and adventure. This is a movie about a tremendously bleak situation, and the characterization we get follows suit. Tom Hardy could have been any fighter pilot, Harry Styles could have been any soldier. Mark Rylance could be playing any regular guy with a boat, called into action by the powers that be. This isn't a film about the heroism of a few specific individuals, so much as it is about the extraordinary circumstances everyone who was involved found themselves in. 

The film puts all its chips on building tension, and that's something that it does incredibly well. By the time we enter the final act, the audience is well-trained to fear the sound of Luftwaffe aircraft, just as the Allied troops do. It comes off much more like an immersive experience than a movie about a historical event, presenting the situation as gray, dreary, and hopeless as it likely seemed to those who were there. We get the most dialog and characterization with our civilian protagonists on their boat, so they become the ones we feel most attached to; we want to see them reach that beach just as badly as the soldiers do. However, for as strong as the atmosphere is, the stumbling narrative focus tends to hold the film back. 

When characters die, we don't feel anything for them. On one hand, that may have been the point; in war, the casualties are many. "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic", after all. However, it really does feel like the film expects us to feel something, despite these characters having very little in the way of individual identity. Frankly, I wish that this had taken the Flags of Our Fathers/Letters From Iwo Jima approach and given each storyline its own film, telling the entire tale over the span of a trilogy. No doubt such an approach would be far more expensive, but it would give us the requisite time needed to grow attached to these characters, giving those emotional beats some true power. The film ends with Winston Churchill's famous "we shall fight on the beaches" speech; it's one of the finest speeches ever written, but the conventionally triumphant ending hardly feels earned, given the bittersweet climax and dreary tone the rest of the film carries.

Lack of investment aside, this is most assuredly a film that knows how to play to Christopher Nolan's strengths as a director. Tension is kept tight at all times, helped along by Hans Zimmer's ominous score. The cinematography is utterly gorgeous and the opening sequence establishes everything we need to know about the story, tone, and general direction of the film (as all good opening sequences do). This is one of the first films I've ever seen that has taken the subject of war and presented it almost like a horror film; there are a number of genuinely unsettling moments, all conveyed with a believable, tasteful amount of style and finesse. If there's one thing Nolan knows how to do, it's to construct a scene (especially in a visual sense), and this film is chock-full of notable moments and visuals that are still stuck in my head to this day. 

Dunkirk is an interesting film. It's unquestionably well-made, from a technical standpoint, but there still stands the question as to whether or not I'd recommend it. It's surprisingly arthouse for a big-budget war movie, especially from a mainstream director like Christopher Nolan. It all but ignores baseline aspects of filmmaking like characterization in favor of masterfully-built tension and atmosphere, resulting in a film that is incredibly effective, if this is the type of film you like to see. I suppose my advice would be to go see it, but temper your expectations beforehand. Understand you're not about to see what one might expect when they think of a World War 2 film. If something like Pearl Harbor is at one end of the spectrum, Dunkirk is at the exact opposite end. All in all, I don't regret going to see Dunkirk, especially considering I saw it in a theater with a quality sound system. It's a well-crafted experience, but I'm not sure I'd ever get excited if I found out it was airing on TV.