When we first heard of Nolan venturing to cinema again with a teaser for his latest war film, there was little to doubt that the man was going to do a lot and show us a lot less. I personally think that his first shot at portraying one of Britain’s biggest losses in World War 2 is now one of his best works that he has come up with.
The events are based on the war campaign that happened in 1940 at the French port city of Dunkirk, where some 400,000 Allied soldiers — including more than 200,000 members of the British army in Western Europe — were pinned down by the Germans who were closing in. Facing an eventuality that either were capture or death. The men found salvation from the civilians from Britain who pulled off an impossible rescue with non-military boats in a mission named Operation Dynamo. It was this act that saved the lives and morale of the men who would later fight on the Axis powers united more than before with their hearts filled with the spirit of Dunkirk. The timing of Dunkirk now releasing paints a subtle picture that seems much needed during these troubled Brexit times.
In this grand theatre of war, our view of Dunkirk is narrowed to a few men among a hundred thousand whose names don’t matter. All that does however is they are trying to either survive or make sure their fellow men make it out, and it happens on the land, the air and the sea. The humanity that’s focused here is that the soldiers are weathered and are close to accepting their deaths.
We open with a scene with a regiment scrambling to the picturesque town of Dunkirk for what looks like a relative moment of peace. There’s propaganda being airdropped all over them informing they are surrounded. The soldiers press on, some looking for a drink of water, the other a smoke, and one who takes the papers and convinced he has a moment to himself proceeds to relieve himself. At this point, you’re not sure what to make of a man choosing that time to expel his bowels, but neither he’s given a chance to finish and the viewer isn’t given a chance to decide as shots ring out and at the end of that scene, when every man from the unit falls, save for the one wanting to defecate. He finds his allies, and proceeds to a nearby spot in the beach to finish his business.
It’s worth noting there’s barely any dialogue save for moments when context is necessary. However, Nolan has already communicated the simple things effectively. Every shot fired, every gun loaded and suddenly we’re facing men who are isolated, weary and despondent. When the surviving soldier does try to relieve himself again, he realizes he’s close to dumping near a makeshift grave where another nameless soldier is trying to bury the dead with dignity.
Elsewhere, we see a group of civilians defying military orders and depart on a small yacht that’s been repurposed by the army for rescues, they join a bigger fleet of civilian boats and race against time across the english channel and finally a unnervingly calm scene starts in the air where a squadron of three British spitfires engage German interceptors and bombers targeting escaping British ships. The British pilots have their own problems too, they’re running on limited fuel.
Fans of Inception and Interstellar will be quick to recognize they are now watching events unfold in Nolan’s time. Dunkirk’s key moments, take place in locations and timelines that merge. The Mole, which portray the events of the beach takes place over a week, the events of the civilians by sea take place during a day and the air battles happen in the course of an hour. This is pointed straightforward as the scenes happen. It’s not immediately obvious as we shift from scene to scene but it does merge beautifully in a climatic end.
In doing so, each scene that happens across the the mole, the air and the sea traps us to watch if these men will achieve their individual goals and as these come to full circle, Nolan keeps segueing from one scene to another, and he does this while making this a tense spectacle. We see a soldier drowning from a sinking ship and it cuts to another soldier who does survive a sinking but ends up shellshocked. In spite of all of this and you’d think that so much happens, the truth of it is that Dunkirk has its moments of unnerving calmness that often mislead. Hans Zimmer’s use of the Shepard Tone, an auditory illusion consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves is a signature that Zimmer has employed on previous Nolan films but is talked about quite extensively in this film.
You can hear for yourself and understand that Zimmer has enjoyed himself thoroughly by creating a sound that likens itself to dive bombers coming in for the kill, or the machine gun fire from desperate soldiers firing at the german airplanes picking out soldiers to the final crescendo of bombs dropping into British infantry. Moments like these will leave you shaking in your seat.
“Dunkirk” is a World War II movie, one seen through the eyes of soldiers. In hindsight, this is a movie about survival, not the politics or the desires of the men involved. There are no names, only bodies across land, sea and air. We barely see men of rank and when we do, they’re in the same targeting zone as the rest of the men. We don’t hear as much as a mention of Nazi Germany other than the fact they are “the enemy”. They know who they are fighting, we know who they are fighting and we catch glimpses of enemy colors on the few aircraft that do appear but in the midst of it all, they’re running away from a killer who has no face. We don’t see any actual german infantry save a glimpse of them in the end.
The soldier who survives in the beginning is called Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) but you won’t hear his name being mentioned anywhere. Eventually, Tommy joins rank along with a silent soldier and they join the highlanders, one of them you’ll recognize as Harry Styles and they’ll be the faces you see trying to escape the clutches of death in every scene they’re in. Tom Hardy plays the pilot who operates on a last name basis with his copilot played by Jack Lowden.
Mr Dawson, played by Mark Rylance, takes his little yacht, joins the armada of civilian ships and encounters a shellshocked Cillian Murphy terrified at the prospect of heading towards Dunkirk and even during the moments of relative safety, sacrifices are made.
Dunkirk is a movie about a battle that’s already lost. It’s about a movie about escaping that loss implying the men are longed doomed to never reach home despite being able to see it within view. Some decide to swim the english channel out of desperation, some take row boats while there are others who are lucky to be picked to on a naval frigate and be welcomed with tea and biscuits. Ultimately, they all meet the same fate.
At the end of it all, there’s that symbolism of Britain defying the odds with the miracle of Dunkirk rather than the glory of war that Nolan chooses to close with. A burning British spitfire on occupied enemy territory with a pilot accepting his fate, signalling that the war isn’t over.
