By Brett Blake The most harrowing film we’re likely to see all year, DUNKIRK is the supremely impressive latest offering from director Christopher Nolan, and though it might not be his most emotionally direct or accessible movie to date, it is unquestionably one of his most technically accomplished. Perhaps even the most. Telling the story of the attempted evacuation of Dunkirk, France (which took place over roughly one week in May and June of 1940), from three separate perspectives, DUNKIRK presents a fairly narrow range of characters to represent each aspect of the broader evacuation: a few young soldiers trying to get off the beach (Fionn Whitehead, Aneurin Barnard, and Harry Styles, among others), a civilian yachtsman (Mark Rylance) crossing the English Channel to help evacuate the 400,00 stranded men, and a pair of RAF pilots (Tom Hardy and Jack Lowden) patrolling the skies above Dunkirk. Other characters come and go (some performed by the likes of Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, and James D’Arcy), but Nolan primarily uses these three anchor points - which are unfolding over three separate periods of time and which eventually converge - to give the audience a fairly complete picture of this pivotal moment in the early days of the World War II. It cannot be overstated what a massive production and undertaking this film is. The word “epic” gets thrown around so often that it has truly lost almost all of its value and weight, but DUNKIRK is a full-on, proper, cinematic epic, a movie of enormous scale which no doubt had countless logistical hurdles to overcome. Christopher Nolan, experienced on big films, orchestrates everything with supreme grace and confidence, filling the frame with thousands of real extras in real locations, dozens of real boats on the real sea, and real dueling airplanes actually flying through the air. There are inevitably moments of digital enhancement and fakery in here somewhere, but the totality of the experience is one of extreme verisimilitude; this all feels real, and simply from a staging standpoint, this is the most impressive war-centric film production since SAVING PRIVATE RYAN in terms of its scope and ambition. It’s staggeringly effective filmmaking. Another phrase that’s been overused is, “It’s an experience.” You’ll hear people often say about a movie (usually ones that are more style over substance), “Well, it’s an experience.” Again, sometimes the overused cliche proves to be true, because DUNKIRK is, more than anything, an example of a “You are there!” film. Nolan’s goal is to drop you into the Dunkirk evacuation and make you feel what that experience might have been like. There’s comparatively little dialogue, and the plot is very simple; there are no great twists to be revealed, no big mysteries to be solved, no transformative character arcs. That does raise the issue that there are few (if any) characters we can really get behind on an emotional basis (more on that below), but the movie is concerned with the experience of being part of the evacuation and making you - the audience - have a visceral or even physical reaction to it. It’s a tightly-paced, tightly-wound film, and the unrelenting intensity that Nolan generates is often close to overwhelming (in the best way). The editing and the (jaw-droppingly fantastic) sound design combine with the crisp cinematography to produce an immersive quality that is striking. The only element of the movie that could be called an outright miscalculation would be the score from Hans Zimmer. For as much as he gets knocked for frequently coasting on autopilot, Zimmer also has a long history of exciting experimentation (see his previous Nolan score, INTERSTELLAR, which is one of his very best and most singular); his experimentation with DUNKIRK, however, mostly results in a harsh and frequently grating “sound design”-esque sort of score that, admittedly, does help ramp up the suspense at points, and does have a propulsive quality which is (more or less) effective, but for the most part - as music - is either pounding and overbearing or bland, textural/atmospheric stuff, and this is coming from a Zimmer fan. The force of the imagery is so strong that we don’t need the music to unnerve us even more, yet that’s what Zimmer goes for. One can only wonder what a traditionally symphonic, more thematic score would have done for the movie. DUNKIRK absolutely delivers spectacle in spades, but is there anything more meaningful to be pulled from it? It’s unclear. Nolan’s technical mastery is unimpeachable, and this may well be his best-directed film; however, it’s also one of his coldest, save for the final moments, which are - in fairness - legitimately stirring and affecting. The contrast between INTERSTELLAR - his warmest and most openly emotional movie - and DUNKIRK is truly stark. Nolan mostly relies on the audience’s willingness to care about the Allies because we all know the stakes of World War II and the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis; he doesn’t seem particularly interested in getting us to care about individuals, but rather the cause as a whole, and this specific moment in time during the conflict. We get invested because the filmmaking puts us right there with the young men on the beach and the civilians crossing the Channel to help, not because any of the characters are particularly worth caring about (in terms of narrative) on their own merits. Some stabs in that direction are made, but it’s pretty perfunctory stuff (though - admittedly - very well performed by the cast members; Rylance is particularly great, making a lot out of very little on the page). The degree to which any of that ultimately hurts the movie is up to the viewer. Speaking only for myself, I think the totality of the cinema here - the direction, the cinematography, the sound design, the editing - is truly powerful stuff, and for those elements alone, DUNKIRK is one of the year’s truly indispensable films.
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