In the course of his nearly-20-year career, British filmmaker Christopher Nolan has tackled psychological thrillers, comic book icons, and science-fiction. And now, like Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock before him, he tackles war and historical events. Dunkirk recreates the miraculous 1940 evacuation (known as Operation Dynamo) of nearly 400,000 British, French and Belgian soldiers on the beaches of Dunkirk in the early years of World War II.
Nolan's direction puts you right there in the middle of the action and allows you to feel the suspense, the tension and, above all, the experience. Furthermore, the way Nolan structures this story for the screen is unparalleled. Juxtaposing three different perspectives--soldiers on land, civilians at sea, and pilots in the air--the results are unlike anything ever seen on the big screen, and are constantly on-edge-of-your-seat and unpredictable. Nolan even mixes a temporal strata of each of these perspectives--in other words, the time durations of each place (one week on land, one day at sea, and one hour in the air). This theme of time is even echoed in the ticking sounds found in Hans Zimmer's experimental and powerful score (with elements of Vangelis in there as well).
Many viewers have argued that the film lacks character development. While that can be debated, there are still key characters we care about, understand, and see various levels of humanity,worry, grief and tension in. Such include on-land soldiers Tommy, Gibson and Alex (newcomers Fionn Whitehead, Aneurin Barnard, and singer Harry Styles); sailor Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance), his son Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney) and friend George (Barry Keoghan), and a traumatized soldier (Cillian Murphy); and spitfire pilots Farrier (Tom Hardy) and Collins (Jack Lowden). Whitehead, Murphy, Rylance, and Hardy, in particular, give standout (and expressive) work.
Nolan's key mission with this film, to reiterate, was to put the audience right in the experience of the battle, and therefore in this story of survival (which one character states is sometimes enough), rescue, and of course certainly heroism. The camerawork and dialogue-limited script add to this successful masterwork of artistic achievement, while honoring the fallen and, most of all, paying tribute to the heroism of regular people willing to answer the call, and not just soldiers. Not since Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998) and Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima (2006) have I seen a war film very different from its genre. This one arguably leaves them and all others behind.
Just as he did with the Dark Knight sequels and Interstellar, Nolan employs and takes IMAX cameras and 65/70mm film to a whole nother level. For one thing, the filmmakers placed some of these cameras in actual spitfire planes and behind real boats, to add a greater sense of authenticity. The latter format, meanwhile, recalls the way films used to be made and seen. Dunkirk is, in fact, the third film this decade to use the format, following Paul Thomas Anderson's period piece The Master (2012) and Quentin Tarantino's violent western The Hateful Eight (2015). I attended a 70mm screening (which I hadn't been to in about six years) and found myself surprised--and a little distracted--by the loud sound of the projector behind me. (It's amazing what six years can do.)
Nevertheless, Dunkirk ties with Wonder Woman as the year's best film, in terms of an old-fashioned and groundbreaking scope. It may, hands down, be the best moviegoing experience this year (and should be seen in IMAX). It represents the way films should be made, and the way they're meant to be seen.
Nolan stated in an interview about the battle's importance:
"This is an essential moment in the history of the Second World War. If this evacuation had not been a success, Great Britain would have been obliged to capitulate. And the whole world would have been lost, or would have known a different fate: the Germans would undoubtedly have conquered Europe, the U.S. would not have returned to war. It is a true point of rupture in war and in history of the world. A decisive moment. And the success of the evacuation allowed Churchill to impose the idea of a moral victory, which allowed him to galvanize his troops like civilians and to impose a spirit of resistance while the logic of this sequence should have been that of surrender. Militarily, it is a defeat; on the human plane, it is a colossal victory" (IMDb).