"You can practically see it from here, Home" Dunkirk Review

Dunkirk

4/5

Directed by: Christopher Nolan

Rated: PG-13

           British director Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk is an unprecedentedly realistic depiction of the British forces' treacherous evacuation from Dunkirk beach. It is about the soldiers' struggle for survival on the beaches, the civilian yacht sailors' attempts to rescue them, and the spit fire pilots' dog fights against incoming German bombers. Audiences are thrust into this situation with minimal exposition. There is one shot of opening text, and then the film continues, and it does not stop. This impending ticking clock is exemplified within the film's soundtrack, as the musical motif of a pocket watch's ceaseless second hand. Time is not on the soldiers' side. They cannot waste a single moment, or it may be their death.
           What makes Dunkirk a realistic depiction of these events is the director's choice to not use computer generated air planes, ships, or locations. Nolan shot the majority of the film on Dunkirk beach and the English Channel. All of the air planes in the film were working replicas and restored WWII fighter planes. Most of the ships used in the film were the real life ships that made the perilous journey to those beaches in 1940. According to an article on the Evening Standard Nolan casts over 6,000 extras and supplemented the rest of the people using cardboard cutouts. Because Dunkirk utilizes realistic special effects, vehicles and locations, it features some incredibly haunting audial art. The pervasive overbearing sounds of gunfire, motor engines, whizzing bullets, crushing tides, and soaring fighter planes immerse audiences in Dunkirk's claustrophobic war zone.
           Though there are a few well known actors in the film, Tom Hardy, Fionn Whitehead, Harry Styles, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, and Kenneth Branagh, Dunkirk's humanity shines through its hundreds of thousands of unnamed terrified faces. There is no overarching romance or character drama to pacify audiences from this experience. Nolan places audiences in the mindset of the 400,000 soldiers desperately attempting to escape their faceless enemy in the skies. The only protagonist is life, and its antagonist is impending death. Survival is victory.
           Much like Nolan's previous films Dunkirk has a unique chronemic structure. Dunkirk relays time's passage through three separate narratives. Each story in the film begins with the start of the film, but they each take place over a different amount of time. The narrative concerning the soldiers on the beach covers the span of one week. The narrative of an old father on the sea covers the length of a day. The scenes depicting spit fire air planes in mid air combat spans an hour. Though the jarring transitions between these three interwoven time lines may be enough to momentarily jolt audiences out of the film, it is not enough to overcome the wave of sights and sounds that make Dunkirk an unforgettable cinematic experience.

Verdict: Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk is an unprecedented haunting retelling of the British evacuation from Dunkirk beach, and it submerges audiences in a world of sound, fear, shock, and survival.