Movie Review—Dunkirk

by Peter J. O'Connell

Dunkirk. Released: July 2017. Runtime: 106 mins. MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense war experience and some language.

Writer/director Christopher Nolan is noted for his mind-bending/time-bending explorations of the human psyche—as in Memento (2000) and Inception (2010)--and of outer space, as in Interstellar (2014). He also, of course, helmed the enormously popular Batman trilogy of recent years, which probed the psyche of a superhero. Now Nolan has given us Dunkirk, which explores history and the heroism of “ordinary” people. 

In the film it's May 1940. Hitler's blitzkrieg has bypassed the Maginot Line, rolled across the Low Countries, and trapped hundreds of thousands of Allied troops, mostly British, on the beach at the English Channel town of Dunkerque (Dunkirk) in far northwestern France. The troops will have to surrender if they cannot be evacuated to England soon. The British Navy—scattered, under air and submarine attack, and lacking ships that can get close enough to the beach—finds it difficult to reach the troops. If they surrender, Britain may become a slave state of Nazi Germany. To avoid this disaster, British craft of all kinds—fishing boats, pleasure craft, yachts, etc.--have been called on to cross the Channel and rescue the troops, while the Royal Air Force battles German planes in the skies to protect the evacuation. 

Nolan brilliantly brings his penchant for mind-bending and time-bending to this situation as a way of structuring the film's narrative. That narrative has three major intercutting threads covering different periods of time. One begins on land and covers one week. It focuses on the grim adventures of three low-ranking soldiers: Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), whose name is slang for a common British soldier; Alex (Harry Styles); and Gibson (Aneurin Barnard), who may not be what others at first assume him to be. A second thread involves a daring day in the life of Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance), a middleaged, middle-class owner of a small craft; his son Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney); and George (Barry Keoghan), a young deckhand. The three sail across the Channel in their vessel, rescuing one soldier from the sea and an amazingly large number from Dunkirk. The third narrative thread involves one hour in the service of three RAF fighter pilots: Farrier (Tom Hardy), Collins (Jack Lowden), and their squadron commander (Michael Caine, voice only). 

The film is intensely focused on the varying kinds of action in the three story threads. Dialogue is minimal; backstory nonexistent; politicians and high commanders in war rooms nowhere to be seen. The three different time frames create a sense of disorientation in the audience that gives at least some idea of what the actual men involved in the Dunkirk episode might have felt. The magnificent cinematography shows that no matter how vast the military operations are, they still are small compared to the immensity of the sky and the sea. The superb score by Hans Zimmer relentlessly ratchets up the tension, with grinding metal noises, throbbing violins, and a ticking clock (reportedly director Nolan's watch). 

Near the film's conclusion, we hear a portion of a famous speech by Winston Churchill: “ . . . We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air . . . .We shall fight on the beaches . . . we shall never surrender . . . .” But we do not hear this speech in the stentorian tones of the great orator. We hear it as haltingly read from a newspaper by Tommy. The incident sums up this terrific film about the extraordinary feats of ordinary men—men who fought in France, on the seas and oceans, in the air, and on the beaches. Men who never surrendered. Dunkirk marked the beginning of that period of several months that Churchill would call Britain's “finest hour.” In Dunkirk Christopher Nolan and his cast and crew provide a fine 106 minutes in the theatre recreating that time.