Dunkirk is a simply extraordinary piece of film-making. Set during the evacuation of British troops from the beaches of Dunkirk in following a disastrous defeat in France, Dunkirk opens with a group of British soldiers — all incredibly young, as most of these soldiers were — walking through the streets of the town as dozens of leaflets flutter down from the sky. A soldier opens one up to see it shows a map of the area with arrows coming in from all sides.
From there we settle into the siege. The film plays out in three separate branches. Intriguingly, these stories take place over different time spans — one week, one day and one hour, respectively. Nolan has always been a director who likes playing with time in his movies — he did it in Interstellar , and, far more successfully, in his classic thriller Memento — and Dunkirk plays out in non-linear fashion, shifting forwards and backwards in time in elegant loops, the stories occasionally inter-connecting with each other in a way that by stages adds colour and overturns what we thought we knew.
And as the Germans close in the film becomes a relentless assault on the nerves and senses. One scene, set below decks on a sinking ship, is pure, unadulterated nightmare fuel. Luftwaffe aircraft aside, the enemy themselves are invisible menaces — only once, briefly, do we catch a glimpse of a German soldier. Nolan ensures we feel their helplessness every step of the way. Most war films profess an anti-war message while revelling in the slaughter. In Dunkirk Nolan sets out to demonstrate what a harrowing experience the evacuation was.
Instead there is just deliverance from immediate death in the aftermath of a catastrophic defeat. Wars are not won by evacuations. Shooting on 65mm film, cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema who previously worked with Nolan on Interstellar , a film that had many faults but certainly looked beautiful paints the beaches as an austere, almost post-apocalyptic wasteland, with sea foam whipped up by the wind into a thick scum, and fires filling the horizon with black smoke.
This is a film about desperation, not characterisation. Nonetheless, the acting is generally strong. But it seems churlish to nitpick a film so stunning. For the entirety of its minutes Dunkirk will knot your stomach and put you through the ringer. It is cinema on a truly epic scale, a tour de force of purely visceral film-making.
