Dunkirk

"...This is a pleasure yacht. You're weekend sailors, not the bloody navy!"

Dunkirk isn't your average World War II movie. It may not even be a war movie, at all. It is a big spectacle (with cross-cutting galore), and all of the crafts firing on all cylinders but instead of big battle scenes and 'men in rooms' strategizing, it pinpoints a specific window of time in the early days of the war, one whose outcome would have had a staggering effect on England's psychology.

This is one of the aspects that I think Nolan was drawn to and why he calls it a survival story. What's more, there are some 400,000 unique stories to tell about Dunkirk. And Nolan loves a subjective narrative.

This review contains spoilers!

The film is formatted (neatly?) into three parts, with three different timelines(!). The timelines weave in and out of one another, until they converge at the film's climax. Each has its own rhythms, characters and circumstances, creating a panoply of POVs. Yet, despite the very open beach, sea, sky, and possible outcomes, the movie feels claustrophobic, frighteningly so, and it feels personal, even though we don't know much about the characters we're watching. A paradox that Nolan gambled with and won. (That said, the timelines may work mathematically, but I don't think the conceit adds to the emotional heft here, in the way it does in Memento or Oppenheimer. The most grace I can give the movie in this area is to say that time is one of our most subjective human constructs and what a week, a day or an hour may feel like, lies purely with the beholder.)

The Mole (One Week)

The first timeline we are introduced to is the Mole, a makeshift jetty that extends out into the sea for huge ships to dock (the more inland waters were too shallow for large vessels). On it are hundreds, if not thousands, of soldiers just waiting to be evacuated. And those who are not in line for the next vessel are in neat vertical rows on the beach, also waiting their turn to leave this nightmare. This nightmare is our first glimpse of what it must have felt like for a young person, sent to war, caught up in a strategic catastrophe, with no hope in sight. We meet Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), nothing more than a kid, and see this dark reality through his eyes: German planes dropping bombs on the beach and soldiers, with no where to retreat, at the end of their mental rope. Tommy picks up the front end of a stretcher with a wounded soldier while his newly found ally, Gibson (played by Aneurin Barnard), a French soldier who, like Tommy, is looking for a way off the beach (to the degree that he swaps uniforms with a dead British soldier, thinking that the British have a better plan than the French) picks up the other end. Both soldiers try to make a run for the soon-to-depart medical ship, only to be told they should leave the stretcher on the deck of the ship and promptly exit to wait in line like everyone else. Both soldiers climb to the lower part of the Mole, presumably to be the first onto the next ship that docks. But the ship gets hit by a bomb from above and maybe this was a grace note for the soldiers. A lesson in how it was never going to be this easy.

It's on the Mole that we encounter Commander Bolton and Col. Winnat (played by Kenneth Branaugh and James D'Arcy). Through Tommy's ears below the pier we hear bits and pieces of news from leadership, but the short of it all is that this is a very fluid situation and also, there is very little hope. Branaugh and D'Arcy are very good here on the Mole. Their presence is reassuring to the audience. As if to say, if this is going to go all the way sideways, you'd want these two making the decisions.

A series of unfortunate events take Tommy and Gibson back to the beach and back to the beach again. There isn't a safe, clever or easy path out of this. Theirs is the most harrowing evacuation, all things considered. Every ship they get on sinks, but the final one is too far out into the water to swim back. It's fitting that Nolan ends the movie on Tommy's face.

The Sea (One Day)

We join the Moonstone and her captain, Mr. Dawson (played by the multi-faceted Mark Rylance) and his crew, his son Peter (HotD's Tom Glynn-Carney), and Peter's mate, George (a fresh-faced Barry Keoghan). Their boat has been requisitioned by the Royal Navy to make the trip across the Channel with hundreds upon hundreds of others, to evacuate the troops. But Captain Dawson is going to sail it himself. He is invested in this rescue effort, his other son has already become a casualty of the war while flying for the RAF. Soon after setting sail, the Moonstone comes across a lone soldier sitting on a hull, floating in the water. The rescue brings aboard a Shivering Soldier (Cillian Murphy and we never get to learn his name), who is in shock. (He crosses timelines with Tommy and Gibson when they are all on a minesweeper that is torpedoed and the soldiers are forced onto lifeboats, adrift at sea. It is here we see Cillian's Soldier in a very different mental state, in control and in command of the survivors on the lifeboat.) Well, the Shivering Soldier most definitely does not want to go back to Dunkirk (He yells, "Look at it! We go there, we'll die!" to which Dawson replies "I see your point, son...") and now we have a series of bad decisions. Sent into the cabin to get warm, but really to get him out of the line of sight of navigation to Dunkirk, Peter locks the Soldier in a room, agitating him even further. Things escalate and the Soldier pushes George down the stairs. He hits his head and dies from his injury, a short time later. A young kid who just wanted to feel useful, killed by a soldier in an extremely compromised mental state, both of them on the same side. This piece of the movie feels like Nolan's loudest statement on who (everyone) is a victim of war.

Luckily(?), there are a lot more pressing issues happening on the sea in the meantime. An RAF pilot (Slow Horses' golden boy, Jack Lowden) crashes into the water and the Moonstone brings him onboard, as well. In the end, it's the Moonstone who saves Tommy (and new pal, Alex, played by Harry Styles), after a nail-biting rescue of soldiers caught in the water where a ship has been sinking, surrounded by its oil. (The Mole and the Sea now converge.) In a catch-22 of fire or drowning, it's an excruciating scene to watch, by any standards. (Largely due to incredible immersive in-water photography that leaves the viewer to wonder – how the hell did they do that?)

The Air (One Hour)

We join three RAF pilots, Farrier aka Fortis 1 (Nolan fav, Tom Hardy), Collins aka Fortis 2 (Lowden), and Fortis Leader (voiced by another Nolan fav, Michael Caine) in their Spitfires, ready to run down the Luftwaffe, as best as they can. Limited to one hour of time, mostly because of fuel constraints, this timeline plays out more closely to real time than the Mole or the Sea. Fortis Leader goes down immediately and we are left with Fortis 1 and 2 in the sky, in the film's most thrilling sequences. Gorgeous aerial photography, by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, conveys the heroism, skill and temperament of wartime pilots – a gentle nod to the son Dawson lost earlier in the war. As mentioned above, Collins takes fire and crashes into the water, to be saved by the Moonstone. Another convergence of timelines, when Collins hits the sea, he is, for the rest of the movie, in the Sea timeline. That leaves Farrier, whose fuel gauge is broken, forcing him to continuously check his watch to guess how much fuel is left. And at some point, the inevitable, no turning back, not enough fuel and the only way through is in a hail of gunfire, taking out a German plane as his own sputters to a smooth coast over the beaches into enemy territory and capture. To me, this sequence (augmented by Hardy's unique ability to convey a quiet resolve), where Farrier makes the bravest choice to sacrifice himself for something larger lands a very powerful emotional beat in the film. A great resolution to the film's tension: The uneasy feeling that the soldiers perceive they haven't done anything heroic but survive juxtaposes with true heroism of this or any war. Fortis 1 setting his own plane ablaze, moments before he is taken by the Germans, is a monumental image.

Non-linear thoughts:

*I am totally, for better or worse, in the bag for Nolan, so take me with a grain of salt, since I have lost objectivity when it comes to his films. I see this film as a highly disciplined successful experiment. But I am wondering, what do others who have watched his filmography (or just like films) see? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

*Dunkirk is finally Nolan's invitation the dance aka the Oscars. He gets his first Best Director nomination.

*So much has already been said about BTS lore, the casting of Harry Styles etc, I don't have much to add, but to that topic: Have you ever heard Quentin Tarantino's thoughts on Dunkirk? The interview is an hour and a half listen, and a fun one. Here is a highlight that has always stayed with me: "The entire movie is the trailer to the movie." (complimentary)

*Winston Churchill – the ultimate master of spin?

*Shout out to producer and partner of Christopher Nolan, the great Emma Thomas. Without her, Nolan was going to shoot this without a script!

Four out of four propaganda pamphlets.

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