Dunkirk is the latest film from Christopher Nolan, director of Inception, Interstellar, and The Dark Knight trilogy, based on a screenplay he authored himself. Stepping out of the sci-fi/fantasy genre for a moment, Nolan presents a split-perspective narrative detailing the evacuation of British soldiers at Dunkirk beach during the second World War, an event deemed one of the greatest military disasters in British history.
The film follows three plot threads: a young soldier (Fionn Whitehead) on the front desperately trying to find passage home, a civilian boat captain (Mark Rylance) heeding the enlistment of vessels for emergency evacuation, and a British fighter pilot (Tom Hardy) attempting to stave off the German onslaught from above. Perhaps the most striking thing about Dunkirk is Nolan’s inventive mechanism for telling these three stories. Seemingly taking a cue from his own film Inception, Nolan wraps and entwines these three stories together by establishing them as their own distinct time frames while simultaneously layering them over one another. The segments, which are titled The Mole, The Sea, and The Air; are each subtitled with the amount of time they span (one week, one day, and one hour, respectively).
As the film plays out, it becomes obvious that these segments are occurring simultaneously, cut up and spliced together, with each segment straight-forward in respect to itself but out of chronological order in the scheme of things. Nolan’s tight and efficient screenplay, which clocks in at a slim (for Nolan) 106 minutes, has turned what otherwise could have been a very straight-forward and generic story into something that can hold viewers’ attention and promote active participation in piecing the fragmented story together. Without a doubt, people are already working on charts and graphs to diagram how plot elements wrap around one another throughout the course of the film.
With a sizable portion of the cast without more than a handful of acting credits, they film is held together remarkably well. Newcomer Whitehead delivers what seems like less than a page of dialogue throughout the film but still manages to act as the most consistent emotional anchor. Harry Styles, who many might know as the most recent pop musician-turned-actor, also holds his own quite well despite limited screen time. His character serves to provide a spark of conflict from within the band of soldiers and his performance is subtle enough to prevent him from coming off as an antagonistic rival archetype, but rather something more realistic and fitting for the story.
From start to finish, Dunkirk is a relentless exercise in tension. Hans Zimmer’s uncharacteristically reserved musical score incorporates a ticking pocketwatch for almost the entire film, tinting everything with an ever-present feeling of anxiety and dread.The war pushes onward with no regards given to those who may be trampled underfoot. But more importantly, Nolan shows us the moments of hope within the despair and the power it has when backed into a corner.
B+