Who knew Oscar season would start so early? July it may be, but Dunkirk is unquestionably one of the best movies we'll see this year. Shall we begin nomination guesses? Best picture, director, cinematography, sound mixing and editing, screenplay, score, and maybe editing and production design. If it sounds like a lot, it should: This movie is also Christopher Nolan's masterpiece, something I didn't expect after the middling Interstellar.
Hailed by some as the greatest war film ever -- a claim I'd readily argue against -- Dunkirk recounts the awesome drama of the Dunkirk evacuation in France, 1940. Told in three parts that recount the events by sea, by air, and by land, the film weaves its way through time and space with amazing clarity. Ever the auteur, Nolan's command of this picture is absolute, eyeballing the spectacle with 70 mm film and immersing us in the horror from the opening sequence. Immerse, I say, because despite the film's non-linear narrative and wide scope, he places us in the thick of each dramatic twist with intimate visual and aural sensation. Though I didn't see it in IMAX, I would recommend that option, if only to really experience Nolan's vision.
Though certainly the vision alone is enough to make the movie great, Nolan has some other surprises up his sleeve. He cuts away the tropes and trappings of war films to unveil a relatively new subgenre. I thought this was going to be a wartime psychodrama, like The Hurt Locker or Apocalypse Now, but it's more an experiential war movie, one that forces us into its world before letting us emerge changed. Like Zero Dark Thirty or Fury, this picture narrows its scope enough that we can't see everything, we don't know everything, and so we're sitting on the edge of our seat while we absorb the violence, the fear, and the pain. Though, with our three vantage points of trooper, pilot, and sailor, we get more information than in those other examples, we're kept invested by the tight editing and compelling score, ticking away at our nerves like a timebomb waiting to explode.
And explode it does, though not conventionally. Nolan masterfully manipulates events so that our emotional reaction is similar to that of the characters. We aren't on the outside, feeling pity or sympathy; we feel isolated, fearful, and vulnerable too. The notices of imminent doom fluttering down on the town at the beginning are disturbing enough; the fighter planes start swooping overhead and firing at random made me flinch more than once; and when a band of boys find themselves in a grounded ship's hull while enemy troops are using it as target practice, it was all I could do not to scream. Which is exactly the problem for the characters. It's an exercise in intensity, one that makes the most of a mere 106-minute screen time. When the yachts and fishing boats come sailing in to save the day, it's the lone, glorious moment of sentiment in the whole picture, all the more rare because it actually works. I'd compare it to a similar scene in Australia, when the boat filled with children sails through the smoking harbor of Darwin to prove the Japanese soldiers did not win the day.
There's so much more to say about Dunkirk, but let's leave it there for now. It's an amazing film. I'm going again this week and probably will still have trouble being too objective. Do yourself a favor and go see it on the biggest screen available.
IMDb: Dunkirk
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