'Dunkirk' Review: Guts Over Glory

Much has been made of the narrative structure of Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, which flits between three distinct time spans covering the WWII evacuation of Allied soldiers the seaside French town of Dunkirk. We see a week from the perspective of British private Tommy (newcomer Fionn Whitehead), a day on the seas with a civilian boat helmed by Mr Dawson (Mark Rylance), an hour in the skies with RAF pilot Farrier (Tom Hardy). It's not nearly as confusing as it might sound: in many ways this is Nolan's most pared down film, with a straightforward linear narrative driven with one unifying theme: survival. Which isn't to say Nolan's dialed down the ambition that's defined his filmmography: Dunkirk is an epic war film that thrusts you into the chaos of warfare, and refuses to relent until its final frame.

It is a very large-scale film - the 400,000 soldiers on the beaches, British, French and Dutch troops escaping the unseen German 'enemy' - and yet also a minimalist project. Dialogue is sparse throughout; the soldiers all have their own reasons for keeping mostly silent, and only speak when it's absolutely necessary. There's no Hardy wisecracks as he pursues enemy fighter pilots, and the young soldiers never stop to introduce themselves to one another, let alone delve into their backstories. Even discourse between the commanding officer (Kenneth Branagh) and the compassionate Colonel (James D'Arcy) is very to-the-point, explaining the outlines of Operation Dynamo's status to the audience briskly. The relatively more 'talkative' sequences in the film are on Mr Dawson's small boat sailing across the Channel, looking to rescue stranded British soldiers back home, but even then the interactions between characters are peppered with interludes of uncomfortable, disconcerting silence. 

Nolan's intent here is not to create enigmas or mysteries, but to drive home the brisk, relentless intensity of war. There's no time to stop and grab your bearings. Yet though it's often times a wordless film, it is never a silent one thanks to Hans Zimmer's mesmerizing score. Almost an antithesis to his eloquent, haunting and melodic work on The Thin Red Line, the heart-pounding chords synthesized to an always-ticking clock creates that urgency for our characters to take action. When soundtrack and the terrific sound effects coalesce, as we are left helplessly watching brave young men struggle against the firepower of the enemy, and the forces of nature. Some of the most harrowing sequences in the film are set amidst the waters of the channel as the enemy repeatedly thwarts attempts to evacuate Allied soldiers. It's remarkably incisive work from not only director but cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema switching from the spacebound adventures of Interstellar to something far more gritty and down-to-earth. 

It's not all just the bigger picture, though, and Nolan's sparsely dialogic screenplay does also ensure that we are presented with more than just faceless individuals among the chaos of war. There's an unspoken respect towards the men and women (many serving on the evacuation ships at the cost of their lives) in service without resorting to hackneyed glorification. Their heroism is handled in a very understated way by the script, and the emotional impact is thus amplified by the uniformly solid performances on hand. Rylance is fantastic as the wise and knowledgable mariner, and the scenes where he reasons with an unnamed shell-shocked soldier (a brief but haunting turn by Cillian Murphy) about returning to Dunkirk are extremely effective. Hardy, face largely obscured for most of his screentime, does a lot with very little thanks to his always-expressive pair of eyes, and of the young soldiers Jack Lowden (as Hardy's fellow RAF comrade), Aneurin Barnard (a quiet and low-ranking soldier), and Harry Styles (a cynical private) impress the most. Whitehead's protagonist is in some ways a character for the audience to project upon, an avatar into Dunkirk, but he delivers a solid performance and I hope to see more of his work in the future. 

Dunkirk is not a flawless film, its final few minutes feel somewhat tonally at odds with the rest of the film, the few bits of exposition do feel a bit jarring, and the sound mixing is a bit off at points making the brief spurts of dialogue hard to decipher. Yet all these faults are tempered by a director whose strengths are often enough to compensate for his weaknesses. It is a fantastic example of minimalist storytelling merged with an epic scope, with thrills, chills and a glowing sense of respect for this story of survival against the odds. It refutes conventional notions of glory and instead honours the bravery of the soldiers. It may not be quite up there with Nolan's very best, but it's a terrific film nevertheless.

Rating: 9/10