OVP: Dunkirk (2017)

Film: Dunkirk (2017)
Stars: Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy
Director: Christopher Nolan
Oscar History: 8 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Director, Film Editing*, Cinematography, Score, Production Design, Sound Mixing*, Sound Editing*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I’m still stuck in that airport when this is being penned (I’m hoping that I get a lot of articles at least out of this attempt to ward off sleep), so we’ll continue on into what was one of the best moments I had in a movie theater this year, even if I still find the pictures of Christopher Nolan to have their own set of problems.  Thankfully Dunkirk didn’t have the irrational fanboy nature of his past pictures (or perhaps I just missed it), so I don’t go into this with the same sort of need-to-make-a-point that I did for something like Interstellar.  Dunkirk, Nolan’s attempt to go into more grownup affairs (you can see the way that he mimics Spielberg in this regard, trying desperately to get the Oscar that he clearly wants but so far hasn’t been able to land with his genre work), succeeds as an expansive look at war, even if it occasionally falters in his quest to make it an anonymous series of moments, making war an entirely universal experience.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around the actions on the beach at Dunkirk, when during World War II over the series of a scant few days hundreds of thousands of soldiers were evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk at great peril (they were essentially sitting ducks at the time for the Germans, and with them was the last hope of the British people and all of Europe).  Despite being one of the most storied moments of World War II (a favorite cinematic subject), it’s never really been done in a “definitive” way until now, so Nolan has chosen well, and uses a triptych of land, sea, and air stories to tell the story, frequently mixing virtual unknowns (like Fionn Whitehead) alongside more famous figures such as Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, and in his film debut, Harry Styles.

The movie’s most unique attribute, and the one that really sells it as an atypical war movie, is the way that it uses very little dialogue or even much identity to establish these plotlines.  Very few characters have openly-stated names in the movie, and we don’t get any really strong character growth.  Normally this would be a fault, but it’s the picture’s secret weapon.  Nolan makes his steady direction, the hyper-realistic cinematography (I saw this on 70mm, and genuinely felt like I could become seasick during select scenes, where the claustrophobia of war’s physical spaces are filmed in staggering realism).  Nolan gains from making his shots expansive and wide-you get a sense of the scale of such an evacuation, with tens of thousands of men littered like sitting ducks along the shores, their only hope of home waiting in a line, or taking matters into their own hands.

The movie, when it veers away from this anonymity, doesn’t succeed.  Scenes late in the film, particularly the way that Harry Styles’ character is treated as a xenophobe when the bullets fly, ring false (it’s worth noting that Styles is actually quite good in the movie, even if he’s saddled with a character that the script can’t handle-I hope he continues acting as he has a naturalism that his boy band brother Justin Timberlake couldn’t remotely approach).  I also felt like the climax of the picture doesn’t succeed, as we’re meant to underline Tom Hardy’s silent flight to the beach, likely to be captured, but the emotional ring of this moment is hollow as we don’t know anything about him other than he’s Tom Hardy (and in yet another role where his gorgeous face is covered by a mask), and I feel like Nolan had a deeper connection with this character when he was writing the script than came across in the picture.

Still, these are small quibbles over one of the better films I’ve caught this year.  Nolan’s script continues to be his weakness (I wish that he’d just storyboard and leave the actual writing to someone else), but his direction remains as capable as sure as ever, even without Science Fiction or comic books as source material.  Dunkirk is movie magic that feels like it’s of a bygone era, something we’d expect more in Thanksgiving than ever in the Summer.  Note to Spielberg, Scott, or Cameron-please when you go “serious” continue to challenge yourself creatively like Nolan does here.