Nolans' Dunkirk, clambers wounded over the dune

Rating: 6/10 (28 September 2017)

Christopher Nolan directed a different kind of war movie with Dunkirk (2017): it is styled as a slower-paced psychological and emotional approach to the events set in Dunkirk when the English attempted to save as many men as possible as the German army surrounded the Allied Forces.
If anyone remembers Atonement, it is this very same beach that the sisters lover ended up dying upon after contracting pneumonia. Many films have been produced about WWII, with quite a few consisting of the Dunkirk moment. The hopelessness in waiting whilst the Germans picked off ships and planes in the English armies attempt to escape is portrayed exceptionally by Nolan.
Nolan tells the multiple stories at once, in an attempt to relay various versions and possibilities of experiences from men at Dunkirk. Cillian Murphy also has a story-line which appears out of nowhere. At first the viewer does not notice he forces the boys trying to escape the beach and tells them to go back and find another way. Then, we next see him alone, boat overturned and suffering from PTSD. And at this point, it is like 'where did he come from? did we see him before?' This is where the issues begin to present themselves.
Where Nolan's Dunkirk tries to scramble across into the unnecessary is when the multiple story lines have cliffhanger moments which intersect and the viewer is unsure of who is going to survive the latest threat to the main characters lives. The cliffhanger moments are more something out of a Midsummer Murders (which I enjoy on a Saturday afternoon) and really present themselves as out-of-place in the slower- paced psychological trauma that is unfolding. Perhaps Nolan felt the audience would not stay for a non-action war movie and felt the need to plop such moments into the film.
The most awkward part of the cliffhangers is Tom Hardy's character, Farrier, has his time re-arranged to be able to intersect with the other two story lines of civilian boatmen and boys on the beach. But this is not the oddest part of the Farrier time-line. What is a peculiar move on Nolan's part is having Farrier being the character who really drives and connects the other two stories. Yet, it is this narrative which causes the most confusion.
Unfortunately, whilst it is great to see the trauma and the pressure- cooker situations of war in Dunkirk have been brought to life by Nolan and the actors all superb, with so many story lines occurring at once there is not enough time to flesh out each character. But perhaps that is exactly the point? How many men were able to get to intimately know the personalities of each men they fought with in a rough situation where men died every day? One aspect that must be commended, beyond the actors conveying the emotional and mental turmoil of Dunkirk's escape is the English forces abandoning their French allies for the sake of themselves. This is perhaps something not oft-spoken about and was good to see the injection of this aspect of the war politics into Nolan's movie.