A Relentless Experience that Demands to be seen on the Big Screen

Rating: 8/10 (25 July 2017)

Nolan is great at crafting experiences, and Dunkirk is absolutely an experience. It demands a screen the size of a large wall, and a surround system that can handle extremely loud and deep noises. He puts you right in the shoes of his characters, with minimal dialogue, and encourages you to strap yourself in for the ride.
However, what did surprise me, is that Nolan somehow still managed to weave an unconventional narrative into Dunkirk. The plot follows three different viewpoints; The Mole, The Sea, and The Air. Each one is title-carded with a timeframe. The Mole is one week, The Sea is one day, and The Air is one hour. For a long time this bugged me, as I couldn't work out what these timeframe's signified. Eventually I figured out that they were the amount of time each viewpoint inhabited. The viewpoint of the soldiers and officers at The Mole spanned a whole week, the viewpoint of the sailor and his young crew took place over a single day, and the pilots only had an hour of fuel when they're first introduced. Except rather than introducing these viewpoint chronologically, Nolan introduces them all at once. These three different timelines all running concurrently to one another creates a staggered sense of flashback and foreboding. We see characters drift from one viewpoint to another and back again, completely out-of-sync. He manages to take this, and somehow still craft an enthralling plot line that references and explains itself, resulting in twists and turns that otherwise would not have been present, and prevents it from getting too convoluted and confusing.
The camera work is simply spectacular. We're put underwater with the soldiers, or bobbing on the surface. We're forever peering over ominous sand dunes, or crammed into Spitfire cockpits. We see fire from below, and a stalled engine from above. We see bombings from the air, from the sea, and from the land. One of my favourite pieces of camera work was from a camera strapped to the side of a boat as it capsizes, with the water level slowly peering in from the left until it consumes the deck, as we watch soldiers desperately jumping off. We're put on that boat as it tilts and goes down. There's a few shots of genuine beauty as well though. Shots that just linger with a moment and let it wash over you. One of the final scenes of a Spitfire sat on the beach in flame definitely springs to mind as one of the most impactful single-shots of the movie.
The music and sound design has a lot to answer for as well. This movie can be incredibly loud, which just immerses you even more. Each gunshot is a punch to the gut, each bomb explosion a skipped heartbeat, and each screaming air raid a terrifying experience that scares you to your core as it would the soldiers on the beach awaiting their fate. Then there's Hans Zimmer's score, which is about as Zimmer as you can get. I mean the film literally opens with a Zimmer clock tick tock tick tock. It never lets up either, this ticking rhythm is kept up for literally the entire movie. It's solid scoring from the very opening moments until very late in the movie, and it's relentless. Just tick tick tick tick tick for over an hour. The orchestra builds on this rhythm and the music fluctuates around it, but the ticking is ever present. Nothing instills a never-ending sense of suspense better than Zimmer's score here. And it makes the eventual silence at the end even more significant, when the panic and race against time is finally over, and there's just nothing, and it's a massive sense of relief. Variation 15 of Edward Elgar's Nimrod is also integrated into Zimmer's score so well, creating a massive sense of hope in the film's closing moments that it's hard not to smile and feel completely satisfied.
The thing with Dunkirk though, is that it is an experience first and foremost. It tells the story of the evacuation of Dunkirk, not the story of a particular character. As such, there is no depth to any of the characters. They're all just tools to the story. Dialogue is at a bare minimum, with much of the exposition left to visual, sound design, and character expressions. The Acting from all involved did exactly what was required though. The silent exchange of looks between Fionn Whitehead, Aneurin Barnard, and Harry Styles on the beach says all that needs to be said. The nod of approval from Mark Rylance to Tom Glynn-Carney is all that needs to be said. The wave from Jack Lowden to Tom Hardy is all that needs to be said (except in this case twice, because it has completely different meanings depending on your viewpoint). The salute from James D'Arcy to Kenneth Brannagh is all that needs to be said. The shaking and quivering of Cillian Murphy is all that needs to be said.
As I've mentioned, Dunkirk is an experience. It demands a big screen and massive sound system. It's not about characters, it's about the event, it's about what it was like to be there. It immerses you in the deep end and doesn't let up until the sense of relief at the end. It weaves a surprisingly unconventional narrative in and out of one another, manufacturing twists and revelations and opening up different perspectives of the same events. While Dunkirk is light on character and emotion, it's yet another masterclass of technical filmmaking from Nolan. I give it an 8/10.