Nolan delivers the most beautiful war film in decades

Rating: 9/10 (19 July 2017)

Christopher Nolan who might be the most consistently celebrated director who makes both art and money has delivered a masterpiece. Nolan has envisaged the disaster at Dunkirk as a window on the experience of war. This is not a classic war film. With sparse dialogue, even less blood and no Germans, Nolan has given a prism which explores the battle through the lens of a thriller. Throwing away all the usual tropes the viewer is put into the film from the first scene and then spends 108 minutes surviving. The director most often compared to Nolan is Kubrick and here we can see an echo of "Paths of Glory", Kubrick's second and famously anti-war film set in the trenches of the Great War. Nolan takes a wide angle, a cold eye and sets it to form a triptych: three stories unfold and converge. One from the air, the sea in the form of the Home Fleet and finally from the land with the soldiers trapped on the beach. There is no overarching narrative or rhetorical flourishes but just the image and soon a magical thing occurs. The sheer humanity of the events takes your stomach and grips it as tightly as any thriller has and does not let go till the film is over. Nolan is helped immensely on all fronts. The score by Hans Zimmer is always reminding you of time. Time spent in the wrong direction can be fatal, even looking at the sun can be the difference as you hear the notes of a watch ticking away. The film is absolutely glorious. I mean arguably the most beautiful war film since "Apocalypse Now" and Hoyte Van Hoytema (who worked on "Interstellar") has created the best aerial combat I have ever seen. I am not sure how it could have been filmed. The entire vista looks real, the battleships are British and there is nary a CGI effect though the one downside is you never get the impression that there are hundreds of thousands trapped there. This is the best sound effect editing I have ever heard. These are craftsmen at the zenith of their art. The cast is impressive. Totally British as insisted by Nolan, the ensemble includes Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy and Mark Rylance. Fionn Whitehead is a newcomer and the closest to an audience surrogate but even there it is only because we meet him in the first scene. Everyone is strong but it is Rylance who steals the film. His nobleness in impossible times serves as a sharp contrast to modern views on duty and sacrifice. Nolan has delivered a piece of art which is hard to review. Like all great art there is a visceral experience required. There is little sentimentality and it invokes intimacy despite being on a huge canvas. It is the work of someone at their peak.