Remarkable tour de force

Rating: 9/10 (24 July 2017)

One of the most intense scenes in Christopher Nolan's war movie 'Dunkirk' doesn't feature bombs, planes or boats. It shows three soldiers, sitting on the beach, looking at the surf, waiting for help that may never come. While they're sitting there, we see another soldier behind them. He is walking over the beach towards the sea, first dropping his helmet, than his gun. He keeps walking and disappears into the sea. The three soldiers sitting on the beach know what they've seen. And so does the audience. Not a word is said, but an awful lot is shown.
This scene proves that 'Dunkirk', other than some of Nolan's previous movies, is not only visual bravado. It's not just big budget film making, aimed at entertaining large audiences yearning for the ultimate cinema experience. Nolan uses his big budget to tell us something. To give us a history lesson. To show us the Dunkirk evacuation as it really happened. Never do this again, he advises us. Never again decide to send innocent teenagers into a senseless, cruel war.
The film is outstanding in many respects. One: the narrative structure is a tour de force. Three different story perspectives with three different time frames are blended into one film, showing the same events from different angles. Two: technically, the film is perfect. Without many computer generated images, Nolan lets boats sink, planes go down and bombs explode. Three: it may sound strange, but in 'Dunkirk', war has an aesthetic quality. Thousands of soldiers queuing on the flat beach, waiting for boats that are nowhere to be seen, is a remarkable sight and Nolan makes the best of it. The same with the masses of identically clad soldiers, and with the impressive opening scene of soldiers catching flyers, wafting through the empty streets of Dunkirk. Four: 'Dunkirk' is an overall white-knuckle experience. Even although we know how it all ends, the suspense is always there because we don't know who will live in the end and who won't. The minimalist and extremely effective soundtrack adds even more adrenaline.
At the very end of the film, the chilling observations of war cruelty are followed by sentimental British patriotism. In my view, it's the only minor flaw of this otherwise remarkable cinematographic experience.