Visceral and intoxicating.

Rating: 8/10 (27 June 2019)

Chose to rewatch Dunkirk tonight for two reasons. Firstly, it was the last day it was available on NowTV and secondly, I wanted to see if it transferred well to the small screen, having seen it in the cinema first time around. Well, for the most part, it does.
Christopher Nolan set out to make a film about the infamous withdrawal of troops that was as accurate as possible. Reading up on Dunkirk, it becomes clear that while historians and experts on the operation can and will find fault, many of these inaccuracies were either intentional in order to allow for artistic licence (the German plane liveries, the lack of real characters, etc), underplayed (the role of the RAF) or embellished (the role of the 'Home Fleet').
The latter of the three can be read two ways. The popular image is that thousands of pleasure boats, yachts, schooners, tugboats and rowing boats, skippered by civilians, crossed the Channel and brought everyone home. The reality is that just 5% of the more than 330,000 who were evacuated from Dunkirk came home in such vessels. Now, that shouldn't be sniffed at; we're still talking about more than 16,000 men who may otherwise have died on the beach in France.
To his eternal credit, Nolan recognises this fact and other inaccuracies. In interviews, he was at great pains to explain the need for a director to balance realism with dramatic narration and in this regard, I feel that he succeeds because Dunkirk is, for the greater part, a very accurate telling of those 9 days. It is also tremendously watchable, gripping and, though it feels like the wrong word, entertaining.
The tension throughout is palpable. At Dunkirk, the men were sitting ducks waiting to be rescued as the enemy closed in on land and in the sky. We, the viewers, feel this sense of ominous dread throughout, interspersed with moments of intense action, death, pain and hopelessness as the seemingly impossible task of evacuating so many men slowly grinds into action. We feel the desperation of soldiers who just want off that beach, to be away from the bullets, the bombs, the noise.
The noise. Dunkirk won Oscars for its sound design and sound mixing while it was also nominated for Hans Zimmer's score and rightly so. The audio is utterly integral to the film's sense of foreboding and dread and it never lets up. The screams of planes and men, the shuddering impact of the bombs, the stinging smack of bullets into metal and flesh; I vividly recall being in the cinema and wanting it to stop, praying for the noise to cease so I could think straight. Just imagine what the hell it was like being there at the time. Hell.
Similarly, the score adds layer upon oppressive layer to the cinematic experience. Zimmer provides the sweeping orchestral score that underpins all great war films whilst making inspired use of an audio effect known as The Shephard Scale. Google it for a full explanation but in essence, this is an illusory effect achieved by stacking several scales on top of each other, all rising in pitch at once. As the high notes drop away, the low notes replace them, tricking the listener into thinking that the music is constantly rising in pitch. The effect, especially when the sounds of war boom over the top, is incredibly unsettling and brilliant. There were reports at the time of cinema goers feeing nauseous and even throwing up just from the soundtrack. Cinema doesn't get more visceral than that.
Watching Dunkirk, one often feels like one is viewing everything through the eyes of a shell-shocked soldier. Dialogue is intentionally sparse (and sometimes feels a bit too corny, too 'Hollywood', when it arrives) and the action often feels like it's taking place over in the distance. That is until it roars up on the characters and the audience and suddenly, the fog of disorientation lifts and we are plunged straight back into the mayhem of trying to survive in dreadful circumstances.
No one character is the hero. This isn't one man's story but an obsessively considered and thoughtful retelling of the whole incredible saga that was Dunkirk. It is open to debate what would have happened if Dunkirk had failed but if it had, we would have had a very different war. At the time, the British Empire stood alone against the Nazis. America hadn't yet joined the war and Russia still had a peace treaty with Germany. Surrender at Dunkirk, with the loss of 200,000 British soldiers, would have put huge pressure on Churchill to make peace with Hitler. Would he have done so? We will never know but in the aftermath of the miracle of Dunkirk, Britain was galvanised and Churchill would go on to make his famous promise:
"... We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender..."
As a historical retelling, Dunkirk is mostly spot on. As a piece of cinema, it is quite brilliant and frequently overwhelming. As a chapter in history, the real Dunkirk spawned a million heroes whose story deserves to be told as well as Nolan has told it here.
8.5/10