Nolan's Finest Hour

Rating: 10/10 (22 July 2017)

I can honestly state that no other film has truly given me the feeling of actually being on location, which, in the case of Dunkirk, 1940, is not altogether a pleasant experience. But it's a great, great film. I've never seen anything like it. It is also the most un-theatrical film I have seen to date; it actually comes across as a documentary. The acting is admirably restrained, the dialog all but absent, and the cinematography to die for. The casting is inspired. From the crooked teeth of our main tommy, aptly named Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) to Commander Bolton (Branagh, who always looks any part he plays), everyone could be your average Brit in WW2. No gloss, no glitter. Not even elevated rhetorics: Churchill's speech of 4 June '40 is read aloud from a newspaper, with no gusto and interrupted.
Nolan takes the decisive moment of World War II, the evacuation from Dunkirk which was the bleakest hour of the war when it seemed like Germany would win after having subjugated every country in Europe save England. The colossal evacuation, performed primarily by private fishing boats, gave 300,000 men the opportunity to fight again. The subsequent Battle of Britain, one month later, convinced the US about entering the war and aid the allies before fighting in the Pacific, and this was what sealed Hitler's fate.
We may be apt to forget how easily the allies might have lost the war – but Nolan reminds us with a vengeance, especially near the end of film when the survivors return to England as they believe in disgrace. They have done nothing but survive. But their survival turned the tide.