Christopher Nolan makes a quantum leap with this movie

Rating: 7/10 (2 August 2017)

Christopher Nolan makes a quantum leap from the unfathomable multiple dimensions of deep space and indefinite time in the Interstellar to a very earthly magnitude of colored grains of sand and the cold waters of the beach of Dunkirk and the moist air of the English Channel. Nolan's sets a tone with a deft, neatly skillful and quick moving triphibian – Land, Sea and Air – interwoven but disjointed narrative. The movie is a tableau of action set non linearly with the story coming out of the nuances of expressions from the actors with little importance for dialogue. From the looks of it, Nolan did not intend it to be a reference for History, if one is looking for a historical account then this is not the movie. Nolan says that if one is looking at the movie with a historical point of view then there are inaccuracies which he stands by - one of them being - the yellow nose paint on the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters. Nolan wants to tell a story and in the plot there are always going to be things that may not be accurate, it is the human responses to situations that has driven the movie, it is not about the war, it is about the British. This is more a movie of experience than war itself, this is about the stark terror and shell shock of people that is seen in enclosed spaces in the thick of war. One can see how war has gotten on to the mind and body of the people at Dunkirk when they duck or lie down flat on the ground when the German bombers Junkers Ju 87 spatter the beach with bombs. The movie is with fictional characters and it gives Nolan that much free hand to deal with emotional and other aspects of the story line, the kind of which one may not come to see in historical war movie - maybe we should see it in the light of the recent Brexit and see if there is message in the movie. As I see, the movie has a dig at Churchill who chooses to evacuate the British first and not publicly say that. This is not a standard war movie, it is not about the war, it is about the grit at war time, it is about the resolve, courage and move ahead attitude when decisions are taken, it is about the strength of character shown by people. Nolan's experiments with time is well known in his other movies - Inception, Interstellar, Memento and Following where we see that he loves anachrony, here in Dunkrick he has that much less freedom to experiment, but still does it with the Mole, the Sea and the Air, to his credit he manages to show time moving at different speeds at these different spaces. This is not a plot driven movie, it is a happening, occurrence and participation driven movie, more than concentrating on the carnage and destruction of war, the movie brings in the intrigues of the mind of people and how either quick changes in decisions are made or not made as the situation demands. It is more than Operation Dynamo we get to see here, ironically with no justice whatsoever to the statistics of Dynamo wherein the number of British soldiers evacuated was 185,000, number of French soldiers evacuated 121,000, with 25 destroyers out of a total of more than 150 ship and several 100 fighters planes lost – so don't go in for a crash course of history in this movie, like I said it is about the involvement of people in the war, rather than the elaborate descriptive narrative on the strategies employed in the war by the Allies and the Axis. The Sound has to have a special mention here, it has been dealt with great expertise in the movie, not only the presence of it but also the absence of it at times is the hallmark in the movie, the ever frequent crescendos and upsurge in the noise in the beach - the noise of the Stukas Junkers Ju 87 bombing the beach has been done with great accuracy. Special technical expertise has been concentrated on the sound track to recreate them with instinctive reality to give us a picture of the chilling effect that it could have had on the solders whose only chance against the German Sturzkampfflugzeug dive bombers was chance itself. The movie is a loop where one can think of the end as the beginning, considering the enormity of the Operation Dynamo. The movie pushes through on heroism of war in the subtlest way possible and yet effective to have an impact on the viewers. The movie was half way into production when EU referendum for Brexit was on, the analogies are there for people who look for unintended messages. Briton standing tall in the WW II and what was to come after Dunkirk was the Battle of Britain and talking of BoB, 20 th Century Fox has Ridley Scott to direct the movie Battle of Britain. In all Dunkirk reminds us of what Leo Tolstoy said – the two most powerful warriors are patience and time.