An experience that puts you there

Rating: 7/10 (22 July 2017)

Dunkirk is made as an 'experience', trying to put the viewer there and experience the same terror and foreboding as the troops. The evacuation plan was a quickly thought up emergency plan to try and get as many troops back home as possible. There was little real expectation it would work as soon as the Luftwaffe started bombarding the sitting targets. The expectations were that the entire German military forces would descend on the beaches and annihilate them. Churchill evidently said getting 40,000 back home, a tenth of the number stranded there would be acceptable. They got 300,000 back.
The British sent in their RAF fighter squadrons in what was in effect the prelude to the Battle of Britain and for Nolan it was a great chance to show in modern movie technology the breath taking dogfights between 109s and Spitfires in the way that 1968 movie The Battle of Britain couldn't. For me the best part of the movie experience was the Spits giving the German military machine the first and rare demonstration of machine and combat equality. Unbeknown to the frightened and later angry stranded land troops was the fact that Britain was fighting their cause out of view in the skies, and preventing their expected annihilation. The air battle was the most decisive challenge to the Germans in the Battle of France with the French planes already blown out of the sky and the French army hardware in the form of tanks mostly still in transit to the north.
This is a different movie from the norm made by a film maker known for his experiments on the screen. Dunkirk is no exception and it will inevitably alienate some who crave a normal linear narrative movie with characters they can relate to. The format chosen here will not give you this character or story depth. If you want that then maybe the movie Dunkirk released in 56 is the better movie for telling the whole story. Dunkirk 2017 is a loud and visually stunning event allowing you to witness the action and fear of those troops their country tried against tough odds to save. With the most emotionally engaging part of the movie the huge fleet of little boats sent in to pick the troops up, many sailed by their civilian owners, you get a taste of the Dunkirk Spirit, thanks in large part to the stirring performance of Mark Rylance.
A big film about a very important episode in the history of War War 2, if not the most illustrious or glamorous or victorious episode for the allies, and one left more to history books and TV documentaries rather than movie makers to inform us of. It cried out to be (re)made in modern style to remind people of the sacrifice of both troops and civilians and how precarious the allied cause was in the early stages of WW2.