Dunkirk Gets Lost on the Beaches

Rating: 7/10 (18 July 2017)

There's no denying director Christopher Nolan has pretty much been crowned the torch-bearer for smart, contemporary, mainstream entertainment ever since The Dark Knight (2008). The fact that he backs up his visionary works with intelligently written screenplays and analog bonafides - such as real special-effects and shooting on film, only further engenders him to the minds of film aficionados. There's no denying he's one of us - a filmic omnivore and true believer in the power of the form who not only adores the trappings of his craft but is willing to subject his carefully crafted stories to obsession, scrutiny, and obsessive scrutiny a la constant fan theories.
Thus saying Nolan's newest movie Dunkirk isn't all that and a bag of potato chips, actually hurts to say. Whatever misgivings anyone has had about Nolan - his characters lack emotion, his stories too heady, his pacing, so syncopated as to be robotic, have all come home to roost in this one. What's more, you can add loud, fractured, disorienting and at only 102 minutes, overlong to the list of complaints.
Of course that may be part of the point. The evacuation of Dunkirk was, no doubt a fractured, loud and disorienting event for the over 450,000 soldiers who experienced it. The movie, re-cobbles the harrowing World War II military disaster from perspectives of land, sea and air; attempting to give the audience a fuller picture. The film opens with a nameless British soldier lining up on the beaches hoping for deliverance (Whitehead). We then jump to RAF pilots (Hardy and Lowden) providing what little air cover they can before tossing our hat in with Mark Rylance and his conscripted fishing trawler. In between these interweaving stories, we're reminded of the stakes by Commander Bolton (Branagh) who's exposition feels more like a godsend than a clunky add on.
Yet even then Dunkirk can't help but feel like an ordeal. The non-linear storytelling (not just told from varying perspectives but also out of sequence) does little to immerse the audience into the film's claustrophobic settings. It doesn't draw attention or make comment like Rashomon (1950). It doesn't create the illusion of omniscience like in The Thin Red Line (1998). And it certainly doesn't get into the head space of the characters like in Slaughterhouse-Five (1972). It winds up forcing the viewer to continually update their context, using brainpower to figure out the time of day instead of caring about whether Tom Hardy is going to win his dogfight.
Dunkirk does has a well received cousin in the form of A Bridge Too Far (1977), which similarly used fluid story dynamics and a large ensemble cast. In that regard Dunkirk improves on that formula by using mostly no-name and workmanlike character actors to do most of the heavy lifting. Yet A Bridge Too Far actually reached its climax. It did so through anticipation and dramatic irony. Dunkirk on the other hand starts at level eleven and stays there.
This is turning into a much more negative review than is warranted. Dunkirk is still, for all its faults, a worthwhile movie. There are some masterful shots in this film, the immediacy of the situation is always clear and present and the utility of the IMAX format is on full display. If you don't believe me you can take the word of Christopher Nolan himself. Also while the score by Hans Zimmer is likely to be polarizing to some, I for one found it aptly encompassed what the movie was trying to achieve (even if it is too much of a good thing).
Additionally the muted work of Fionn Whitehead, Aneurin Barnard, Cillian Murphy and the rest of the petrified soldiers is just excellent. With precious little dialogue and even less to differentiate themselves, these soldiers brilliantly capture the primal desperation and numbing exhaustion of the situation. Let it be said that out of all the sleek, heretofore unnecessary movie magic that Nolan employs, what saves this picture are the anonymous faces of horror who live or die based almost entirely on circumstance.