Survival! Survival! Survival!

Rating: 10/10 (26 July 2017)

We all knew that Dunkirk was going to be a huge, sprawling epic, in every sense of the word - something that is the lifeblood of the modern cinema. I also sensed we were going to see an ensemble cast showing the audience small, but important pieces of the action at Dunkirk. And that is precisely what Dunkirk is all about. However, one factor looms larger than all the hopes for character development and structure within the basic storyline of the mass evacuation of allied soldiers from Dunkirk in the face of resistance from the German Army. That factor is the need for survival, survival of the huge amount of men trapped on a beach in Dunkirk. I suspect that the survival instinct at its most basic is something that modern man rarely experiences, so we are at the mercy of the Director, Christopher Nolan, who has to make us feel it. I think he succeeds rather well. He has to impress upon us the huge dangers these men felt for every minute of what definitely must have felt like a 24 hour day. What does survival require? Animal instincts surely come to the fore, we saw that in the instance of Cillian Murphy's war shocked soldier, whose cowardice threatens the lives of those around him, in the opportunism of the two young soldiers who cheat their way back onto the ship that potentially offered them the chance of freedom, only to see it bombed to nothing by the Lutwaffe. The technical aspects of the film are excellent. The attention to detail, the prevailing atmosphere of surreal unreality, the stark visual battle sequences, are all excellent. I was totally immersed in this film, as I am sure others are when they see it. Outside the cinema, groups of people stood discussing it. My scriptwriting tutor used to call it "instant success". This film is an instant success, and I feel it could become a cinema classic. Mary Gumsley