You know a director is great when their name alone can push a movie to be released. Very few directors can claim such a status: Steven Spielberg. George Lucas. Quentin Tarantino. Paul Thomas Anderson. And the newest member, Christopher Nolan. Batmaning his way into everyone’s hearts, everything the guy has made is at worst interesting and beautiful to look at and at best, the gold standard for a superhero movie. The directors newest cinematic event is in the war arena. Dunkirk showcases all of the directors trademarks, and puts Nolan’s stamp on what a war film should look like.
At the time Dunkirk was the sight of a colossal failure. Bulldozed by the Nazi war machine, the French/British allied forces retreated to Dunkirk to await transport back to England, among them Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), a fresh faced solider unclear what comes next. In fact, even Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) and Colonel Winnant (James D’Arcy) don’t quite know what to do other than orderly await rescue. In the meantime Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) and the fishermen in nearby villages, for home and country, take up boats and head towards the beach to save some soldiers. Meanwhile, the Germans stop their march to the sea so their Luftwaffe can pick off the enemies from the air, but Farrier (Tom Hardy) attempt to stop that destruction with minimal support. Although sometimes they end up like the Shivering Soldier (Cillian Murphy).
Nolan is famous for meticulous research before he directs his films, and Dunkirk is no exception, especially when it comes to depicting his action sequences. Since there is really no army attacking (except for the frightening and tension setting first 15 minutes), so when bullets fly, Nolan smartly elects to use the Jaws method and not show us where anything is coming from, adding confusion and especially dread for the young soldiers and us; I mean, if bullets are coming from anywhere, exactly how MANY people are hunting them down. Also working against these poor troops are the lack of military support; Nolan smartly identified that British forces wouldn’t send many ships/planes because they had to prepare for the next battle with Germany, so the initial hopeful escape leads to fury and exasperation at the home country. Most interesting is due to all the waiting around in fear of being bombed/shot, the soldiers start to self segregate and turn on each other, frantically looking for other methods to survive. A standard director would simply play the claustrophobic trapped on the beach card using cinematic license, but Nolan’s smarter, and uses the internal issues to create a “killer might be inside the house!” scenario for our One Direction heroes, among others.
One of Christopher Nolan’s calling cards is putting Tom Hardy behind a face mask, but he also keeps all his characters at emotional distance from the audience in favor of meticulous set piece craftsmanship. Both are on display here, though Bane isn’t anywhere near the dark. Nolan uses tricks he learned from most of his previous films to keep tension levels perpetually high. Hans Zimmer is back to Inception us with plane sound effects and humming that builds and builds to a climax and then dissipates into one scene, and again, and again. Like the Batman films, he will linger on shots (like soldiers on a boat hearing a plane coming) and feature tense sequences on multiple boats. But most importantly, he Memento’s time with cuts to slightly before/after the previous scene existed, created some time disorientation, but giving us needed perspective on where people are and what is going on (without getting too shaky camy). Nolan even Prestige’s us with new spins on how war can kill you in awful ways. The director’s full arsenal is firing here, probably why he gave himself top billing.
Other than maybe Richard Linklater, Christopher Nolan is the best working director today. He combines art and commercial entertainment in a way that hasn’t been seen since the 1970’s, capturing that larger than life feel of when you watch a big movie that matters. Dunkirk proudly sits near to top of the directors filmography. At the bottom, the one where love is a dimension in reality. Just….dumb.