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Dunkirk (2017)
As the movie world erupts in loud applause for Dunkirk (2017) there is a serious question being overlooked. A defining characteristic of historical drama is that it leaves us with a better understanding of history. If a viewer knew nothing of the history of Dunkirk would this film make sense? In other words, does this film have a coherent narrative that explains what happened or is it a special effects spectacular?
Dunkirk depicts three dramatised military scenarios that unfold in the air, on the ground, and at sea. Viewers must draw on prior knowledge to make sense of why 400,000 mostly British troops became trapped on a French coastline surrounded by German forces and facing imminent annihilation. The only hope to save what Churchill had called “the whole root and core and brain of the British Army” was to evacuate the troops across the English Channel. From fragments of talk between officers we gather that British Forces were unable to provide effective air support and troop-carrying vessels, so a hastily arranged flotilla of 800 British fishing boats and pleasure craft are sailing towards Dunkirk to save whoever they can carry.
The action shifts frequently between parallel and sequential timeframes: in one scene, the camera is running along a beach, the next flying in a Spitfire sortie, then on top of or under a sinking ship. There are no prominent protagonists or antagonists, just archetypes of military and civilian personnel, both heroic and not. We follow a couple of young soldiers fleeing for their lives while enemy bombings and gunfire tear into their comrades. We meet a British civilian skipper who has answered the evacuation call and follow his journey across the channel to rescue soldiers from bombed ships and downed planes. We share the cockpit of a lone British fighter pilot as he fires on enemy planes to stop them bombing British troops on the beaches and on vessels, all while knowing that he is running out of fuel.
What happens in each of the film’s fictional scenarios is not the point: it is the totality of chaos and the scale of relentless carnage that assaults audience senses. When seen in high resolution 70mm film the spectacle is overwhelming. The booming soundtrack is repetitive and manipulative; constant percussive pulses and orchestral strings designed for only one purpose: to increase audience heart-rate. The dialogue is minimalist and voice recording quality in several scenes is poor but the action is all that matters. The scale of the combat scenes is massive and there are numerous scenes where the viewer will be disorientated, not knowing the good guys from the bad. But this is a pale imitation of what it must feel like in the chaos of battle.
This is hardly entertainment. If the director’s intention is to numb viewer’s senses with a 106-minute glimpse of hell then this film is a success. If it is to tell the story of Dunkirk, it just does not have the narrative framework to explain how and why one of the world’s biggest military disasters even happened. If it is to commemorate the Battle of Dunkirk, then turning the story into a massive action spectacle makes a limited contribution to our collective memory of what has been described as the crucial moment of World War II. Although it fails to illuminate Dunkirk history it is an immersive masterpiece of spectacle.
Director: Christopher Nolan
Stars: Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Nolan, Fionn Whitehead, Damien Bonnard
A Netherlands, UK, France & USA production
CineMuseFilms 
Everyone else seems to think this film is the greatest thing sliced bread. I knew I could count on you for a reality check 🙂
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Lovely to hear from you and thanks.
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Considering the failings you uncover, I am surprised by how high you rated it. CGI… when will this tired fad wear thin? And what will replace it? Remember when action films relied upon acting to build suspense? Well, maybe I’m talking out of place. John Wayne was no actor.
But on another level, I’ve read that the way war is portrayed in print and on screen has a telling psychological effect on audiences. The connection of these war portrayals to the actual political intrigues that are happening are programmed. What is a film like this preparing us for? Is it numbing us to future deathshed? Or is it trying to raise a flag for pacifism? From your review, I would guess perhaps the first option?
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You comments are most welcome. I found it difficult to rate this film as it was one of the most discomforting movies I’ve seen in recent years (for all the wrong reasons). The first quarter is mesmerising in its physicality and scale, then the repetitiveness, manipulations, shallowness of characteristion and lack of historical insight began to kick in and I was looking forward to the closing credits. But its not fair to criticise a film for what the director clearly had no intention of doing. He shows little interest in why Dunkirk happened or how close Hitler came to winning the war had he wiped out almost half a million Allied Forces. The director also shows little interest in developing character depth; indeed, he chose a pace of action that makes this impossible. But he has achieved a powerful film about the brutality of battle. As always, the commercial returns on action films is garanteed better than for history films.
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“This is hardly entertainment.” – That is bad enough, the rest of your review is of course worse for the missing of the perfect opportunity they had to show the true story, the pattern of actual events, instead of the usual gung-ho glory and guts in the battlefield effects-laden offerings.
So well written by you mind, as ever.
– Esme waving at him upon the Cloud
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Lovely to hear from you Esme. They love “gung-ho glory and guts in the battlefield” at the box-office.
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As always you force me to challenge my ideas and I would hope to do the same but I clearly lack your intellect. I will try anyway and thank you for your review. The film is focussed on the intimate and the immediate. I personally don’t think you need to be a student of history to get this, the stakes are described but this is about what it is like to be on person in something so large scale and the small decisions that can have huge impacts. Every character is a type in this film and usually that would be something I would criticise for poor storytelling but here I think it enriches the movie. They can be anybody as a result and that is exactly what they are. Technically it is a brilliant film as you’ve mentioned but I actually found it more emotional too. I don’t think its anti-war or pro-war. Only fools are both unequivocally anyway. This shows clearly the randomness of death in war, the terror of it, the fact that not everybody is a hero and yes the grace of one when they are heroic. A lot of men and women died in the war. They sunk in ships never seeing battle, during training, in drunken fights on R&R. That was the war to them. A young person killed needlessly. Some liberated the camps in Dachau after watching their companies decimated through Europe. They looked upon the victims of Hitler’s plans and thought this is why we fight. Those two realities exist for me easily. I think Dunkirk accepts those two realities too and as you may have guessed I am a fan of the film.
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Thank you Lloyd for an articulate and passionate defence of this film and for challenging me to clarify my views. Everything you say is true and should lead to the conclusion that this film is an unequivocal masterpiece. But I dissent and am happy to present further defence. Film stortelling rests on narrative, emotion and cinematography. There is also a fourth criterion that is wheeled out on special occasions: cultural significance. This film deserves five out five stars for technical virtuosity/cinematography. However, its emtional impact is situationally specific, not character related. In other words, its about visceral fear and excitement. i would argue that is a lower order emotion compared to character engagement or self-reflection. The narrative is the weakest link, and hence IMO the film’s legacy is culturally limited. In time, more virtural reality in film will make Dunkirk seem tame. It opted NOT to tell the story of Dunkirk. Even the words Churchill, Hitler, Nazi are never used and the enemy is perpetually faceless. I get that. It works as a universal statement about mortal combat. But it is says so little about the amazing story that was Dunkirk. For these reasons, the film has let me down.
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You’re too kind to me with your words. Thank you. I think we agree on what the film does and doesn’t do but feel differently about how we rate it as a result. Which is more than fair enough. Thank you for thoughts and for a well written assessment.
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I experienced the film “Dunkirk” as one would an impressionist painting. Like forerunner Terrence Malick with “The Thin Red Line”, I thought Christopher Nolan’s aim was to give the viewer a glimpse of the terror experienced at the cutting edge of combat.
Little dialogue, unnamed protagonists …this film was not story telling as such, it was story feeling, if such a thing exists?
I would rate it very highly indeed though I understand it has its critics.
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I think there’s also something more poetic in The Thin Red Line and more exciting in Dunkirk but I take your point Nita.
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You have summed it up perfectly Lloyd. Thanks for your contribution.
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Some good points. But I must say I thought it was an excellent film. I don’t think it always a filmmakers job to give us a hosiery lesson. Nolan has always been abbot treating the audience as adults.
This great film was about giving you the idea of what war wood have been like.
See my review for my full views on it.
http://huxfilms.azurewebsites.net/2017/07/24/dunkirk-the-review/
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Aside from others’ comments about the organization and shallowness of this film, I found the film disappointing. If one watches carefully they will see details that did not exist in 1940. For example in the final scenes you can see container cranes in the background. The flight scenes were interesting, but they weren’t better than those in the short film “The German” that can be seen on Vimeo. Also, at the end of the film, the interiors of train cars on which the troops are loaded are of a modern vintage. For a film as heavily hyped as this one was, I expected more in the way of historical accuracy. My advice to those who haven’t seen it? Don’t waste your money.
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Thanks for sharing your forensic observations here. I share your disappointment, although for different reasons.
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Just called by to say thanks for following my blog.and really liked what I found here. I have been tossing up whether to see this one or not. Thanks for this review.
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Thanks for visiting Judith.
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I have to disagree with you on this one. In my opinion there was no need to retell the chronology of battle, nor did the film seek to capture the “spectacle” of war.
I believe the film set out to explain the miracle of those many thousands of troops being “spirited” from the jaws of hell and certain doom, made possible through the aggregation of many sacrifices, small and large and individual decisions that each played their incremental part in turning the tide, in the face insurmountable odds.
It thought it was a tremendous film that managed to tell its story with a powerful pulse that conveyed a sense of the overbearing und irresitabled force waiting to crush the allied troops and their non-descript rescuers. This was done without the blood and gore of Saving Private Ryan and without ever properly identifying the enemy (history tells us they were Germans). It wasn’t a story about them, it was a story about the lost soldiers, fisherman, pleasure boaters and and a handful of other protagonists who represented the unknown heroes of the dramatic evacuation at Dunkirk. I really enjoyed the old fashioned style of the film as well, as I thought it really suited the pace & nature of the narrative.
I believe this film was loosely based on, or inspired by Paul Gallico’s ‘Snow Goose’.
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Its great hearing such vigorously argued thoughts, even though I remain un-pursuaded. Allow me to defend my position: if the name “Dunkirk” was removed from the film, much of it stands as a graphic portrayal of the universal savagery of war. As an ‘experiental film’, I would also rate it highly. But calling it Dunkirk means the film gives the impression it will go beyondthe experiential to historical storytelling. The onus therefore is on the director to tell a story which necessitates building a factual context. The film is firmly un-interested in the history and draws upon it to join the dots enough to offer some level of narrative purpose. From my point of view, which is by definition subjective, the director missed an important opportunity and consequently the film disappointed me.
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That’s fair enough. You had expectations that the film would attempt to recount the history of the event. For me, it did that well enough, from the perspective of only those characters revealed to us in the story. I like that, because at the time it took place, none involved had the benefit of hindsight, or overview anyway. It was unfolding by the minute. I am not much of a movie buff but I try to watch a film on its own merit, not on current affairs, mores or historical context. Having said that, there will be films I find distasteful for their very connection to the “real world”. I think that the filmmaker cannot so disassociate themselves from the world they live in. Quite the opposite. I just have to figure out if I trust the filmmaker’s vision and where they are wanting to take me.
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