Dunkirk review – Life is a Beach

Director: Christopher Nolan

Produced: Syncopy Inc.

Distributed: Warner Bros. Pictures

Released: July 21^st, 2017

Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk succeeds on how surprisingly drab it is. I compare this film with the war movies I have seen: Saving Private Ryan, Hacksaw Ridge, Letters from Iwo Jima, Captain America: The First Avenger, or Wonder Woman (those last two count as war movies for me, despite the colorful gymnasts fighting in them). Many of them focus on (to varying degrees of blood and gore) on the horror and violence of armed conflict. They generate serious emotional turmoil with the goal of taking humanity to its breaking point, reaffirming the human spirit, or offering insight into often-unimaginable tragedy.

Even war satire such as Catch-22, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (yes, I put this movie on the same level as the renowned Joseph Miller story), Iron Man (see above), or La vite e bella (for the film snots) still dash the humor, amusement, and chicanery against the rocks of war. The juxtaposition offers criticism of violence, a view into human evil, and brief moments of levity that keep us grounded. It is all about offering a broad palette of emotional experiences, painting a gruesome enough picture to capture the incredible tales of suffering, heroism, hatred, and survival.

Dunkirk wants none of that. Instead, the audience is treated to one of the coldest, most detached accounts of wartime I have ever seem. That is not a criticism, mostly. It reminds me of the silent decay in films like All Quiet on the Western Front or the borderline surrealism in Full Metal Jacket. The minimal blood, sparse soundtrack, and infrequent dialogue complement the desired banality of the film to great effect. Rather than grand emotions, Dunkirk opts for the kind of stillness that generates unease and anxiety. The movie is thoroughly uncomfortable, and that’s what makes it work (mostly).

Dunkirk is about the Allied retreat from France during WWII in the 1940s. The movie plays spans three different vantage points. On the ground is a French soldier (Damian Bonnard) trying to flee across the channel with the rest of the British army, whose ships are continually being sunk as they try to get their soldiers home. On the water is an English yachtsman, his son, and a local boy crossing the channel to aid the retreat. In the sky is a British pilot, shooting German planes out of the air before they can sink the remaining ships. These three stories converge on what is a largely successful retreat (this is history; there are no spoilers).

Considering the messy, decidedly non-heroic events of the British retreat, this understated tone feels like the right flavor of filmmaking. There is nothing triumphant about Dunkirk, as it depicts a hasty attempt to get home before everything worsens (as it quickly will, both in the movie and in history). After all, most of the shots on the ground involve anxious soldiers waiting in line on the beach for the ships as they occasionally dodge gunfire or bombs. Nolan nicely crafts a lingering gloom over the desperate Allied soldiers, who shiver on the beach wondering if they will ever make it home.

The same kind of melancholy lingers over the sea and sky timelines as well. The yachtsman (Mark Rylance) takes his luxury boat across the foggy channel into a war zone, bracing his sense of British duty against the horrors of war, maybe not knowing exactly how bad this war was going to become. The soldier with PTSD he rescued from the water (Cillian Murphy) hauntingly foreshadowed the death to come if they returned to Dunkirk. His grim reflection of the violence he barely survived rang like the premonition a modern Oracle.

Meanwhile Tom Hardy is lonely in the sky, an expansive field of emptiness in which death comes from every direction. He lingers in the air, knowing that if he cannot shoot the remaining German planes, the entire evacuation effort will be a failure. With this tension mounting, he continues to blast faceless Germans out of the sky. This was a particularly compelling film trick: not showing any enemies. I think it bolstered the anxious tone, portraying the enemy like a creeping Miasma. Where are they? How many are there? How long will it take them to find us and kill us all?

Filling out this expertly uncomfortable film is an equally disquieting soundtrack from Hans Zimmer. In a departure from his usual auditory bulwark, however, Zimmer took a more minimalist approach in Dunkirk. I would describe the composition as physiological, pairing with the people depicted in the moment. The time on the ground waiting to survive/die has droning ambient tones underneath the noise. The unsettling hums fill the audience with trepidation, transitioning into harsh, heartbeat-like percussive sounds when the danger increases. This felt like a tough movie to score, considering the deemphasized emotions, but Hans Zimmer conducted a fitting soundscape, ever the master he is.

Yet with all of the praise in mind, the tone Dunkirk sets in the beginning does not carry throughout the entire movie. In thinking about the choice have very little dialogue, I found myself wishing there was even less. The silence works to great effect: it puts the artful tone in the front and center of the narrative, driving attention to the gauntlet of sinking ships, dead bodies, and foreboding skies. It also drives home the battered morale, as though they all know that every complaint, curse, and grasp at hope just worsen the dread. Unfortunately, that anxiety exhausts itself as the movie struggles to find a replacement tone going forward.

Despite Nolan’s conscious decision to depersonalize the events on scream, too many moments depend on emotional reactions from the otherwise underdeveloped characters. In the concluding acts, Dunkirk focuses so heavily on individual responses to wartime casualties, the threat of spies, post-traumatic stress disorder, and the deaths of civilians. I knew these things were objectively bad, yet the characters on screen approached the suffering with flat affect and icy pragmatism, letting the air out of potentially devastating scenes.

There was no jarring juxtaposition or progression to a psychological rock bottom, as is typical with understate scenes. The last third of Dunkirk just has a bunch of increasingly bland performances that fail to resonate, at a stage when the film should be building to a climax. The cold distance in the first two acts just becomes drab, having denied itself the ability to create lasting emotional investment. Thankfully, Nolan’s technical skill means all the narrative pieces come together at the end, but the explosive finale felt toothless. I just cannot imagine why he would hinge his conclusion on dedicated character moments, when the majority of the film specifically avoided that kind of intimacy.

Ultimately, Dunkirk starts strong, but just ends up waddling to the finish line. It was ambitious of Christopher Nolan to attempt such a steely movie, and his skillset seemed most fit for this conflict in particular. Yet when it came time to make a tonal transition, the film hit the conclusion with its guts hanging out. All of the big names made the most of their paper-thin characters, but the tepid performances from everyone else left me wanting more. I recommend all casual Nolan fans think about what they are getting into. It’s a good film, but not what the average film-goer might expect.

★★★☆☆