Dunkirk (2017)
An onslaught of images—captivating, stirring, and technically proficient—Dunkirk succeeds both because and in spite of its narrative form, which abandons traditional pillars of screenwriting and structure for director Christopher Nolan’s signature narrative amalgamation. Here we get converging timelines—by air, land, and sea—leading to the Dunkirk evacuation on the north shores of France during World War II. It’s sparse on dialogue, but relies on Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography and Lee Smith’s editing to maintain a grip of palpable tension and emotional investment in characters we otherwise would care little about. Mark Rylance’s presence alone brings such characterization and begets such empathy that it’s easy to lose sight of other roles in Nolan’s screenplay (filled by an eclectic group of British actors, including the likes of Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles, James D’Arcy, and Tom Hardy). Make no mistake, this is as much a credit to Rylance as it is a dig on Nolan’s writing.
In the end, Dunkirk is what it is—and it would hardly be fair to criticize it for failing to be what it never intended (or needed) to be. In fact, one might suggest that Nolan‘s persistence of vision has created something quite remarkable. Here, in the director’s first foray into historical fiction, we are given a film made particularly for its contemporary audience. Here is a film of images and action, one ostensibly light on characterization and nuance and tone (qualities also missing from its Hans Zimmer score), but one that glimmers with unmistakable marks of humanity and hope. As it closes with a stirring newspaper article read over a montage of inevitable images (one of the film’s few conventional narrative devices), we are reminded both of the heroes that were, and of the conditions that make them universally essential.
★★★½