Dunkirk: A Review

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Dunkirk. I've been anticipating this film for quite a while, for no other reason than to see what a war film would be like if it was helmed by Christopher Nolan. He did not disappoint.

Nolan seems to be comfortable with casting a select few actors and actresses he's worked with before, and this time it's no different. We see actors like Tom Hardy and Cillian Murphy who's worked with Nolan on Inception back in 2010. I have to admit that seeing the same actors across different Nolan films initially gave off a sense of false familiarity, but the performances delivered quickly shook off that impression and immediately immerse me in a new story.

I'd like to quickly address the one aspect I think has hindered many to fully enjoy the film: its storytelling through different point-of-views. Regardless of how dramatic and - for lack of a better word, fancy - this style of storytelling is, it can be quite confusing for those who expected a straightforward, linear story line. The different elements in which wars have been waged - Land, Sea, and Air - portraying different characters with different struggles across different time spans that converge at the final portion of the film could be hard to digest at first, and trying to make sense of all the events that transpire across different locations and time might detract from the experience itself.

I didn't quite enjoy the way the story was told at first, and if I was given the opportunity to decide the way it was told, I'd choose a more straightforward method. Moments before the three POVs started to collide with each other and take shape, however, the previous scenes made much more sense, and the film was immensely more enjoyable. There's a reason that Christopher Nolan is a critically acclaimed film director while I'm only able to sit in front of my computer and praise his work.

The cast as a whole delivers a commendable performance, but I found my eyes fixed on Aneurin Barnard (Gibson). I've only seen Barnard in Ironclad (2011), a medieval war film alongside James Purefoy, Paul Giamatti, and Kate Mara. I can say that he portrays desperate characters really well. In Nolan's Dunkirk, Barnard portrays a French soldier who disguised himself as a British soldier to abandon his post and evacuate alongside the British. His performance, much bereft of dialogue, was powerful nonetheless.

Hans Zimmer, who's worked with Nolan on the Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, and Interstellar, returns to score Dunkirk. I'll admit that Zimmer's score in this film is less enjoyable for me, but there are slivers of moments where the score really impact the scene (off the top of my head, the scene where Farrier - portrayed by Tom Hardy - barely managed to land his aircraft). I get that this might be the intention from the start, as many of the dogfight scenes are accompanied by the ticking of a watch (supposedly Nolan's own pocket watch), and many other scenes only use subtle sounds instead of full music.

As a film, Dunkirk left many things unsaid. This echoes to the characters as well, like Gibson (Aneurin Barnard), Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), Mr Dawson (Mark Rylance), and Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney), whose motivations are either clear as day or shrouded by mystery but rarely expressed in words. If there is one thing I noticed in this film, it's that this film is not like the archetypical war movies. War movies often, unsurprisingly, use heroism, courage, and noble acts as the core of the story, while Dunkirk contrasts these values by portraying 'broken men'. There is another portrayal of broken men that I was instantly reminded of when I saw the state of the British soldiers on the beaches of Dunkirk. It was written by George R. R. Martin, the writer of A Song of Ice and Fire, adapted into the TV show Game of Thrones.

"...Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They've heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know. Then they get a taste of battle. For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they've been gutted by an axe.They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that's still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water. If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they're fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it's just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don't know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they're fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad all in steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world . . . And the man breaks. He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain, or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man..." -George R. R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

Despite the different context and era, Martin's description of broken men is much like the soldiers in the film. They await their redemption (or death), with only a handful fighting back while the rest simply ducked and waited for the worst. Many were idle, with some decided to create redemption instead of waiting, attempting escape through horrible means and selfishness.

For me, the most powerful message of Nolan's Dunkirk was the threshold of every individual in despair. So submerged in their pursue of redemption, it brought out the best or the worst inside every individual. Many acts of courage and cowardice in the film were carried out in desperate times, where the cost was so high that they either forced themselves to find the courage inside (as seen when Farrier - portrayed by Tom Hardy - chose to sacrifice his own safety and freedom to dramatically shift the tide of battle), or acknowledge their cowardice and run or turn on each other (when the soldier saved by Mr Dawson - portrayed by Cillian Murphy - wreaked havoc on Mr Dawson's ship in fear and self-preservation, costing George his vision, and later his life). The contrast between the two seems ironic, stemming from the same despair yet yielding extremely different outcomes. This irony is what makes Dunkirk really enjoyable to me, the heroism of men in fleeting moments of courage. It shows that heroes aren't always inherently brave men, while men doing horrid things aren't inherently evil.

Overall, an enjoyable film, but one that may need to be watched more than once to fully experience without being detracted by trying to understand the complicated storytelling.

Thank you for reading, until next time!

#Dunkirk #ChristopherNolan