written and directed by Christopher Nolan
Dunkirk is one of those movies that only a filmmaker with huge balls would be able to make, considering that, unlike most of the successful movies that have been made about World War II in the last 70 years, it doesn't a) feature Americans, b) depict a decisive military victory, or c) make any mention of the Holocaust. While the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940 is probably known only to WWII buffs and very studious Brits, thanks to this movie, that's all set to change.
The film tells the story of the evacuation of Dunkirk, albeit from three perspectives, that of the soldiers awaiting evacuation on the French coast, desperate to get home, as represented by the travails of Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), his silent companion Gibson (Aneurin Barnard) and Alex (Harry Styles), that of members of the Royal Air Force out to protect the evacuees, namely Farrier (Tom Hardy), Collins (Jack Lowden) and their unnamed squad leader (played by Michael Caine's voice), and that of the civilians whose boats were requisitioned by the English government to rescue the trapped English soldiers, represented by Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance), his son Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney) and Peter's friend George (Barry Keogh). Their stories are told in three separate but ultimately interweaving narrative threads. Kenneth Branagh also stars as Commander Bolton, who supervises the evacuation from the Dunkirk pier and who also provides some pretty convenient exposition, such as an explanation of why the British Navy can't just swoop in and save the 400,000 English soldiers stranded on the beach (the short version: the waters are too shallow for big ships).
In telling this simple story, Nolan brings his considerable visual storytelling prowess to bear, establishing the urgency of the situation right out of the gate with a superb first few minutes that show the squad of soldiers to which Tommy originally belonged get wiped out by unseen German shooters. He may not have invented the split narrative technique, but he uses it to astonishing effect here, as he ratchets up the tension with each passing moment, especially given that the three narratives are out of sync with one another. Each set of protagonists, while all caught up in the same overarching event, faces different perils. The soldiers on the beach try desperately to get off the beach, only to fail several times, the pilots must ever be mindful of both enemy planes and their limited fuel loads, while Mr. Dawson and his two companions are basically sailing into hostile territory with nothing more than Mr. Dawson's experience and their collective grit.
The payoff of narratives like this is seeing everything eventually tie together, which it all does in fine fashion.
This film has been hailed by many critics as the greatest war movie ever, as while I'll certainly join them in their praises for the most part, I wouldn't go quite so far to say "the greatest," especially since the yardstick cited is the seminal Saving Private Ryan.
The film does an incredible job of conveying tension during wartime while eschewing the gore and usual shots of people getting riddled with bullets, but where it falls slightly short for me is in convincing me why I should root for Tommy in particular to "get away" considering there are hundreds of thousands of soldiers in similar straits to his. I get that, in contrast to the Spitfire pilots and the civilians coming to the rescue, the soldiers scurrying to get home are basically everymen, not really "heroes" in the traditional sense, but there is something important about feeling a connection to these soldiers, wanting to see them safe from harm. "Good show, lads," an elderly gentleman says to two of the soldiers who made it home, to which one replies, "all we did was come home." Because all the soldiers are just "coming home," this emphasizes the importance of being able to connect with them, which, for some reason, I did not. Tommy is depicted as a would-be queue-jumper who says precious little, and I don't know whether it's down to newcomer Whitehead's muted acting or Nolan failing to flesh out the character, but truth be told I didn't really see myself cheering him on any more than the thousands of others who needed saving. I felt similarly indifferent towards Harry Styles's Alex, but at least he showed some kind of self-awareness towards the end.
The accusation that the film does not have an emotional core does not feel valid, but I think it's fair to say that there's some deficiency in its emotional heft. Maybe someone like Asa Butterfield or Tom Holland would have done a better job with the character, and to my mind the mere fact that the character doesn't have much dialogue shouldn't have been a barrier to him generating some kind of emotional resonance with the audience, independent of the sheer magnitude of what was happening to him.
Speaking of young actors, I was genuinely annoyed by Keogh, who basically mumbled all of his lines.
Also, I wasn't a fan of Hans Zimmer's virtually omnipresent music score, which Nolan clearly leaned on quite heavily to help him create tension, sometimes at instances where it really wasn't necessary. Anyone who claims that Spielberg leaned on sentimentality to manipulate the audience in Saving Private Ryan should also consider that the throbbing, frequently overbearing score by Zimmer is used to similar effect in this movie. It's not unlike how Alfonso Cuaron used Steven Price's music in Gravity, but in that film the music substituted for sounds that could not be heard in the vacuum of space, while here the music being pounded into my skull just felt like overkill.
Those nitpicks aside, I was a big fan of the performances of Rylance, Hardy, Lowden, Cillian Murphy as a PTSD-afflicted soldier, the exposition-spouting Branagh, and even James D'Arcy, who has a small role as an Army Commander and basically gives Branagh's Bolton someone to whom he can explain everything that needs explaining. This is the most British that a Hollywood blockbuster has even been outside of Harry Potter-related movie, and the quality of the acting (for the most part) benefits from it.
As WWII movies go, this is definitely one of the best, and will certainly be regarded as a definitive dramatization of what happened during the Dunkirk evacuation.
8.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment