Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Written by: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Fionn Whitehead, Damien Bonnard, Aneurin Barnard
IMDb Link
Dunkirk is an entirely sense-oriented film. It isn't designed to attach you to a particular character in the throng of battle, or share some new epiphany about war; the film is pure devotion to simulating the exact nature of the battle by dropping you in to it.
In case you hadn't guessed, Dunkirk is about Dunkirk, more specifically the mass evacuation of Allied soldiers. The entirety of the film's focus is on three, sometimes four perspectives: soldiers on the ground trying to evacuate, members of a civilian ship, one of many sent to help with the evacuation, a couple of pilots watching the skies, and the Commander in charge of the evacuation. While the story is told non-linearly, and technically takes place over the course of a week, the film's scope and scale is brought right down to the smallest possible, focusing on a select few. These people aren't really characters, however; the film uses them more as grounding in the movie, allowing us as the audience to orient ourselves during the chaos of the fighting and gain multiple perspectives on singular events. It could be argued that these soldiers being used as glorified props is a detriment to the movie, but personally I found it unnecessary to know the people involved in order to understand the pure pandemonium of the events, because it's clear Nolan put his all in to making the experience a particularly visceral one. The roar of plane engines, the pounding of bomb after bomb after bomb, the sheer chaos of it all is a spectacle that alone makes the film worth the price of admission to IMAX. Nolan's usual weaknesses such as over-reliance on expositional dialogue and dragging pacing are non-existent here; the talk is drowned out by the absolute noise, and the story moves tightly despite its erratic time jumps and ever-escalating tension.
There isn't much else to say about the film outside of technical aspects. The sound is mostly fantastic, with Hans Zimmer's using of a ticking clock as a motif permeating the film's whole experience, flowing perfectly with the diagetic engine rumbles and bullet shrieks. The exception is the sound mixing when it comes to dialogue; Nolan seems insistent on equalising dialogue and noise levels, which seems to be in order to make the experience more immersive, but is ultimately frustrating because understanding what a character says becomes a coin flip. In the case of Dunkirk, it makes more sense because he's trying to put us right there in the fight, but when it's the same case for the film's few quieter moments, it's still an annoyance. The visuals are breathtaking, offering incredible views of the landscape of the battle and the surroundings, especially some of the final shots of Tom Hardy's pilot flying overhead, offering us a bird's eye view of everything.
The film really is all that, commitment to the craft of the experience, offering us an understanding of the nature of battle by trying to re-create it. The film works almost solely to this end, and as such it really is fantastic from a purely experiential perspective.
The Verdict: It's hardly a revelatory statement at this point, but Dunkirk is Nolan's best film. It's a true event for the senses that throws you right in to the thick of each perspective it shares, while the ever-ticking clock keeps your heart pounding until the last moments. I highly recommend this film if you're looking for something that offers the brutal, unfeeling nature of war in a way that leaves its impact. Just see it in IMAX, you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't.
Rating: 9/10
Published July 24th, 2017
No comments:
Post a Comment