Dunkirk (2017) - Review
Originally published May 2018As I may have remarked in other movie reviews, such as Interstellar, I've yet to see a bad Christopher Nolan film. Even when his films are not at their best, they're still better than most Hollywood experiences. The same is true for Dunkirk, his drama about the legendary evacuation of the British army at the titular location during the early years of World War II. It has some of the same Nolan-esk touches—such as manipulation of time through creative editing—to make the experience more unique, but is that enough to make the movie a new classic?
The true story of the historic event that took place at Dunkirk is already an exciting one to tell. So, one would assume that Nolan's penchant for telling interesting stories in interesting ways would automatically provide vast improvements and additions to any dramatic film that would attempt to recreate it. I'd say it's successful in making the drama of the event interesting, but I also think some of the decisions that were made are a little counter-productive.
Image: Warner Bros
Pros
Tense soundtrack by Hans Zimmer is crucial to the experience
Acting of less-recognizable actors is very good and adds to the drama
Action scenes and climax are entertaining and well-shot
Cons
Big-named actors don't add much to the experience; disposable
Editing and jumping around different stories prevents much attachment to the characters
Script has some cheesy, lame, and cliché moments
Plot & Thoughts
Dunkirk is one of those movies that ambitiously tries to tell multiple stories at once and interweave them together with a climactic moment where the different storylines intersect. Whenever a movie does this, there is an automatic amount of satisfaction when that big moment occurs—it's what the viewers have all been waiting for. This sense of cathartic release can happen regardless of whether it really pays off or not. I'd argue that this is true for Dunkirk as well because I was slightly satisfied when all the stories finally connected with each other, but I don't think that moment really helped the film in the long run.
Story one is told over the course of an entire week on the beaches of Dunkirk. It follows a simple English infantry soldier who is desperately trying to find a way to hitch a ride home during the mass evacuation, whether or not it follows any sort of protocol or military hierarchy. However, the young soldier keeps hitting roadblock after roadblock as the German forces continue to bombard the soldiers on the beach and the approaching navy vessels with attacks from their planes and submarines. The story of the soldier trying to escape the beach is arguably the main one, as the other two stories seem to drive toward this character's journey and his attempt to get home.
Image: Warner Bros
The second story, which takes place over the course of a day, is about an older gentleman, his young adult son, and his son's friend taking their small private vessel to Dunkirk to rescue as many soldiers as they can. While the British government commandeered many private vessels for this massive evacuation, there were also countless volunteers like these characters who took it upon themselves to drive their own boats to the beaches to pick up as many men as they could. This was the story that I found the most compelling as it had the most meaningful dialogue between characters and the most emotional shifts as events unfolded. By the end of the film, these were the characters who we learned the most about and appeared to have the most care paid to them in the script. There were moments of subtlety among them that I found to be the strongest of the movie.
The last story, which takes place over the course of the last hour of that same day, is about a British Spitfire fighter pilot as he crosses the English Channel to provide aerial support to the evacuation effort. This story is both: the most action-packed and the least interesting. It is probably the most pivotal in terms of how important this character's role is in the climax. However, there is nothing special about this particular character other than he's a really good pilot. There are a few interesting quirks about his story, such as the extra tension having to do with how much fuel he has left in his plane as he crosses the channel. The dogfights are also well-shot and fun to watch. Yet, there is nothing about this character or his story that makes him anything less than expendable to the movie. Even if they removed his character from the film and still had the events play out the same way, it wouldn't have changed much.
Image: Warner Bros
The expendable nature of characters is the main issue I have with Dunkirk. To the film's credit, that may have been the point. Considering the historical event was a massive evacuation of more than 300,000 people, Nolan may have wanted you to feel how each person is both immensely important and immensely disposable in their own way. Regardless of intentional or not, it didn't sit well with me and it is further perpetuated by the fact that the famous actors featured in the film don't really need to be there. Each story has a recognizable actor in either a main or supporting role, but none of those actors were necessary in making any of their stories more interesting. I won't mention their name here, because, even though I like each of the famous actors in this movie, they didn't do anything special to make it any better than it already was; their names were there to sell movie tickets, nothing more.
The less-recognizable actors pick up the slack as the main characters of stories 1 & 2. These characters are well-acted and help keep your focus on the drama taking place. They also benefit from the fact that the dialogue written for them doesn't suck. The whole script isn't terrible, but there are some really lame, predictable moments around some of the big-name actors that just drag down the drama. I felt myself gag towards the end when the music swelled with emotion, the camera panned to the water, and I heard the lines:
"What do you see, sir?"
"Home!"
Barf. The dialogue is definitely at its best during story 2 with its overt and subtle characterization. After finishing Dunkirk, I couldn't help but wish we just focused on that story and left out the rest.
Image: Warner Bros
All flaws aside, Dunkirk's best quality is its sound. Dunkirk won Academy Awards for its sound editing and sound mixing, and rightly so. The roars of the vehicle engines, the interspersed dialogue of extras waiting for rescue, and the explosions and gunshots, all sound amazingly good, even on crappy airplane headphones. The sound for this movie is so good that I distinctly remember it being the best thing about it—sound is not usually the quality one remembers from their experience watching a movie. All the different sounds of Dunkirk help sell the experience of this movie and work heavily to the film's benefit.
Likewise, the score composed by Hans Zimmer is tense and constantly builds to a crescendo in ways similar to previous scores Zimmer has provided to Nolan's films. While the action scenes are somewhat fun to watch, they're not so spectacular that they are not dependent on the score. If Zimmer's score was not there, a lot of the tension and drama would be lost and Dunkirk would be far less captivating.
TL;DR (Conclusion)
Dunkirk, while still a solid movie with some significant strengths, never quite reaches the heights of other Christopher Nolan movies. There are some great moments punctuated with a solid musical score and amazing sound editing. Tension permeates the whole experience and helps keep the film moving and interesting. Unfortunately, it also gets bogged down by some lazy script-writing and by the gimmicky nature of trying to tell three stories at once in a more unique way. Had more time been spent on the characters and less on the gimmick, Dunkirk might have been far more compelling.
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