There is something about Christopher Nolan’s last two films featuring Tom Hardy. The British actor plays Farrier, a naval aviator fending off German Messerschmitts on mid air in Dunkirk. A mask partly obscure Bane’s face in The Dark Knight Rises, but Farrier embody the Dunkirk Spirit in this masterful film based on "Operation Dynamo".
The survival movie is mostly based on facts, filmed on IMAX cameras, tell perspective through extended battle footages meshed with silences and equal parts dialogue. Dunkirk is equal parts suspense and visceral camera work. The aerial shots in the movie is sparsely reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick, the filmmaker who was a master at conveying perspective through minimalism. Nolan keep politics anonymous in Dunkirk calling the Germans “Enemy”. Expect anything but filmmaking from a visionary.
Being British Nolan is entitled to take cinematic liberties, and yet he keeps creative boundaries peripheral to the Dunkirk beach. His cinematic reach does not exceeds its grasp on script. Some even question if it’s ethical to make a war movie this beautiful?
Brilliantly filmed, Dunkirk is a “survival tale, ” as the director calls it and no World War II epic of the Hollywood kind. The Hollywood, as we know it, would have made an anti-war Dunkirk but not Nolan. There is not even shards of hope in Nazi occupied France but a sense of agony among soldiers stranded on the beach, something which is evident right from the start. It shall be noted an anti-war Dunkirk would have served better pay offs but may miss the essence of the evacuation and the events leading up to it.
Nothing else would cause wreckage like battles, yet Operation Dynamo is a miraculous escape. Come to think of it, why did Adolf Hitler’s Nazis retreat Dunkirk having surrounded the hapless troops? Nolan’s movie gives us no answers and rightly so.
He depicts the soldiers on the stroke of what would have been a collossal disaster. English soldiers and allies stranded on Dunkirk beach in occupied France awaits their fate as the Messerschmitts and the Luftwaffe bombs comes flying from all parts. One narratic arc happens mid air, and the other two strands on the sea and land. Farrier is not up to a reconnaissance mission but he is defending the Messerschmitt the fighter aircraft of the Nazis. Instead of taking names, Nolan gives us one moment that shows a frightened Farrier staring at his fighter plane’s rearview mirror with a grey reflection.
More than 400000 soldiers, mostly English Expeditionary Force and some allied troops, get stranded on Dunkirk beach. Their lives literally depend on Farrier, even as the private boats sail the English Channel to the rescue later in the film.
Nolan never tries to outdo what Steven Spielberg did with "Saving Private Ryan, " a more affecting film but one that used melodrama to pull our heartstrings. Apparently, it’s Spielberg who told Nolan to stick to facts while filming Dunkirk.
The film keep up quite well throughout the runtime, which is short unlike some Nolan puzzle films. The 106 minutes long movie also serves as a reminder that battles can be defended, if not won, through air combat.
Many lives lost, cinematics of on display and in that sense Dunkirk is a “Nolan masterpiece” and a “World War II Failure”. An absolutely great piece of cinema seems devastatingly real on IMAX.
My favorite scene in Dunkirk is the private boats passing the English channel, a calming image amidst all the mayhem. Oddly enough, it’s passing the English Channel that inspired Nolan to film Dunkirk. It’s still a Nolan film, one that extends his oeuvre to lofy new heights.