Battle on the beach Xu Fan
Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk will make its debut on the Chinese mainland on Sept 1. reports.
Fans of Christopher Nolan gathered outside Beijing Wanda CBD Cinema in the rain this week for a sneak peek into his World War II epic Dunkirk.
The movie, which tells the story of the 1940 evacuation of Allied soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk, France, will open across the Chinese mainland on Sept 1.
Nolan, who’s known in China for Interstellar, attended a promotional screening of Dunkirk on Tuesday alongside his wife, who’s the movie’s producer, Emma Thomas.
The film weaves three separate plots over land, sea and sky. It focuses on the survival of British and French troops.
“What is interesting to me about the Dunkirk story is the simple, clear and paradoxical situation. We had 400,000 men on the beaches — so close to home but unable to get there,” Nolan said in an interview on Monday during his first visit to Beijing.
“We try to use the points of view from people who were actually there. We try to be true to what might be the experiences of those people.”
The 47-year-old British-American filmmaker had the idea for a long time.
When Nolan was producing his first movie, Following, in the late 1990s, he and Thomas used a small ship to sail across the English Channel. The 19-hour journey also retraced the route that around 850 private boats sailing from England to Dunkirk took to help rescue thousands of soldiers trapped on the French beach.
“We were very struck by the experience. It was incredibly dangerous. The water was turbulent. It took a much longer time than we’d thought, because the conditions were poor,” Nolan recalled at another promotional event in Beijing on Tuesday.
There were no real bombs falling or a war zone nearby. But Nolan says he could still sense the tension, and his respect for those involved in the evacuation increased during the filming.
WWII has been a theme for many movies. But few in the past 50 years have told this very important chapter in military history.
“As a filmmaker, you are looking for gaps. You are looking for the stories that should be told but have yet to be told,” says Nolan.
“It’s a film that you can only make once in your career. You have to get it right. I want to do it in a way that is very personal to me. I try to make it a subjective, tense experience.”
Thanks to such films as Inception and Interstellar, Nolan is seen as one of the world’s most successful directors. Ten of his films have earned more than $4.6 billion and a total of 26 Oscar nominations and seven wins.
Nolan was also nominated for best original screenplay at the Oscars for Inception (2010) and Memento (2000).
The filmmaker has again shown his storytelling talent by penning the Dunkirk script.
“I don’t want to give audiences historical or political lessons. I want to give them a connection with the characters,” he says.
Thomas says: “Although the movie is very action-driven and being produced on a big scale, it’s also a story about individual characters.”
Nolan says he uses suspense to appeal to Europeans familiar with the Dunkirk story.
“It’s a bit like when you see James Cameron’s Titanic. You know the ship is going to sink, but you really don’t want it to happen. I think you can bring the audiences there and pull them into the story with suspense and tension,” Nolan says.
The director, who launched his filmmaking career with documentaries, also pursued reality as much as possible.
With a budget of $100 million, the crew shot most of the scenes in Dunkirk. They recruited over 1,000 extras, and used some planes and boats involved in the 1940 evacuation. After reading firsthand accounts, Nolan talked to veterans and incorporated some of their stories into the movie.
Most of the main characters are played by young actors, such as Fionn Whitehead and Tom GlynnCarney.
Nolan says he didn’t want “to commit the usual mistakes” in Hollywood films, where very young soldiers’ roles are played by much older people.
Some Chinese fans have already watched the movie. It has scored 8.3 points of 10 on the popular Chinese review website Douban.
Contact the writer at xufan@ chinadaily.com.cn