Riveting & thrilling war drama
Acclaimed auteur Christopher Nolan’s new film Dunkirk is as compelling as the Winston Churchill’s speech at the House of Commons. Churchill galvanised the British people with this speech at the House of Commons on 4 June 1940, looking back at the retreat and miraculous rescue of British, French and Belgian forces trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk, France following a catastrophic defeat at the hands of the Germans during WW2.
Nolan tells the story of the Dunkirk evacuation code-named Operation Dynamo in three timelines, from air, land, and sea. Nolan focuses on the character of Dawson (Mark Rylance) who has already lost a son in the war and sails towards Dunkirk with another son Peter (Tom GlynnCarney) and Peter’s school friend George (Barry Keoghan). Dawson’s dogged spirit contrasts with the cowardice of the RAF pilot (Cillian Murphy) rescued from a watery grave; who doesn’t want to go back to Dunkirk, “where we will all die.”
In the harbour, the brave Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) leads the navy rescue effort. Elsewhere on the beach, a band of young soldiers hides in a boat which is promptly strafed by the Germans who want to make evacuation impossible. In the air, the RAF is fighting bravely; one pilot (Tom Hardy) in particular, fights valiantly against the Luftwaffe’s blitzkrieg.
Nolan’s narrative bursts with edge-of-your-seat moments. Anxiety, tension, stress, your reviewer felt them all, heart beating like a drum. In all this, the human actors are far from ciphers. Impressive is the word for Fionn Whitehead and Harry Styles, as unexpected a piece of casting as funny man Robin Williams in the role of a coldblooded killer in Insomnia. We expect war films to be bloody. But Nolan’s epic avoids gore even as we see heartrending images of dead soldiers. Dunkirk is a paradox. Beaten but unconquered.