MISSION ACCOMPLISHED Sara Stewart
WWII drama recounts astonishing rescue of thousands of vulnerable Allied soldiers stranded by the sea
THE tension starts from minute one and doesn’t let up until the credits roll in “Dunkirk,” Christopher Nolan’s terse, nervejangling WWII drama. Based on events in the spring of 1940, it takes place on a French beach where 400,000 retreating British and other Allied troops are stranded in the open, waiting helplessly to be evacuated to Britain — only 26 miles away, across the English Channel — as German planes bear down on them.
It’s a close-range study of a single historical moment from a director whose past work has ventured to the grandest of subjects, from the deep space of “Interstellar” to the subconscious of “Inception,” not to mention his three epic films in the Batman franchise, most notably “The Dark Knight.” So it’s hardly surprising that Nolan’s exhilarating camerawork becomes even more pronounced with this intense focus, turning the horror of wartime into an immersive and grimly beautiful tableau — particularly in the IMAX format and on 70mm film.
Three different timelines are entwined here — could you expect any less from the man behind “Memento”? — in three different locations: the beach (one week), the sea (one day) and the air (one hour). Pay attention to those chapter titles introduced early on, as they’ll
be handy reference points later when it’s seemingly night in one place and daytime only miles away.
On the beach, Nolan mostly sticks close to a soldier named Tommy (newcomer Fionn Whitehead) as he fumblingly tries to escape the terror and chaos on the beach; the camera cuts away every so often to document the sheer scale of the madness — hundreds of thousands of men, pressing out onto a stone breakwater in the hopes of making it onto a rescue freighter. You may recognize one of those men as singer Harry Styles, who turns in a nicely low-key performance as a soldier who befriends Tommy. Despite his boy-band good looks, he blends right in with Nolan’s expertly selected army of pasty, heartbreakingly young men.
On the sea, Oscar winner Mark Rylance is Mr. Dawson, a small-boat captain answering a call to come across the Channel to help. He picks up a stranded pilot (Cillian Murphy) along the way who seems physically fine but visibly broken. “He’s shellshocked,” Dawson explains to his son. “He’s not himself. He may never be himself again.” And in the air, it’s Tom Hardy under that helmet (what is it with this guy and covering the lower half of his face?) as a Royal Air Force pilot, chasing German fighter planes in a Spitfire with a busted gas gauge.
All the while, Hans Zimmer’s score ratchets up the anxiety, with grinding metal noises and ticking clocks and humming violin strings rubbing your nerves raw. But, as technically impressive as it all is, the film’s steeped in the same “just grit your teeth and get on with it” philosophy of the soldiers and rescuers at Dunkirk, which isn’t as much of an asset for Nolan as it was for them. Clinical to a fault, the director tamps down on the emotions of his characters; the closest he comes to allowing an overt display of feeling is showing the eyes of a naval commander (Kenneth Branagh) filling with tears, though he quickly cuts away before even one can spill over.
Still, “Dunkirk” satisfies as a brisk, gripping survival story. At only 107 minutes, it’s also astonishingly short in an era when most movies needlessly run long beyond the two-hour mark. As usual, Nolan is ahead of the curve (as he was years ago with his preference for digital 2-D, rather than the frequently muddy 3-D). Short and anything but sweet, “Dunkirk” is undoubtedly destined for Oscar’s short list.