Christopher Nolan’s 2017 war epic Dunkirk has earned a reputation that was quite enviable at the time of premiere. On one hand, it was the work of a creator of popular blockbusters whose name could effectively serve as a promotional poster; on the other hand, it is the work of an artist who has never compromised his talent in conflict with studio executives, and thus enjoyed the status of a critics’ favourite. It was therefore unsurprising that each new Nolan film was heralded as a potential cinematic event of the year and likely Oscar winner. However, the experience teaches us that even the best could make mistakes, and that propaganda machinery and the immense enthusiasm of fans and critics (who often did not even acknowledge themselves as fans) frequently create “hype” that even the most talented people could not justify. Dunkirk, 2017 war epic, which was hailed a “masterpiece” and “the best war film ever made,” could represent one such example.
The title of the film means nothing if you aren’t a native English speaker. The reason for this can be found in the fact that the city is far more familiar to the world under its native, or French, name, Dunkerque. In the spring of 1940, it became the site of one of the most significant and spectacular events of World War II. A few months after its outbreak, after the Allied, mainly French, forces missed the opportunity to end it immediately when the entire German Wehrmacht was occupied with the invasion of Poland, and after the war on the Western Front was known as the “Phoney War,” a period during which nobody attempted any offensive. This changed when Germans finally launched their own. Thanks to the criminal incompetence of the French high command, they managed to surprise the allies with a tank breakthrough through the seemingly impassable Belgian Ardennes forests, breaking the Allied front within a few days and pushing to the English Channel. At this time, the British expeditionary forces found themselves cut off from their French allies, and the entire remaining part of the land in northern France, where Dunkirk remained the only port from which the British could evacuate back to Britain. Due to the absolute superiority of the Germans on land and in the air, many doubted in this operation, but the British, despite the devastating attacks of the Luftwaffe, managed to extract the majority of their forces – over 300,000 soldiers. Although they left most of their equipment and although the French capitulated a few weeks later to the Germans, this evacuation gave the British a strong moral boost to continue the war against Hitler, and later, propaganda and national mythology turned this defeat into a victory, much like the Serbians during their WW1 retreat through Albania or the Chinese Communists during the Long March.
Dunkirk follows three seemingly unrelated stories, which provide a perspective of the people who were involved in this operation on land, at sea, and in the air. The first describes a week during which Tommy (played by Fionn Whitehead), a young soldier of the British Army, desperately tries to reach safety on the other side of the English Channel, encountering many dangers along the way. The second segment takes place during one day, in which Mr. Dawson (played by Mark Rylance), a civilian owner of a small boat, along with his son and his friend, sails across the English Channel to join the evacuation. The third segment shows a hour during which Farrier (played by Tom Hardy), a RAF pilot with his Spitfire fighter aircraft and a group of wingmen, tries to protect the British ships from German bombers.
Speculations about Nolan’s chances to win the Oscars with Dunkirk were usually based on the fact that his theme is close to the heart of what is known as the “Greatest Generation” (i.e., the veterans of World War II), who still made up a significant part of the Academy’s voting bloc. However, those who watch the film themselves will conclude that Nolan has invested much more creative effort into it than usual. This can be noticed not only in the film’s visual polish and attention to minor details, but also in the effort to be different from the typical summer blockbusters. This difference can also be seen in the conscious decision to not spend a hundred million dollars on CGI, so Dunkirk today looks like a “old school” war spectacle, like The Longest Day or the Battle of the Atlantic – thousands of British soldiers on the beaches are played by real extras in British uniform, warships that are actually borrowed from museums, and the aircraft are real (with a little creative touch because it is rare for such aircraft as Ju 87 Stuka, Heinkel He-111, “Spitfire,” and “Me109” to be in operational condition after seventy years). However, critics will be more impressed by the fact that Nolan, after Memento, once again plays with non-linear narrative, i.e., that the three stories do not happen simultaneously, even though they are shown at the same time, so the viewer can follow parallel what happens with the pilots in an hour, with the ships in one day, and with the land-based protagonist a few weeks before. Part of the critics have declared this approach revolutionary. Majority of the audience, on the other hand, will be confused; those who have more experience with unconventional cinema will relatively quickly understand this “detail” and won't need much time to conclude how everything will ultimately fit together and how the entire story will end.
In addition to non-linearity, Dunkirk should differentiate itself from traditional blockbusters by a non-romantic portrayal of World War II, which is almost entirely devoid of heroic and patriotic clichés, and the battle on the northern French beaches is portrayed as a disaster film, where everything is reduced to mere survival. This is the only goal for which the young protagonist and his friends are dedicated, and because of this, they are ready for numerous non-heroic, and at times morally questionable, actions for which their loved ones suffer, sometimes in rather unpleasant ways. Although the PG-13 rating has ensured that the depiction of drowning and explicit bloodshed is avoided (which is why Dunkirk is much “milder” than Saving Private Ryan), the overall tone is much darker. This, on one hand, is not surprising, considering that the film portrays a battle that the British and the Allies lost (and which took place at a time when the Americans were still neutral and the Second World War was still considered merely as a way to get out of the Great Depression by producing weapons). The Battle of Dunkirk was also linked to numerous controversies around the relationship between the British and the French allies, the latter blaming the British for leaving them stranded on the beaches. This aspect, which was later used by Hitler and Vichy propaganda, also appears in the film and is part of the plot. The Germans, on the other hand, almost never appear in the film, with an exception of aircraft and a few scenes at the end; until that time they are an almost abstract, invisible enemy who sends bombs, mines, and torpedoes from afar to the protagonist.
A realistic and dark portrayal of the war, which Hollywood, unlike later conflicts, has declared “good,” is, on the other hand, compromised by the fact that the story ends with a military catastrophe and simple survival, which is still portrayed as a triumph of Good over Evil. This happens in the scene where the desperate masses of British soldiers waiting on the beaches finally arrive hundreds and thousands of small civilian boats whose owners voluntarily risked danger to “bring our boys home.” The heroic act further emphasizes the shift of Hans Zimmer’s music to patriotic tones and the use of motifs from the classical composer Edward Elgar (in a similar way used in the historical film Elizabeth from 1998), but most importantly, the reactions of two characters – the Royal Navy Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) and the British Army Colonel Winant (James d’Arcy) – who are in charge of the evacuation on the only remaining dock in the port, and whose discussions serve as exposition to the uniformed public, bringing broader political and military context to the events the film. The two actors are exceptionally diligent, but they seem as if they have wandered from another film, or that their job could have been much cheaper for the traditional narrative.
The final scenes also seem like those of another film, providing additional context with the famous speech by the British Prime Minister Churchill about continuing the fight against Hitler, which should give some sort of deeper meaning to everything the audience has seen before. Because of all this, it is difficult to avoid the impression that Nolan used this “elevated” detail only to justify his big exercise in style. In this sense, Nolan does not seem significantly different from Joe Wright, who had portrayed the chaos on the beaches of Dunkerque a decade ago in an exceptionally evocative and spectacular, but perhaps not the most necessary scene of his film Atonement. And it is even more difficult to evade the impression that the masters of the "old school" war epics, such as Steven Spielberg or Veljko Bulajić, would have told the story of Dunkirk much better in a traditional and less pretentious way. Although the quality is far above what was typically offered in 2010 cinemas and although some of its ambitions were met, Dunkirk seems like a great victory of style over content.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
(Note: The text in its original Croatian language version was posted here on September 12th 1999.)
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