Other Media Review

Movie Review: Dunkirk

This is a movie that starts tense, stays tense, and ends… still pretty tense. It’s also a masterclass in film structure, and I would put it up there with Hell or High Water as one of the best constructed movies of the modern age.

It also had one of the most effective teaser trailers I’ve ever seen.

Dunkirk tells the story of the Miracle at Dunkirk, a week at the end of May and beginning of June, 1940 where the bulk of the British Expeditionary Forces and the remaining French army were surrounded by the German army on all sides. A superhuman effort to get as many of the 400,000 troops out of France was more successful than expected, due to the use of the Little Ships of Dunkirk: civilian fishing boats, ferries, pleasure yachts, and lifeboats that were shallow enough to come up to the beaches and gather up as many people as they could. When Churchill put Operation Dynamo, the evacuation plan, in motion, he expected to evacuate around 35,000 troops. In the end, the number was over 338,000.

It’s one of those turning points in history: if the BEF had been crushed by the German army in that week, that probably would have been it for the Allied forces. Stuff You Missed in History Class did an excellent two part episode covering the events leading up to the Dunkirk evacuation, and the evacuation itself, and I highly recommend it.

Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, Interstellar) got the idea for this movie over 20 years ago, but realized that he wasn’t a good enough filmmaker yet to make the movie he had in his head, so he shelved it, and worked on movies with big scopes and big budgets and played around with narrative and made himself into the filmmaker that could make this movie the way he wanted to.

The movie is structured around three POVs: land, sea, and air. On land, he tells the story of the men on the beach – it takes about a week in their time. On sea, the story is one of the little ships, and we’re with them for one day. In the air, there’s three Spitfires providing air support to the  operation, and we’re with them for an hour. The narratives cut back and forth between POVs, until they overlap and eventually end with all the narratives ending at the same place.

It’s basically the movie version of the Golden Ratio. I can’t stress enough how much I liked how well put together each storyline was and how well they wove together. Nolan has talked about how he used a mathematical structure to put things together, and what this does is it makes the entire film extremely atmospheric and claustrophobic.

In the land section (it’s referred to as The Mole, because of the breakwater that was used as a dock, since most of the harbor at Dunkirk was destroyed), most of the action is experienced through the eyes of a young soldier, Tommy (FIonn Whitehead, aka Not Harry Styles), as he makes it through the town of Dunkirk to the beach, and onto various ships as he tries to get home. He hooks up with Alex (Harry Styles) and some other people, while the officers (Kenneth Branagh and James D’arcy) manage the evacuation.

On the sea, Mark Rylance plays a man who owns a pleasure yacht, and when the call goes out that the Navy is activating the civilian fleet go to Dunkirk and help, he chooses to pilot his own ship, instead of letting the Navy commandeer her (in general, most of the Little Ships were piloted by the Navy). With him is his son and another kid from their town, and they pick up Cillian Murphy from a wreck along the way.  Cillian Murphy is only credited as “shivering soldier” and is completely traumatized by his experiences.

In the air, Tom Hardy flies a Spitfire and shoots down German planes. We get to see his face once, and most of his scenes are just him, in his cockpit.

There are a bunch of things that make this movie so effective. One is that the Germans are mostly a completely unseen threat. You never see them, except in planes. You don’t know where they are or where they’re coming from. The movie starts almost in media res: all Nolan needs you to know is that the bulk of the British army is on this beach, and there’s no way out but across the Channel.  You don’t need to know anyone’s backstory, or motivation, except for what is immediately important: get off the beach, get as many people on the boat as possible, shoot down those planes.

Another thing is the music. Hans Zimmer did the score, and his partnerships with Nolan has been REALLY good. I like Zimmer’s music a lot, but he has a tendency toward sameness, except when a director can really get him to focus. Most of the score involves a low drone in the background, reminiscent of the sounds of a diving plane, or an air raid siren. It adds to sense of dread and urgency. (I like using Zimmer’s music as a writing sound track. I’m wondering how well this will work added to my “writing” playlist.)

My main criticism is that I wish that either Fionn Whitehead or Harry Styles had blonde hair. They looked a LOT alike so it was hard to keep them straight. That’s kind of the point- the swirling mass of humanity was supposed to be faceless, but I spent a lot of time going “Is that… which kid is that?”

Also, yes, it’s a dude heavy movie – there were women involved at Dunkirk, mostly as nurses on the ships (the heroine in The Secrets of Nanreath Hall was a Dunkirk nurse), and they are seen, but not really involved in the main thrust of the narrative. Honestly, I’m okay with this particular facet. Others might feel differently.

It’s also an exclusively white movie, and there were four companies from the Indian Army Service Corps at Dunkirk.  (I could not find quickly any concrete information on other soldiers of color in the BEF, other than a forum that said “Well, there wasn’t really a color bar for the British army” so if anyone has more solid sources, please do post them.) (Edited to add: Slate has a good article on accuracy in the movie, and they do address the Indian Army Service Corps issue – that it would have been good to see them, even though yeah, it would have been less than a thousand among hundreds of thousands. And there were French soldiers of North African ancestry who were also part of the evacuation.)

What I liked best was what I can learn about storytelling: what are different ways to tell a story that makes the point the creator wants? Take risks! Trust your audience! And if you have an idea for an art, but you think you might not be ready to make it yet so it works in the way you want it to, it’s okay to shelve it and develop your skills until you’re the creator you need to be for this piece of art to match your vision.

I am not gonna lie. I cried when those Little Ships came across the horizon. In the Imperial War Museum in London, the Tamzine, the littlest of the Little Ships, stands next to a Spitfire and other vehicles of war. And she’s just as important. She had a job to do, and she did it.

Dunkirk is in theaters now. Tickets (US) are available at Fandango and Moviefone.

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  1. LML says:

    Seeing mention of this movie before I read your review my thoughts were: War. Suffering. No thank you. But now I’m thinking … maybe… Thank you for a concise review which details the movie’s narrative.

  2. Carol S says:

    I agree — I was extremely impressed with the movie both as a viewer and considering it from a “film studies” standpoint. I love the use of time shifts in the movie, and the fact that there were three time frames intermingled was fascinating and not confusing as it sounds. I thought the whole movie was a kind of counterpoint to Saving Private Ryan. Instead of going into to France, the troops were evacuating; instead of the massive scope of the D-Day invasion, the story is very intimate, and you feel like you are a close part of the action (the dogfight scenes almost made me airsick!); and instead of focusing on the individual’s identity, the troops are mostly anonymous and you feel like they are cogs in a big machine, even though you are experiencing what they experience intimately.

    Also, even though I know Harry Styles’s face very well (my teenaged daughter is a huge fan), I didn’t feel like he was disruptive to the suspension of disbelief. His acting was quite impressive, actually.

  3. cleo says:

    I saw this opening weekend – I posted on FB that the fact I was willingly waiting to see a war movie was one way 15+ years of marriage has changed me.

    Thanks to Mr Cleo’s tutelage and multiple viewings of classics of the genre (The Longest Day, Midway, Paton, etc) I really noticed the ways Dunkirk is and isn’t a typical war movie. It has the sweeping cinematography. It shows you the pov of officers in charge and enlisted men just trying to survive. But there’s no war room scenes, there’s nothing from the opponent’s pov, there’s no view of the Germans at all except for their airplanes and bullets. And there are no politicians. You do get Churchill’s famous speech at the end, but read out loud by someone else, subduedly.

    In some ways it reminded me a lot of HBO’s Band of Brothers (series based on a real air force battalion fighting in Europe in WWII) – each episode has a very narrow focus from the pov of one or two characters, without much, if any sense of the larger war. BoB is bloodier though.

    Things to know if you’re not a war movie fan but are interested. It’s not very gory but it is intense. Characters you follow die or have bad things happen – sometimes for heroic reasons and sometimes for very mundane reasons or no reason at all.

  4. Lora says:

    I respect that it is a well done film.
    However, I saw the trailer, turned to my husband and said, “Oh good, i was hoping they’d make a movie about the heroics of white straight men. We need some of those for representation purposes.”
    That’s not to say that it isn’t a fine film, only to say that I watched enough of these brave cowboy style action and historical flicks in college to last me a lifetime. I’d prefer to bow out respectfully and wait for a film with some diversity in viewpoints.

  5. Ms. M says:

    The other thing that is unusual about Dunkirk is the lack of blood. To be honest, the only time I remember seeing any is when a civilian has a head wound. I don’t suggest you take young kids to war movies, but if you want to, this is the one.

  6. I wouldn’t agree with the idea of taking a young kid to this movie. Certainly not wihtout pre-screening. I do say, “I don’t know your kid” but there’s a lot of dread, a lot of bombs, a lot of bodies, and ships sinking out of under people. It’s designed to be a movie about the experience, and it’s intense. so… I really do not suggest taking young children.

  7. Maureen says:

    I’m a bit of a history buff, and weirdly enough, my ex-military husband had never heard of Dunkirk. So when I was trying to explain what happened, I was already in tears-that was before I saw the trailer for the movie.

    I do have a very hard time watching war movies, I’ve never seen Saving Private Ryan-and my husband begs me yearly to watch Band of Brothers, but I haven’t been able to do it. Knowing this stuff actually happened, it is all so heartbreaking. I do feel like I will go see this one though-I’ve always been interested in what happened there, and I will go in knowing that I will probably be sobbing throughout the whole movie.

  8. Ellielu says:

    @Lora. There is nothing cowboy-style about the movie. While some of then characters behave bravely, and some are understandably less than brave, this film is mostly about individuals just trying to survive amidst staggering defeat.

  9. Ms. M says:

    Sorry– you’re right. Not young kids. I guess more middle school-early high school age, which is about how old I was when I saw Apocalypse Now (in school) and Saving Private Ryan in theaters.

  10. Francesca says:

    I am not the most unbiased viewer of this type of movie, given that my uncle flew bombers and my mother’s house was bombed in the Blitz. I am also not that keen on Christopher Nolan, who I think is somewhat overrated (yeah, I said it), nor am I a big fan of Hans Zimmer, but, holy crap, this movie had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. I got a big lump in my throat when the small craft appeared on the horizon.

  11. TheFormerAstronomer says:

    Christopher Nolan specifically pushed for this to get a 12A rating (rather than a 15 like other war movies) because he wanted younger teens and tweens to be able to see it, which is why there isn’t much gore or swearing.

    And I feel all the comments about not wanting to go and watch more Heroic White Men Being Heroic, but I’m also torn because this was a really important part of recent British (and European) history that we hear about a lot less than some of the other Famous War Moments.

  12. As much as I’m in favor of more diverse representation, I really don’t want to say people shouldn’t make or watch movies about white men who are heroic. The point isn’t “ugh, white men” – the point is to expand the range of people who are depicted as protagonists and as heroes (well, also as every character role).

  13. chacha1 says:

    I am sure we will see this at some point, but I am also sure we won’t see it in the theatre. The war scenes in “Wonder Woman” were about as much of that as I can take this summer.

  14. Hazel says:

    @Althea: When I was a little girl, I re-wrote all the adventure stories in my library, to make the heroes female. One of my favourite characters was a cross-dressing fighter pilot who was imprisoned in Colditz. I named her Frances/Frank. 🙂

    OK, so that was a little girl’s fantasy, but there were certainly places where women and non-white people played significant roles, and, nothing against white men, but it’s those other stories I’d like to see and to read.

    But this sounds very good.

  15. Leanne H. says:

    Great review. I really enjoyed the movie and yet I agree with the critique that there could have been more diverse representation. It’s not that I can’t accept the fact that white men vastly outnumbered other people at Dunkirk. It’s that contributions by women and POC have been pushed to the sidelines and totally erased in almost every genre, but most especially in war movies. I think it’s time to give a platform for women and POC to be the heroes, too. (But I know I’m preaching to the choir, here, Bitchery.)

    Important side note: “other people” with Harry and Non-Harry include Aneurin Barnard, aka Richard III in the White Queen miniseries. I could watch his broody face in anything. *swoon*

  16. linn says:

    @Leanne H. That is a very important side note! I swooned so hard over Aneurin’s Richard III!

    I can’t take much violence and war – the Dunkirk scenes in “Atonement” almost made me leave the theatre, feeling nauseous with anxiety – but I’m so so tempted by this. The 70 mm, the cinephile porn, the Mark Rylance, the music, and now the Aneurin Barnard…

    On the one hand I don’t want to vote with my wallet for more white male war films, but on the other hand I want to vote with my wallet for more quality films.

  17. Leanne H. says:

    @linn, yes to all of that!!!

    But fair warning… this movie is anxiety-inducing all the way through. I needed to reapply deodorant afterward.

  18. Varian says:

    I’m torn between “this sounds fascinating from a storytelling perspective” and “this sounds waaaaaay too intense and anxiety inducing for me.”

  19. Tam says:

    When I was a child, I loved this book about two boys taking a small boat across to Dunkirk -‘The Dolphin Crossing’ by Jill Paton Walsh. I’m not certain if it’s still in print, but I still remember the emotional kick it delivered.

  20. BellaInAus says:

    I get teary any time anyone mentions Dunkirk. There’s something about the way that ordinary people just buckled down and did what had to be done that gets me in the feels.

    I’m not a watcher of war movies, either, but I’ll make sure I see this.

  21. pegasus358 says:

    I thought this movie was intense, edgy, and excellent. I’ve been listening to the score (Thanks, Amazon Prime), and it, too, is excellent– and great writing music, I thought, Redheadedgirl!.

    I am seriously debating whether I want to shell out the $25 to see it in the IMAX theater in Lincoln Center…. I really just might.

  22. Melanie says:

    I was wavering on whether to see this in the theater, and your review made me decide to do it. I have a longstanding interest in the story of Dunkirk; I saw the Tamzine at the Imperial War Museum on my last trip to London years ago. Though I watched Saving Private Ryan in the theater, I don’t think I could handle that level of violence now. So I’m relieved this movie isn’t as gory. I’m also enough of a cinephile to be intrigued by what you say about the movie’s structure.

    My introduction to Dunkirk was an old YA novel, In Spite of All Terror by Hester Burton. Years later, I read The Dolphin Crossing, which Tam mentioned above, but when I read In Spite of All Terror I was young enough that I didn’t know about the wider historical context, so I really didn’t know what was going to happen.

  23. pegasus358 says:

    My introduction to Dunkirk was in Suzanne Brockmann’s THE DEFIANT HERO, in the WWII subplot!

  24. @Hazel – I remember being ten and falling madly in love with The Hobbit but being really bothered that there are *no* women in it. Almost everything I’ve ever written has had a female protagonist and often a mostly female cast – one of my friends who played in a D&D game I ran noted that most of the NPCs were women and that was really different from any game he’d ever played in with a male GM. So I definitely feel where you’re coming from there.

    I just… am not comfortable with diminishing, denying, or erasing the heroism of actual people in desperate situations in history, like the soldiers at Dunkirk, simply because they were white and male. Resisting fascism and other threats was (and is) everyone’s responsibility and burden, and I feel there’s a lot of room for stories of ordinary people being heroic regardless of their race and gender.

    I also prefer framing representation positively as “we need more women/POC representation” rather than negatively as “ugh, white dudes.”

  25. Karin says:

    Since the topic of POC(or lack thereof) in the Dunkirk movie came up, I thought this article about the Indian troops would be of interest. It’s old but somehow popped up on my Twitter stream today: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/nov/08/patrickwintour?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tweet
    “Sir Paddy Ashdown revealed yesterday how his father was brought before a court martial for refusing to comply with an order to abandon Indian troops under his command during the Dunkirk retreat.
    The order had been “idiotic and disgraceful”, said Sir Paddy, who was a Royal Marine captain before he was leader of the Liberal Democrats. His father, who ended the war a colonel, was in the Royal Indian Army Service Corps, based in the Punjab. In 1939 he took a platoon of Indian soldiers and their troop of mules as one of four mule trains to join the British Expeditionary Force in France.”

  26. Joanna says:

    Late to the party but saw this today, the extra price for IMAX was totally worth it. Made the aerial combat scenes and long views of the ocean and beaches amazing! And yes this movie was Intense! I’m a history buff but also can be squeamish about war movies and I could watch most of this ok.

    As for the POC issue, there were actually 2-3 dark faces in the crowd of French soldiers at the pier at the beginning of the movie who were being denied entry onto the British boats (they mentioned at the end staying to get the French forces off as well). I don’t know that aspect of history but maybe there were African-French Colonial troops there? Now I’m curious.

  27. Hazel says:

    Just saw it. Finally. I actually watched most of it and was impressed. My heart rate is still elevated and I doubt my blood pressure’s back to normal.

  28. Janine says:

    I am not normally a fan of war movies but I really liked this. It was an interesting variation on a genre which usually sticks to just a few tropes. I am with those who have limited tolerance for yet another variation on the “white dudes being heroic” plot, but I thought this particular movie earned it with its unique perspective.

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