I am really glad I went into Dunkirk not having seen any trailers, heard of the score, not knowing anything about it except the fact it was a film about Dunkirk during the second world war, and that guy from one direction was in it.
I've been a little down on Nolan films since Interstellar was a load of old cobblers, so I was extremely pleased that Dunkirk was an incredible experience that blew away. It's told via a non linear story structure, three perspectives of a soldier on the dunkirk beaches, a civilian sailors and two young boys ordered to assist in the famous evacuation, and an RAF fighter pilot on the way to provide air cover for the evactuation, roughly covering land/sea/air. These and other players in Nolan's drama aren't characters in the strictest sense though, they are portryals of emotions, fears, reactions, that all would have been present at this particular event, even the negative ones that British national memory tends to pretend wasn't a thing.
These stories are told in chronological order, but since each story is on a way different timescale from each other, the soldiers story takes place over a week, the sailors over a single day, and the fighter pilot story is only an hour, it sure does feel a little abstract. Despite that though, I never lost the story thread, or found it confusing or that it didn't work.
The atmosphere of claustrophobia and tension Nolan succesfully creates here is outstanding. The German forces are never really seen, and never even referred to by name, they are simply known as some outside force 'the enemy', and portrayed as the nearly invisible mouth of the sack closing around the beach. When they do come in for attack, usually in the form of some swooping aerial assault or deeadly submarine torpedo, we get barely a glimpse, before they're off again. Despite this, 'the enemy' is clearly the hangman's noose here, their mere presence or mention fills the people in the film, and us, with fear. It's practically a horror film, or a suspense thriller, more than a war film.
The incredible score by Hans Zimmer compounds this, with an incredible soundtrack that really drills the ticking clock, constant tension into your mind. I've heard some people complain that 'the music was too loud' to which my response would be, well yeah, thats the point, it is in fact, supposed to be that loud. It sounds like well, as close as it could have got to how it would have sounded on those beaches in 1940, I imagine.
The filming and shots done by Van Hoytema are also just incredible, emphasing a big, yet also tiny, canvas of war and of the beaches, and showing us how close, yet how far, the nebulous 'enemy' force is from completing its ghastly task.
I'm really not doing Dunkirk justice. It was a cinematic experience like what we don't get very often. It blew me away, shook my bones, and was just an incredible cinema experience, all while being on a goddamn 12 age rating (or PG 13 in America, whatever) Absolutely mind blowing greatness.
