Plot:
Allied soldiers from Belgium, the British Empire and France are surrounded by the German army and evacuated during a fierce battle in World War II.
Review:
Based on the real life story, Dunkirk focuses on the military operation that took place in Dunkirk, France, during the Second World War in which about 400 000 soldiers were stranded, while being surrounded by the German army.
While Dunkirk differs from a normal Christopher Nolan film (Inception/The Dark Knight trilogy) - where we know the outcome before the film even begins - the director skillfully crafts a intimate war story from three perspectives.
With Dunkirk, Nolan delivers one of his best films to date, especially with his unconventional use of camera angles. In his previous film, Interstellar, what that film achieved well was how tight and restrictive it made the viewer to feel. Nolan accomplished this because of the lengths he went through to shoot the film - like attaching an IMAX camera to a Lear jet.
Nolan's frequent Visual Effects Supervisor, Paul Franklin, tweeted some photos while shooting Interstellar showing a Lear jet with an IMAX camera embedded into the nose of the plane. The pictures have since been removed from the social network.
Picture: Twitter
It that very skill of thinking out the box, that helpsDunkirk feel fresh, despite it's subject matter.
Dunkirk is one of the director's shortest films, with a 1 hour and 47 minutes run time - but it does not feel that ways because of how the story was shot. Especially with the use of the camera position used to depict the disorientation of the soldiers, and the claustrophobic situations they were put in.
One memorable shot, which is included in the trailer, is how the screen fills up with water, giving the audience a representation of how unpredictable things easily could become for the soldiers.
Hoyte van Hoytema, the cinematographer for Dunkirk, created a cerebral and emotional texture for the film, and doing so without a traditional saturation of colour. The movie uses muted tones, with no extensive colour popping up on screen, other than a few explosions. Hoytema creates texture with formal precision, which along with the clear direction and style by Nolan, helps create an immersive film.
Dunkirk also fits into the Nolan style, with the director's preferred non-chronologically story telling method. For this film viewer, it initially felt like an unnecessary move on the director's part, but it did add an enormous amount of emotional weight into the film's narrative, making this noticeable tactic less annoying - instead it was done in service of the story.
There is a strategic and methodical use of music in the film, with Hans Zimmer crafting a score elevating moments of tension, fear and solemness. The score for the film is impressive considering that there is a large stretch of the film which passes by without dialogue. For a Nolan film, Dunkirk is very sparse on dialogue, but that makes the cinematic experience all the more enjoyable.
The plot for the film is easy to summarize as it is a recorded part of history:
"Belgium and Holland were hit so hard by Germany that they were forced to surrender, and British troops in France, who were pushed toward the water by the onslaught of German forces, fought themselves to a point of no return at the French port of Dunkirk.
But, if they hoped to escape back to England, they had a logistical problem: the beach at Dunkirk was so shallow that the big ships of the Royal Navy couldn't reach the stranded soldiers. In a stroke of ingenuity, a call went out for civilian boats to head to Dunkirk to ferry the troops to safety."
However, that is not what makes Dunkirk the great film that it is, Nolan crafts a World War II film that feels fresh, and unlike anything we've seen before. His films are made for the cinema and to be enjoyed on the big screen, and it would be a missed opportunity not to experience Dunkirk as intended.
The film has been receiving Oscar buzz, and it is because of the director's impressive style which gives insight into why this is the case.