Review of Dunkirk (2017) by Ly G — 25 Jul 2017

Has Christopher Nolan struck gold again?

Yes he has.

Where do I start with this one? I am putty in the hands of films. They can very easily manipulate me emotionally and linger on in my mind for days and even months. But of late, despite this certain weakness, I wasn't being able to spot films of such caliber that could leave a long-lasting impression on me even though I really have been watching some great movies. But now, finally, that spell has been broken. Dunkirk has taken me on a ride, plunged me into the cold depths of the English Channel, made me scramble for life aboard a sinking ship and pray to dear God for a miracle. It is exactly that, which we witness on screen. With not much of a particularly intricate story to tell, it is simply a raw and immersive visual feast of the horrors of war; a WWII depiction of verisimilitude.

Right from scene 1, you're thrown into action. The film lives and breathes in the moment, just like the characters who're trying to escape fate and have hardly any time on their hands for anything else. There is not a single scene that is wasted and due to its tight run-time, the film feels perfectly measured. Every frame brings with it a sense of uneasiness and an overbearing feeling of a portentous, if not ominous, immediate future.

In classic Nolan style, we see perfectly color-graded shots,frequent angled viewpoints and a non-linear narrative consisting of three separate timelines occurring very close to one another which eventually merge in the end. The cinematography is flawless and the use of real locations and props (including even the planes and boats) only add to the authenticity. Hans Zimmer's background score is haunting and forms an interdependent relationship with the visual proceedings of the film, elevating our experience to the stirring heights of amazement. The crescendo of the tense, shrill sounds of strings with the arrival of an enemy plane or just the tick-tick-tick of a clock, signifying the race against time, laying low in the background of momentarily silent scenes can give anyone the shivers.

The characters we see are not allowed to sit with us and tell us the stories of their past lives. We don't know if some young man left a fiance at home or grew up with only one parent. No one person receives special focus and our attention is never drawn away from the war. In spite of this, just the spanning theme of agony and fear makes us root for every single one of them, even the ones we see for only a few seconds. We palpitate and draw sharp breaths every time a rescue attempt is thwarted mercilessly by the Germans or someone is fighting for life in a dire situation.

"Survival isn't fair" is very rightly said by one soldier in the movie. Especially when circumstances are so trying that the basic thread of hope that binds humanity together is being stretched to its limit, one should not be expected to think of anyone but one's own self. However, every now and then, when we see a ray of compassion breaking through the rock solid layer of desperation and the ugliness it can lead to, we're reminded of the power of our hearts. When a mass of civilian boats appear on the horizon to save the soldiers or when a fighter pilot makes sure to destroy an enemy plane even when he's about to fall, we are made to realize that empathy is really all that defines us. No one was born of special mettle but built it up in themselves and let it out even when it was hardest for them to do so. It renews the belief that maybe we too have such potential within us.

While I do think watching the movie in IMAX will make it even more extraordinary than it already is (and I heavily regret not being able to do that), Dunkirk will be marvelous irrespective of the format it's viewed in.

This is a story of something true that definitely took place in the past. People went through living hell and survived. But watching this film, it was jarring to accept this blatant yet almost unbelievable fact. While we may never come close to knowing what it must really have been like to exist even for a second in the reality of that sort of terror, we can try beginning to fathom it by finding out how, by just being a mere spectator of a fictitious recording of the same events, we can be so severely moved.

P.S. If this doesn't win an Oscar, I don't know what will.