Review of Dunkirk (2017) by Clarisesamuels — 03 Sep 2017

Dunkirk is a WWII film about the drama of Operation Dynamo. But it is actually a film about wartime courage, and even more importantly, it is about wartime fear. Not just average fear, but the kind of fear that shocks every nerve in the system and threatens to cancel out reality, replacing normalcy with an absurd void; the kind of fear that comes dive bombing out of the sky with a screaming terror that can deafen the ears and jar the soul.

The stars of this film are unknown actors, in keeping with the notion of the unknown soldier, the anonymous young men who were fed like fodder into a faceless, wartime death machine. They are young men with nondescript features, strangely bearing a resemblance to each other, as if they were all related to each other—brothers, sons, and cousins—all facing a grim reaper who cares nothing for their hopes, dreams, and aspirations, and who robs them of their individuality as well as their future. The movie casting does not draw attention to the fact that smaller, supporting roles are filled with big-time names. As you watch the film, a certain familiarity starts to clue you in. Is that Kenneth Branagh? Benedict Cumberbatch? Tom Hardy? Mark Rylance? They are hiding under officers' naval uniforms and aviation gear. They do not want to steal the spotlight from the cast that is playing the most important role in the film—the anonymous soldier on the beach who falls into a crumpled-up heap every time the German dive bombers make another sweep across the sky. This is the eternal essence of war—horror, desperation, hopelessness, and death.

Mark Rylance is the quiet, bland, and unassuming Mr. Dawson, one of the civilians who has in May of 1940 answered a frantic call from prime minister Winston Churchill. Hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers are stranded on the French shore of Dunkirk, surrounded by the Germans, and they are close but yet so far from the White Cliffs of Dover and home. Churchill has ordered the requisitioning of small fishing boats, launches, pleasure craft and yachts to make the treacherous journey across the English Channel and take on as many soldiers as they can possibly fit in their modest vessels. (Many of the boats were requisitioned by the British Navy and were manned by experienced personnel; some were helmed by the private owners.) These vessels could navigate the shallow waters that the large military warships could not. The small boats, known as the Little Ships of Dunkirk, comprised about 850 private boats that sailed from Ramsgate, England to Dunkirk. Mr. Dawson, a private civilian, is among them, and the bravery of this and other insignificant sea captains like him is fiercely heroic and yet strangely unremarkable. The private citizens who volunteered are just average people doing what they have to do. Mr. Dawson has nerves of steel, and he is determined and uncannily courageous; nothing can force him to turn back. Although this is not intended to be a feel-good movie, the epic sight of hundreds of watercraft emerging from the mists of the sea to effectively rescue 338,000 men trapped on a WWII beach is nothing less than cinematic history. Director Christopher Nolan has made a WWII movie like no other.