Monday Afternoon Matinee Vol.2
“Dunkirk” (2017)
*written as an “instant reaction” piece in 2017 and added to my grand opus career article on director Christopher Nolan. I’m rather obsessed with his films. What can I say?*
“Men my age dictate this war”
You won’t be surprised by now to learn that nearly all of Nolan’s central themes pervade this beautiful film: from memory and memories, perceived identity or tribe in this case, dealing with loss and particularly the central theme that runs through nearly all of his films: time. The elasticity of time. The un-realness of time. The manipulation of time. And here, after watching the seemingly same trailer over and over and over again with my teenage son on our Saturday trips to our local picture house, “Dunkirk” is fully realised on the big screen and what a timeless (pun intended) joy it is.
In essence: the film, and a running time of just 106 minutes, is split across three distinct, yet interweaving time(s) and narrative(s) entitled “1. THE MOLE (One Week)”, “2. THE SEA (One Day)” and “3. THE AIR (One Hour)”.
“The Mole” is by far the largest unravelling of the cast of characters here and takes place primarily in the town of Dunkirk and the beachhead from which the thousands of British soldiers await their fate as they take cover from the strafing German aeroplanes, building portable ramps into the sea and trying to negate the vicious tides or simply awaiting a high tide to sweep their makeshift vessel out to sea. Vastly more incidents are thrust upon “Alex” (Harry Styles), “Gibson” (Aneurin Barnard) “French Soldier” (Damien Bonnard) “Tommy” (Fionn Whitehead) and all the way up the ranking order to an always perplexed looking Kenneth Branagh as “Commander Bolton” as everyone desperately awaits either their fate or an impossible mission, and their rescue via a huge flotilla of personal boats, ships and cruisers leaving England.
“The Sea” is by far my personal favourite of the interweaving timelines and despite their individual time durations (here it’s one day, it’s one week on the beach and just one hour in the air: see below) all are given room to breath and equal time to tell their share of the tale. Mark Rylance is incredible as an English citizen simply setting sail for France in a perilous pursuit to aid the soldiers stranded on the beach and is ably supported in so many ways by his son “Peter Dawson” (Tom Glynn-Carney) and especially so a last minute stow-away “George Mills” (Barry Keoghan). Keoghan steals the show for me and with Mark Rylance excelling as per usual it’s brilliantly acted, portrayed and narratively wrapped together with the other two timelines.
“The Air”. Hardy dominates this timeline and he has to as it’s a virtual one man show as he dog fights with German aircraft over the air space of Dunkirk.
A final word on Dunkirk is it was well and truly worth the wait and my son and I were enraptured from first minute to last. I ventured to my local picture house twice more to see it on the big screen and have seen it 3/4 times now since and it remains a stunning achievement from Director Nolan. The film won 3 Oscars (deservedly for the claustrophobic sound editing in the hands of Richard King and Alex Gibson) and won a further 2 Oscars from 7 more nominations but the “big” ones in Directing/Score/Cinematography and of course Best Film didn’t go the way of this astonishing film.
“Dunkirk” can also be found within volume 2 of my “Essential Film Reviews Collection” with all 7 volumes free to read should you have an Amazon Kindle “Unlimited” package. I also have 9 self-published literary dead horses to flog on Amazon too and here’s my latest pride and joy I’ve hawked around the internet like a cheap drug dealer since publishing it in late May of this year:
"The Essential Film Reviews Collection" VOL.2 - link to Amazon
"A final word from The Boss" - link to Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.