Dunkirk

Director: Christopher Nolan

Nominated for: Best Picture; Best Director; Best Editing; Best Original Score; Best Sound Mixing; Best Sound Editing; Best Cinematography; Best Production Design

I kind of view Darkest Hour (Joe Wright) and Dunkirk as companion pieces and actually did watch them chronologically.

Christopher Nolan has a reputation for doing as much of his films in camera as he possibly can – he’ll do on set visual effects as opposed to CGI – this film is no different and I think it shows. There is a visceral realism to the film, aided by the fact that they shot on the real beaches in Dunkirk … even if my dad did say that it was far too clean on the beaches. Nolan also has a bit of a reputation of playing with time scales – again no different here. There are three timelines running concurrently throughout Dunkirk – events on land take place over a week, events on se take place over a day and events in the air take place over the course of 1 hour. I completely understand why he chose to do this though because there was simply too much information to put into the film and this was clearly the best way to overcome that.

It’s an incredible cast with a veritable who’s who of British acting – Sir Kenneth Branagh, James D’Arcy and Sir Mark Rylance leading the charge in terms of the older actors. I love Mark Rylance – there’s this aura about it that is mesmerising and makes him a delight to watch. Tom Hardy is excellent as the pilot – although somewhat under-utilised I would say. Likewise Kenneth Branagh is under-utilised in his role as Commander Bolton … although I do love that he remains on the beach to help with the evacuation of French soldiers. Cillian Murphy is something of a conflicted character as he is reluctant to go and assist with the rescue. However this reluctance makes absolute sense once you realise that he is shellshocked.

I watched the extras for Dunkirk which gave an enormous insight into the thinking behind several decisions (like filming on the real beach) so I know that Nolan made a conscious decision to have the young men who would have been the common soldier actually played by young men rather than older actors playing down. This resulted in showcasing some new talent amongst the trio of young lads the land timeline follows … some of which turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Aneurin Barnard (one of my favourite stage actors thanks to Spring Awakening!) plays a wonderfully sneaky young soldier who has an uncanny ability to read the situation correctly resulting in the continued survival of Tommy and Alex. Fionn Whitehead plays Tommy who, I guess you would say is the protagonist but only because he is the first soldier you meet, was a bit of an unknown entity as I haven’t seen any of his other work but carried the film well. For me though the biggest surprise was Harry Styles, of One Direction, as Alex. He was actually a surprisingly good actor and so much more than just a vanity casting. He actually played a fairly big role and formed part of the trio of young lads who’s experience we follow on land.

For me my favourite part of the film was seeing the little ships finally appearing over the horizon. It’s such an emotional moment – we know now the enormous role they played in pulling off Operation Dynamo. It seems like such an insane premise – we’re going to send private pleasure cruisers across the English Channel to rescue a tiny percentage of the 400,000 soldiers currently trapped on a beach completely encircled by enemy troops – and yet it is one that paid off dividends resulting in a total of 338,226 men being pulled off those beaches alive. What was in effect an undeniable defeat at the hands of the Axis forces actually ended up being a pivotal point in the war and definitely turned the tide. And the deserving heroes of that Operation were the hundreds of little ships that sailed into a war zone – none of who were serving military personnel. They were  magical sight and almost reduced me to tears when watching it – they definitely gave me goosebumps! Nolan even had a number of the real little ships that took part in Operation Dynamo in the film which just added to the level of realism.

Dunkirk is an extraordinary tale of bravery and British resilience and Christopher Nolan, along with all those involved, has truly done it justice. I know that war films often get a bad rep as they do tend to pick and choose which elements of the real story they’re going to include but I do think they have a place and important role to play in the preservation of history. We’re getting to that stage where those people who actually lived through these events are sadly no longer alive and run the risk of forgetting important events. Cinema has the power to keep this events in the public consciousness – and not just for the time that they’re initially in the cinema thanks to DVDs and home cinema channels. Yes they should be taken with a piece of salt as they are dramatisations but they’re an excellent starting point for informing future generations of events that shaped the world they currently live in.