As a child, I grew up in one of the southern English ports from which the little boats sailed to participate in the evacuation of Dunkirk. Though I was too young to realize what was happening at the time, throughout the war years and after, I was made aware of the significance of that event in the eyes of the townspeople. For them, the main thought was of the Miracle of Dunkirk and they constantly registered their pride in that some of the townspeople had participated in bringing about that miracle. It was therefore with some expectation this would be my main concern with Christopher Nolan’s film.
This is not to say the film is a bad film. In fact, it is a work of genius. Rather than tell the story of the evacuation of thousands of English and French soldiers from the beach in Dunkirk, to which they had been forced to retreat by the enemy, Nolan has mainly chosen to depict the harrowing experience of the men up to the final evacuation.
To do this, he has chosen to
interlock three stories, one set on land, one on sea, and one in the air. As
each of these stories is of different length, the cross-cutting proves to be a
little confusing, but each is told with a compelling and gripping intensity. Thus he reveals the agonizing tragedy played out by the
trapped personnel and the efforts of those who are hoping to assist them.
It is the film’s great achievement the terror of the experience is revealed largely without words, often through the facial reactions of the actors, and always with telling effect. The result is a film which reveals the horror and waste of war, the ultimate senselessness of such combats, and the tragic loss of lives cut short or forever shadowed by the experience.
One remarkable aspect of DUNKIRK is that it does not do this by focusing on carnage and bloodshed, yet the film is replete with loss and death. In exquisitely made sequences, one is able to share in the terror of men trapped in the hold of a ship filling with water, with the tension of a dog fight in the air, with the bitter agony experienced as huge ships filled with men and nurses are capsized.
With masterful cinematography, with an extraordinary soundscape,
and with superbly understated acting, the film plunges one into the horror and
the terror. No film has ever made such a compelling anti-war statement without
being preachy.
However, for all that the film achieves, I was personally disappointed in regard to what the film omits. Yes, there are indications as to what led to the reality that was Dunkirk, but for many some background might have been helpful. It doesn’t even ask the obvious (and still unanswered) question as to why the enemy did not pursue their advantage and launch a full-out attack on the trapped personnel. More importantly, as mentioned earlier, the miracle achieved by the little boats seems to be something of an incidental; indeed, for most of the film, one gets the impression there was only one such craft involved.
There is no explanation as to how the word was spread to the sailors of the armada of small fishing vessels and pleasure craft to embark on their brave voyage, little indication as to why they responded as they did. And in the end, there is little registration of the way in which a defeat was turned into a victory – the repeating of part of Churchill’s famous “ We shall never surrender” speech in a kind of coda in the last few minutes of the film, hardly suffices to show how Britain, so far from feeling doomed as a result of Dunkirk, was able to strengthen its resolve as the people concentrated on the 300,000 lives which were saved and not the 100,000 that were lost. Yet, in the end, that was what Dunkirk came to mean for the beleaguered Brits and their allies.
One must be grateful to Nolan for having brought to our consciousness the tragedy that Dunkirk was for so many and for making us understand on a very human level what war really means. But the historical importance of the event in the process of the war needs also to be stressed. Brilliant as DUNKIRK is as a major cinematic triumph, it might have been so much more.