Christopher Nolan’s war epic is a five-star masterpiece

IT’S already generating Oscar buzz and for good reason. It’s so good it could easily be an early contender for Best Film.

IT’S unusual for a movie seven months out from the Academy Awards to be generating Oscar buzz, but the bees are swarming, and with good reason.

Dunkirk is a return to true form for director Christopher Nolan and it may very well be his best film yet. It combines the clever structure of his film Memento, the scale and ambition of The Dark Knight and the incredible cinematography of Inception.

It is so tightly structured and paced, there is not a single wasted moment or shot in Dunkirk — everything has a purpose and fits in as a vital piece of the cohesive whole.

War movies aren’t for everyone, especially if it’s the usual gore-fest, which can be beautiful in their brutality but only if you have the stomach for it. Last year, Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge won plaudits for its extremely graphic battle scenes and that’s certainly one way to illustrate the inhumanity of war.

But Nolan has done it without showing any blood or dismembered limbs, an extraordinary feat for a war epic. This bloodless approach is every bit as effective.

Capturing the “military disaster” of Dunkirk has been done on film before, recently in 2007 by Joe Wright with a memorable five-minute one-shot in Atonement. The scrambling evacuation of 400,000 trapped British forces has a unique place in World War II history given it represents both failure and a miracle.

Nolan has managed to capture the chaos and desperation as soldiers wait for rescue. Told through the perspectives of three groups, his non-simultaneous triptych takes place on the land, the sea and in the air.

Tommy is a young private that anchors the film. (Melissa Sue Gordon/Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

Young Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) is the only survivor of his battalion to make it to the beach at Dunkirk. He teams up with wordless Gibson (Aneurin Barnard) as the pair tries to board a ship back to England, less than a hundred kilometres across the channel. Along the way, they pick up Alex (Harry Styles).

As Navy Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) says to Army Colonel Winnant (James D’Arcy), home is so close you can almost see it. It’s also Bolton who tells Winnant that the salvation they need may not come with the government reluctant to send more destroyers and air force planes beyond what’s necessary to evacuate a small portion of the men who are needed for fighting elsewhere.

There’s a sense Dunkirk is already lost and the British forces must save what they can for defending Britain for if/when the battle shifts even closer to home ground.

In the air, two lone air force pilots, Farrier (Tom Hardy) and Collins (Jack Lowden), take off from England to defend the ships that do manage to set off from Dunkirk from the German Luftwaffe, enemy planes dropping bombs at the mostly defenceless men on the beach and on the water.

In the water, Mr Dawson (Mark Rylance), his son Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney) and Peter’s friend George (Barry Keoghan) are part of the civilian fleet of small merchant ships that have been drafted into service to aid the evacuation.

Dunkirk is heart-pounding stuff — literally — because even long after walking out of the cinema, your heart will not let go of the experience. This is something Nolan has proved adept at in the past but takes to another level here.

Harry Styles is surprisingly great. Who knew? (Warner Bros Pictures via AP)

Much of that has to do with the sound design of the film, whether it’s the cacophony of gunfire seamlessly becoming frantic footsteps, morphing into a heartbeat before finally settling into a clock ticking, or the menacing, overwhelming howl of an incoming German plane. It’s bone-chilling and surges through your body as an entirely visceral experience.

The sound is only marginally bested by Hans Zimmer’s extraordinary score whose richness and tempo reinforces the urgency of the action.

Even though you get no backstories to any of the characters — they’re almost more like archetypes to represent those who were there — they still feel fully formed.

The young cast (Whitehead, Styles, Lowden, Barnard, Keoghan and Glynn-Carney) are great here, their youthful faces only underscoring the tragedy of the young men lost in wars waged by men three times their age.

Styles, who Nolan cast without pre-knowledge of his appeal among the tween set, has smashed expectations. He’s surprisingly excellent, with his character given the weight of both paranoia and the sense of failure among troops, which he deftly handled.

Dunkirk is Tom Hardy’s third collaboration with Nolan. (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

And the veterans (Branagh, Rylance, Hardy and Cillian Murphy) bring the gravitas. Branagh can convey everything you need to know with just a flicker of his face while Rylance embodies the everyman courage that has won so many wars throughout history.

Nolan filmed Dunkirk in IMAX and on 70mm and it’s absolutely worth seeking out the biggest screen you can because it is a breathtakingly gorgeous film.

From the expanse of the beach, lined up with rows of soldiers all ducking for cover, to the horror of jumping off a sinking ship into oil-slicked water, to the aerial gunfights, there is nothing here that isn’t worthy of being admired and remembered.

Even Nolan’s propensity for a puzzle — here, the non-linearity of its structure — isn’t overplayed, it’s merely used as a momentum device towards the final sequences.

Dunkirk is the best war film we’ve seen in years and it stands out for accomplishing that without the gore or the dripping sentiment that bogs down so many others — in that way, it’s a very British war film.

The acts of courage here need minimal comment. Nor does the absolute savagery of senseless death and destruction. But at the same time, it couldn’t be more clear. Dunkirk is nothing short of a masterpiece.

Rating: 5/5

Dunkirk is in cinemas from Thursday, July 20.

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