Dunkirk

(Warning: contains spoilers for Dunkirk.  But it happened 77 years ago, so you should probably know the ending already)

Dunkirk has been one of the more eagerly anticipated films of 2017.  The first trailers for the film premiered around the same time as Suicide Squad and then there was little by way of promotion until its release this year.  Which, in an era of promotional campaigns and teaser trailers makes it unusual.  But this is an unusual Christopher Nolan film.  Although you could comfortably play a decent game of "Christopher Nolan bingo" (Emma Thomas producing? Check.  Hans Zimmer composing?  Check.  Lee Smith editing?  Check.  Michael Caine?  Check - he's there as a cameo, marking his seventh time in a Nolan film), it is based on a true story and is surprisingly less than two hours long. 

The film is about the Dunkirk evacuation (also known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, and operation Dynamo) that occurred over nine days in 1940.  British, French and Belgian troops found themselves trapped on the exposed beaches of Dunkirk, unable to retreat to Britain, while dogfights roared overhead.  800 boats of varying shapes and sizes (including ferries, fishing boats and lifeboats) set off to try and collect as many people as possible.  Over 300,000 people were rescued, and it led to Churchill's now infamous "We shall fight them on the beaches" speech.

Critically acclaimed (currently scoring 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic), and generating a lot of online chatter, I was keen to see what it was like.

I was disappointed.

There is a lot to commend it.  Generally, historians agree that it is broadly accurate and not glammed up for Hollywood.  This is always pleasing to hear, particularly with regards to World War 1 and 2 depictions as there are fewer and fewer people alive today who can confirm what it was actually like to be there at that time.  Nolan and his team have been painstaking in detail (compare the differing uniforms of various characters throughout the film), and Nolan himself made a point of not attempting to film Dunkirk until he had a lot more experience as a director of big-screen productions.  that is to his credit.  Audiences cannot help but realise how cold, desolate, bleak and dangerous everything about the situation was.

Hans Zimmer's score is excellent at ratcheting up tension to almost unbearable heights.  There is an almost steady drone throughout, which leads to paranoia and uncertainty - is that part of the soundtrack? An enemy plane?  Both?  As a result, the film is uncomfortable viewing, because the audience can never settle because the next barrage of action is always imminent.

The story-telling has an interesting conceit - there are three overlapping storylines (air, sea and land), told at three different times, which means that, like it or not, I'm going to have to watch this film again to better understand exactly what happened.  The dialogue is minimal, so for the most part Dunkirk runs almost as a silent film.  Sometimes you just don't need words.

So far, so good.  And those are three very strong ticks in the "good film" box - looks good, sounds good, is honest.  But, for me, it isn't enough.

For a start, it's a 12A war film, meaning that the people who die do so cleanly, quickly and in one piece.  Even those with no experience of war know that this cannot possibly be true.  Weaponry is not so kind.  Films like Saving Private Ryan, Hacksaw Ridge and Apocalypse Now have set the bar high for a shocking and compelling account of what warfare is like.  Dunkirk is almost bloodless as a film, and given that Nolan has set out to be as accurate as possible, this seems like a very strange decision to make.  Thus begging the question: who is this film for?

Secondly, it lacks personal story.  For me, the most interesting storyline was the one in the sea where Mark Rylance's character (Mr Dawson) sets off in his little fishing boat with his son, Peter and their friend, George.  Along the way, they pick up a shell-shocked soldier (Cillian Murphy) who is understandably panicked that their intention is to go to Dunkirk - the very place that he is now trying to avoid.  Their story is a constant tension between two competing points of view, both of which are completely understandable.  This is what brought the enormity of the situation to life for me - that Mr Dawson and his young companions who had no experience whatsoever, were off into the middle of a warzone in a boat that wasn't built for conflict, to rescue damaged soldiers (with no way of treating them), with no instruction from land, no way of proving that they were allies, and little more than a limited amount of tea to offer.  That story is fascinating, but a fraction of the running time is devoted to it.  I would have watched an entire film of that story (Mark Rylance, as always, is impossible not to watch).  Instead, this competes with nameless, faceless, story-less characters in the air (where Tom Hardy is) and on the beaches (where Harry Styles is) and I don't know why I'm supposed to care as much about them.

An entire film of this story, please.  Thanks.

Personal story, I believe, is critical for big scale stories like Dunkirk.  I know that millions of people died in World War 2.  I know that it affected generations to come.  But on film, you need to have at least some identifying figures to understand the scale, and why it matters.  It is sad when people die, but it becomes tragic when we understand them as individuals and not just one of a number.  Which is why scenes like this, are imperative and why (to me) Dunkirk is less of a film for not featuring them.

Thirdly, this film is solely about white, English-speaking men.  To the best of my knowledge, war (particularly world war) is not so selective.  In the real-life Dunkirk, 1 in every 4 crewmen on British merchant vessels was a lascar, and the majority of them were from South East Asia, or Africa.  Women were trained to parachute behind enemy lines, disrupt communication, treat the injured and the dying.  In Dunkirk, they cheerily hand out bread and jam and not much else.  That, in itself, is another odd decision.

Finally, if you see this film having little to no idea about what the Dunkirk evacuation was, you may leave the film none the wiser.  Much as the posters say that this is "the event that shaped our world", there isn't much to put it into a context, or explain the difference that all those "ordinary" members of the public in their boats made.  Explaining the evacuation to the House of Commons, Churchill described the situation as "the whole root and core and brain of the British Army has been stranded at Dunkirk, about to perish or be captured."  The evacuation, he claimed, was nothing short of a miracle.  A national day of prayer was called before the evacuation started, such was the hopelessness felt by everything going on.  The rescue of 300,000 soldiers was arguably one of the main things that enabled the war to continue to the conclusion that it did.  Nolan stated he was keen to "not get [the film] bogged down in politics", but I would argue that without a greater context, it lacks a lot of impact.

I don't get it.  There are reviews I have read that says this is Nolan's best film ever, that this is the best war film ever made, and that it's an instant classic.  That was not the film I saw.  This is disappointing.  Made even more disappointing that Nigel Farage thinks that it is the very metaphor for Brexit.

Who wears a suit to the cinema?

The only conclusion I can come to is that there are three versions of Dunkirk: the one I saw, the one film critics saw and the one Nigel Farage saw.  That's the only explanation that makes sense.  And there are fewer and fewer people who were there who can tell us which one is right.