Dunkirk

Ever get that “something’s missing” feeling? You’re in a situation where everything appears in place but you still sense there’s a missing piece. That was me watching Dunkirk, the just-released World War II epic about the evacuation of Allied troops from that French city during the Nazi invasion of France. At some point during the film, I flashed briefly to a memory of my mother tasting her delicious spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove – manipulating a spoonful as if testing a fine wine but with a perplexed expression – “did I forget the oregano?” That’s what I was feeling. I was watching a fine film, an extremely well-built recreation – but if felt somehow incomplete.

 Notwithstanding my vague sense of a gap, there is certainly no denying the significant craftsmanship in Dunkirk, the movie. Christopher Nolan (writing and directing) has created and aligned an array of amazing images and brilliant set pieces to re-enact this critical event from the early stages of the war. He tells the story from three perspectives - the Ground, the Sea, and the Air. On the ground waits over 300,000 British, French, and Dutch soldiers having retreated from the Nazi invading offensive to the beaches of Dunkirk, a site well suited for evacuation across the English Channel. Their situation is desperate. German battalions are pressing hard – held back, precariously, by what remains of the French army. The evacuation must happen soon or, as Churchill described, "the whole root and core and brain of the British Army” will perish or be captured. On the sea sail pieces of the British Navy, ships too large to reach the men waiting in shallow water. They are trailed by hundreds of conscripted citizen craft – fishing boats, pleasure craft and yachts - scrambling to reach the beach and ferry men to the larger ships or back home. In the air, sparse teams of RAF fighter planes attempt to fend off German bombers and strafing Stukas working to prevent the evacuation.

Nolan, creator of some my favorite films – Momento, The Prestige, Batman Begins, Interstellar – seems to be using Dunkirk to stretch his considerable movie making talents into the large-scale action film arena. He goes old school in his detailed reenactment, employing thousands of extras to create a massive war landscape instead of relying on CGI; assembling boats that had participated in the real Dunkirk evacuation, and using genuine era-appropriate planes for aerial scenes. This all pays off in giving Dunkirk an amazingly authentic feel. Nolan is at his best in the air where a battle is waged between three spitfires and several sets of Luftwaffe bombers and fighter escorts. You are almost in the cockpit as the rat-tat-tat of the Spitfire’s guns is answered by the hard bangs ahead from the German bombers’ rear cannons. Combining these detailed images and sounds of battle with Hans Zimmer’s meager and haunting score, Nolan has created a rare and effective dark realism.

Dunkirk will certainly get high grades from the paid critics for its minimalistic approach – as Nolan leans heavily on his detailed images in place of dialog and sentiment. But that minimalism, including the film’s limited-scope focus on small chunks of the crisis, also kept me from feeling the gravity and grandness of the event. The intensity and desperation of those pinned down, the urgency of the rescuing naval force, the skill and the bravery of the air-borne warriors – are all adroitly illustrated; but the story was light on the humanity of it… the complete drama of the miracle rescue is somehow lacking. Nolan gives brief and late-coming glimpses of the heart in the event – the calling out of the places the tiny rescue ships had come from as they approached the peer to take on soldiers, the remembering of lost young heroes in home towns. But it seemed too little to harmonize Nolan’s minimalism with the massiveness of the event. Dunkirk has all the pieces – so well assembled and with such fine detail - the story is real and important. But for all its fine attributes Dunkirk lacks the emotional power to move it from good to great. 7 out of 10.