Dunkirk

(Warner Bros.)

Christopher Nolan stated that his intention with Dunkirk was to create “virtual reality without the headset.” That was the pitch that led Warner Brothers, an American company, to budget a completely British film. That was the pitch that will get audiences into theater seats. And it’s a pitch that’s entirely accurate.

With Dunkirk, Nolan hasn’t created another cookie-cutter war film. Instead—in true Nolan fashion—he has revolutionized the genre, and possibly even cinema itself. This isn’t a movie you simply watch. No, Dunkirk forcefully rips you out of your seat and spits you out onto the beach with the soldiers. It’s a movie you experience, and there’s nothing else quite like it.

The year is 1940 and the second World War is still in its infancy. The German army has surrounded British, French, Belgian, and Canadian soldiers on the beaches of Dunkirk, France. 400,000 soldiers stand there hopelessly waiting for an evacuation that may never come, as the waters are too shallow for large ships to reach the shore and the military is unwilling to spare additional resources. Churchill wants only 30,000 back.

The soldiers on the beach exhibit a certain degree of numbness to the situation. Enemy planes pass overhead and drop bombs on them, taking out a few dozen at a time. They dive to the ground, pray for their life, and then stand back up, nearly unfazed—this is already normal for them.

Nolan chooses to cover these events in a way that only he could. Dunkirk is split into three sections following soldiers on land, civilians at sea, and pilots in the air. The catch is that these sections play out across different lengths of time, occasionally overlapping and affecting each other in interesting and exciting ways. It’s an ingenious structure, and one that will surely be analysed for years to come.

The first of these sections, “The Mole,” takes place over the course of a week. Here we follow three soldiers (played by newcomers Fionn Whitehead, Harry Styles, and Aneurin Barnard, all excellent) as they struggle to find a way onto a boat and back to England. Of the three, this section is the most harrowing and generally thrilling as the soldiers encounter one life-or-death situation after another.

The second, “The Sea,” takes place over a single day. We follow Mark Rylance’s Mr. Dawson, a civilian sailor who sets out across the English Channel to help aid in the evacuation with the assistance of his son (Tom Glynn-Carney) and his son’s friend George (Barry Keoghan). Here we are reminded of the senseless brutality that war brings with it and the ways that it frequently destroys the lives of even the strongest and most hopeful people.

And the third, “The Air,” takes place over the course of just a single hour. We accompany two RAF Spitfire pilots, Farrier (Tom Hardy, who delivers one of the film’s most powerful moments of acting through just the eye-holes of his mask) and Collins (Jack Lowden), as they provide what little support they can to the soldiers and ships below. Here you will find some of the most stunning aerial dogfight sequences ever put to film, especially when viewed in the intended 70mm IMAX film format.

(Warner Bros.)

If the film’s structure wasn’t unconventional enough, Nolan takes it a step further by eschewing traditional characters and character development. Dunkirk has a true ensemble cast and the breakneck pace of the film means we never get the chance to learn much about them. Characters don’t sit around between battles reminiscing on tales from back home or their hopes and dreams for after the war. They’re too busy fighting for their lives to worry about such trivialities.

Some may take issue with this, but the direction is no accident. Nolan deliberately chooses to prevent us from getting to know any of the characters too well. He doesn’t want us to see the film through someone else’s eyes, he wants us to live it alongside them. And herein lies Dunkirk’s greatest accomplishment. It becomes a completely new kind of war film—an experiential one.

Nolan achieves this by bombarding the senses. Dunkirk relies on very sparse dialogue to tell its story. What little there is almost feels unnecessary; visuals tell the bulk of this story. And what visuals! Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema have crafted a gorgeous film that will leave you at once entranced and terrified. Much of Dunkirk feels like a silent epic from the dawn of cinema brought to life with modern techniques.

Your time spent with Dunkirk will also be vastly improved if you take the effort to see it the way it was meant to be seen. Over three quarters of the film was shot with 70mm IMAX cameras, meaning the aspect ratio is blown up to a nearly square image and projected onto an unfathomably large screen. The format is spectacular, especially during the aerial battle sequences where your field of vision is expanded to dizzying effect. At the very least make every effort to see it in the cinema. Dunkirk is one of those films that must be seen on the big screen, otherwise you really aren’t seeing it at all. Watching this film for the first time on a laptop would indeed be utterly reprehensible.

Dunkirk’s sound design is equally impressive, often overwhelming, and always effective. The sounds made by Luftwaffe planes attacking soldiers on the beach stuck with me the most. It’s a demonic, blood-curling shriek that would normally be more at home in a horror film than a war film. It’s truly the stuff of nightmares. Hans Zimmer’s score is also an essential part of the film’s soundscape. It’s the composer’s most experimental work yet, avoiding typical melodies in favor of the constant ticking of a pocket watch, aiding the film’s constant white-knuckle tension.

All of it comes together perfectly to elevate Dunkirk to staggering heights. As I’ve already said, this is an experience like no other. Nolan has crafted a new kind of war epic worthy of his name. Dunkirk is a masterpiece of filmmaking that will surely land the director his (outrageously overdue) first Best Director nomination. This is a breathtaking, unbelievably suspenseful and unsettling tale of survival with an eventual inspiring showcase of communal spirit. It’s pure cinema.