Dunkirk: Time, Dread, and Human Perseverance

The image that has stuck in my mind most clearly after two viewings of Dunkirk is at the very outset of the movie – just as one of the major characters, Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) makes it to the beach (the group of nameless soldiers he has been with gunned down just moments earlier), he dives to the ground as German dive-bombers drop their explosive cargo with a ruthless consistency down the beach. This scene captures the themes we are to expect from the rest of the film – randomness, anxiety, and most of all, the undercurrent in each of Nolan’s films: dread.

Nolan has always been, in my mind, an amazing yet flawed director. His movies carry with them ambition and bombast. They are feats of directing, cinematography, musical direction, etc. This is an enormous strength of Nolan’s, and yet it is also exactly what drags his movies down consistently. Whether it is voyages spanning light-years in Interstellar, traversing the human consciousness in Inception, or the machinations of a few master magicians in The Prestige, Nolan has always struggled with the personal stories of his characters. They are crucial pieces to the larger game, yes, but they tend to lack emotional color, or, to paraphrase one of the reviewers who inspired me (Film Critic Hulk): Nolan is so laser-focused on what we as humans want to be true, unable to truly grasp the nature of love (the force which “transcends space and time” in Interstellar) but desperately wanting to break through to be understood.

Yet it feels like in Dunkirk, Nolan is able to finally break through, to make himself understood, to be heard clearly.

Dunkirk is, in my opinion, Nolan’s most intimate and emotional film. Which, given the arbitrariness of death and pall hanging over the entire film, perhaps confusing. But Nolan’s removed and seemingly impersonal and cold view which has be the “…but” for every one of his other films here acts to make it more personal, more realistic, and more emotional.

This third-person view benefits Dunkirk because of the nature of war, and of this particular battle. So many war movies we watch follow the bravery of a few people doing incredibly things against all odds, and rushing home to receive well-deserved applause and honor for their actions. Yet Dunkirk is not about this at all. In fact, as so many have said, to describe Dunkirk as a war movie is to sell it so incredibly short. It is to some extent a story of human survival against all odds and of the limitlessness of perseverance. Yet what I see in this film is an allegory about the nature of life itself.

Perhaps it is cynical to suggest so, but taken on a large scale, life differs little from that beach we are introduced to. Death is wholly arbitrary. It is certainly less likely, but there is no guarantee that we will be here from moment to moment. It is a terrifying thought, yet one that plagues us all. And yet, like those on that beach, we do our best to move forward moment after moment, and against all odds, many of us are able to win moment after moment. It’s a continuous battle, and a necessary one. In the movie it’s necessary to avoid surrender, to continue the battle against the Nazi forces rapidly pushing up toward England. For the rest of us, it is merely life.

The bravery of a few are ultimately irrelevant in Nolan’s allegory. Many of the brave in this movie find themselves drowning, shot down, scarred, dead, or trapped under an oil patch, only to face the fire. It is merely enough that we keep on keeping on.

One such interaction takes place at the end of the movie, with one of the soldiers stepping off of the ship that rescued him questioning the thanks he is receiving from one of the men greeting the incoming soldiers: “all we did was survive.”

The man responds, “that’s enough.”

We all, each of us, fight our own battles. Some struggle with illness, both physical and mental. Some struggle with poverty, with oppression, with hate or fear or any number of things.

A universal enemy, however, is time. The antagonist running through each of Nolan’s films. Hell, it’s in the name of a ton of songs in the soundtracks of his films. But the relentless ticking in Hans Zimmer’s phenomenal and fitting score (itself worthy of a separate post) serves to ratchet up the tension in the scenes brought to the screen. It was actually through a friend of mine that I first noticed something in particular – the soundtrack is nonstop and oppressive until Tommy falls asleep on the train, coming back from the dock to his home. He is finally safe. He has finally escaped the death-trap that was the beach at Dunkirk, at least for a moment.

Much criticism has been made of the soundtrack for this film. That it is oppressive, or overwhelming, that it gave the viewer no time to breathe. But that is exactly the point.

There is no time to breathe. We can’t simply take a break from the tick-tock of our own existence. It is only through acceptance, and through our continuous battle, that we can earn reprieve.

Time eats up everything. It sucks up possibilities, loves, interests, our friends, our families, and everything that is important to us. Eventually, it sucks us in too. But that hardly makes us powerless.

This, I believe, is the power of Nolan’s Dunkirk. It’s sold as a movie about bravery in the face of futility, and that is exactly what it is.

Except the battlefield isn’t Dunkirk.

It’s Nolan trying to reach us all. It’s a shared experience that we all face.

Now, I could talk for hours more on all the technical aspects of this film that I loved. And there were many. The amazing editing. The links between plots and scenarios that I didn’t really unpack before a second viewing – that is, the way all three threads wound together in the end. I actually had to have someone explain to me why Tom Hardy’s character didn’t just ditch his plane at the end of the movie! The cinematography that captured the paradox of a wide open beach being a trap. Et cetera, et cetera. And I very well may speak more about these in the future.

But the linchpin of this entire film – of all of Nolan’s films – is that we all must grapple with existential dread. This can take many forms, be that a line of explosions along a beach, the realization that over two decades have passed while you were on a planet, or any number of real world situations. But the fact of the matter is, we all have to grapple with our impermanence.

Dunkirk is about this fact. But more than that, it’s trying to show us, hey, we can deal with this. We can fight that fact. And ultimately, our individual stories aren’t what’s important here. It’s the struggle that’s important. Simply existing is enough, getting through day to day in a nonsensical and meaningless world.

Surviving is enough.

5/5

(For the amazing review of Film Crit Hulk: http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2017/07/26/film-crit-hulk-smash-christopher-nolan-the-cruelty-of-time)