Instead focusing more on the intense, subdued, emotions of the actors a very difficult feat to produce and the riveting visuals and soundtrack, Christopher Nolan brings a new type of storytelling to the big screen. With the lack of dialogue, audience members have to pay more close attention to what is going on, so the already demanding film becomes riveting. This movie is many firsts for Nolan, including being his first war film, first film with multiple protagonists carrying the story, and his first movie shot entirely on location.
Dunkirk follows a three-fold story of the historic events that occurred in at a beach in Dunkerque, France. At this point in the Second World War, British and French troops have been isolated and surrounded by the Germans, with nearing , men lined up, waiting, hoping, for a way home twentysomething miles away across the Channel. Daweson Mark Rylance , his son Peter Tom Glynn-Carney , and their young friend George Barry Keoghan as they make their way across the channel to rescue the men stranded at Dunkirk aboard the leisure boat the Moonstone.
Living up to his reputation for nonlinear storytelling, Nolan reasserts his claim to the throne in his synthesising of the unique perspectives. Daweson, the Spitfires of Collins and Farrier can be seen in a dogfight with the Germans. As men are boarding the civilian boats on the beach, Farrier, on an empty tank, glides over thousands, as he fights off remaining German aircraft.
With the nonlinear deliverance, this arc more closely resembles an intense squiggle, like angered spaghetti, as the action ebbs and swells much like the waves on the beach itself.
The choice to have not the dialogue drive the film, but the visuals and soundtrack, was a bold one. Most movies that enter the Hollywood radar are rich in their dialogue, ranging from playful banter to clever one-liners, to incredibly moving lines with excellent deliverance.
