Yes, I know, I was away for two whole months. This was both deliberate and incidental. It was deliberate in the sense that, after churning out content for both May and June, I was slightly burned out and needed some time away from the keyboard. Between jumping over police barricades and walking halfway across Seattle on May Day, making sure I caught Alien: Covenant, bouncing from theater to theater to catch the Seattle International Film Festival while still writing my Covenant review, then writing a piece about the film festival, then being obliged to catch both Wonder Woman and The Mummy back to back and produce a piece on those, all while working my day job and juggling these with a philosophical piece I've been working on, I will admit that I was looking forward to taking a couple of weeks away from writing (which also coincided nicely with a vacation I had planned in Southern California for the beginning of July). However, those couple of weeks quickly turned into the entire month of July for those "incidental" reasons that I hinted at. Specifically, nothing interesting happened in July (or, nothing interesting that I would be in a position to write about - I'm sure very important stuff happened in the world in general). It feels as if no interesting movies came out, save for Spider-Man: Homecoming, there were no events happening around me that I could attend, and I wasn't able to make it to any conventions. As such, there was little material for me to put pen to paper about. Though this is not to say that I wasn't busy last month, ironically, as I have been preoccupied with moving into a new apartment and other personal events going on around me.
But alas, here we are in August. My summer has moved beyond its apex and the chaos is subsiding, with events in my life starting to return back to their normal routine, allowing me to devote time to writing once again. It also appears that film studios felt that August would be the ideal time to release whatever projects they had in development. Perhaps the lack of offerings in July can be attributed to the release of Spider-Man: Homecoming during the first week - other studios may have been too worried about their projects being eclipsed by the latest offering in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and had reservations about releasing them around the same time (and I will say that, while not the greatest release in the MCU, Homecoming was perhaps the best Spider-Man release since 2002's Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire). As such, now that I am back in Seattle and done with my vacation, I figure it's time to go theater hopping again. A quick look at the movie calendar on Fandango quickly presented me with a few attractions that caught my attention: The Dark Tower, Annabelle Creation, and the recently released Dunkirk.
The choice wasn't a particularly difficult one to make. As someone who has actually read and enjoyed the Dark Tower series of novels (The Gunslinger remains one of my all-time favorite books), I had the visceral feeling that the movie was just not going to do justice to the books, insofar as a movie based off of a book is hardly ever as good as the book itself. And, it turns out, after reading what other critics had to say about it and actually seeing it myself, my instincts were correct: despite a good performance from both Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, The Dark Tower was just lame. At the same time, while I am very much overdue for a review of a good horror film, Annabelle Creation is a hot-off-the-presses new release, and I unfortunately haven't been presented with the opportunity to go see it yet. As such, Crimson Peak will have to remain the only horror film that I have reviewed for the time being. I do not regret this decision, however, as Dunkirk is perhaps one of the most surprising films that I have seen in a very long time - surprising in the sense that I actually really enjoyed it when I was expecting not to.
I acknowledge that I am a little late to the party on this one, and I will also admit that I initially wasn't planning on seeing Dunkirk. I have never really been drawn to historical war dramas - something about them has a tendency to just bore me. Perhaps it's the mundane nature of their content - one of the largest reasons that I'm not a huge fan of Pearl Harbor, for example, is the fact that a large portion of the film is spent following the day-to-day lives of two macho soldiers in the US military, something I am not particularly interested in seeing. Or perhaps its the exceedingly predictable nature of their plot that disinterests me - countless are the movies where the benevolent Allies go door to door confronting those evil Nazis who might as well be stock villains for any generic film at this point. We all know how that story ends already. There are some exceptions to this rule, of course. I actually enjoyed watching the ragtag Vasily Zaitsev duel with the decorated Erwin König in Enemy at the Gates, and any war film that takes artistic liberties with historical events is certainly bound to be less mundane (a la Inglourious Basterds).
Given my general aversion to war films, Dunkirk was, understandably, not initially on my radar. However, my ambivalence towards it grew when I learned that it was a Christopher Nolan production. I have generally been a fan of Nolan's work, having thoroughly enjoyed Memento, The Dark Knight trilogy, and Inception. As such, I found myself seriously pondering the prospect of Nolan actually being able to add the necessary artful touches on a war drama to make it somewhat palatable. On top of that, it seemed as if I was being bombarded with endless gossip and reviews of Dunkirk everywhere I went, with most lauding it as some of Nolan's best work and even one outlet calling it one of the "best war movies of the 21st Century" [1]. "Surely," said I, "a film that is able to generate so much fuss that it is deemed to be among the 'best war movies of the 21st Century' must be doing something right." And so, much like my attitude towards Wonder Woman, as someone who desires to experience good fiction in all its forms, I found myself obliged to enter a darkened theater and experience my first war film in many years. However, unlike Wonder Woman, I was pleasantly surprised with how good Dunkirk actually was. Chris Nolan yet again manages to take what I would normally consider to be a rather mundane subject matter and add those artful flourishes to it that make it captivating.
What exactly was so intriguing about Dunkirk? Well, perhaps the most fascinating aspect was the fact that Nolan was actually able to create an engaging experience with very limited dialogue, and much of the dialogue that was present was actually there to help explain what we were seeing. For example, the exchanges between the three RAF pilots during the "Air" segments were notably brief, and those exchanges usually explained that a German bomber was lining up to hit a British minesweeper, something that the layperson in the audience probably wouldn't have been able to infer otherwise. From there, we have to watch the drama unfold as to whether or not the RAF is able shoot down the bomber in time. Other scenes simply speak for themselves. There is another scene, for example, where we witness a large contingent of wounded, tired, and hungry British soldiers claw their way on board a military destroyer vessel bound for England in order to escape Dunkirk. However, not long after cozying up with a new warm blanket from the nurse and some crumpets and jam, the ship is hit by a torpedo and the audience has to then witness these same soldiers struggle to avoid the twisted metal of the damaged hull and abandon ship without drowning. Again, there is very little dialogue during this scene, aside from maybe some idle chit chat among the soldiers. And there is yet another scene where one soldier simply drops his rifle and walks into the ocean to commit suicide and drown. No words - he just casually walks into the water and disappears. This lack of dialogue serves to actually draw even more attention to the rising drama throughout the entire film, which is even further amplified by Hans Zimmer's musical score. Zimmer yet again demonstrates his musical prowess with a slow, atmospheric pacing that couples well with the drama, not unlike what we heard from him in the Dark Knight trilogy. The image of the lonely British soldier under dark grey clouds on the beaches of France, trudging into an unknown future, is made all the more tense by the violin strings rising in a foreboding crescendo. It was almost as if the music did the talking sometimes - one could quickly tell what the tone of the scene was simply by paying attention to the score.
The acting performance from the entire cast, generally speaking, also merits considerable praise. It is no easy feat to portray a complex character simply off of mannerisms alone when dialogue is treated as a footnote to the drama. However, the ability of, say, Kenneth Branagh to convincingly convey sentiments of terror, anxiety, and sheer elation simply through facial expressions is a clear testament to his experience and background in Shakespearean drama, and the ability of other actors to demonstrate emotions and character to an English-speaking audience while communicating in other languages is also a commendable feat. For example, there is a scene where a handful of British soldiers are hiding out on a beached fishing ship, waiting for the rising tide to carry it back to sea so they can sail it back to England. After the ship incidentally also takes some Nazi practice fire, the group decides they need to lose some weight so the boat doesn't dip down to the level where the bullet holes might start leaking water in. The group begins to bully an otherwise quiet, reserved, and unfamiliar soldier, Gibson, into leaving the ship and risk getting seen by the enemy under the pretext that he is actually a Nazi spy. It is quickly revealed, however, that Gibson is actually an allied French soldier who has been quiet because he actually doesn't speak any English. As an audience, we have to witness Gibson make his passionate objection to being kicked off the ship in French, though his feelings of fear and dread are still made clear through his body language (and, for me, my ability to sympathize with Gibson is made all the more profound by that fact that I actually know a fair bit of French, enough to make out bits and pieces of what he was saying). Every actor in the film had a unique role, and, given the lack of dialogue, each actor was able to deliver on that role almost completely through facial expressions and mannerisms, and they were all able to do it flawlessly.
Was there anything about Dunkirk that I didn't like? Perhaps the most annoying thing about it was that the costume design gave all the characters a sense of uniformity, which can be a good thing, but can also be a burden for the audience when one loses track of which character we are following at the moment. For example, I found myself sometimes lost as to which one of the three RAF pilots we were watching as they all, reasonably enough, were wearing the same uniform and had the same headgear and mask on. There were no identifying markings on neither their headgear nor elsewhere on their uniforms to tell them apart. Similarly, I also found it slightly difficult to distinguish between many of the soldiers in the film as they all seemed to be young British men with dark brown hair wearing dull brown army fatigues. It is crucial to be able to tell the soldiers apart, however, as the audience needs to know whether or not it's Gibson or Tommy or some other anonymous soldier that may have been shot or drowned. That said, this phenomenon amounted to little more than a small nuisance rather than a glaring strike against the film - after a brief moment of character disorientation when the scene changed, most of the audience should be able to realize which character is which and resume analyzing the drama in front of them.
In short, many of the previous claims made by other critics about Dunkirk are accurate. Chris Nolan actually manages to take a very real and very serious event and add a degree of artistic flourish to it. The depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and desperation of the characters drives the film forward without the need for lengthy dialogue, though the action and drama is certainly augmented by Hans Zimmer's slow, pacing soundtrack. Again, I was extremely surprised; as someone who normally doesn't enjoy war movies, I have to admit that Dunkirk may very well be a contender for my top film of the year so far, and certainly shines above anything else that may have come out this summer, including Wonder Woman. Whether it remains in this position has yet to be seen, though, as there are several hot contenders slated for a Fall or Winter release that are bound to amaze more than almost anything else that came before them. As I have said once before, 2015 was a spectacular year for film while 2016 was abominable, and 2017 held promise. Coupled with Alien: Covenant and Spider-Man: Homecoming, Dunkirk may have just solidified that title for 2017.
[1] http://www.indiewire.com/2017/07/best-war-movies-21st-century-dunkirk-the-hurt-locker-1201856492/
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