Scene from the film Dunkirk.
Camera IconScene from the film Dunkirk. Credit: Supplied, Warner Bros Pictures.

Dunkirk is not just a masterpiece, but one of the greatest war movies of all time

Leigh PaatschNews Corp Australia

DUNKIRK (M)

Rating: five stars (5 out of 5)

Director: Christopher Nolan (Inception)

Starring: Fionn Whitehead, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy, Harry Styles, Kenneth Branagh.

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The epic weight of an unbearable wait

IT ONLY takes a matter of minutes for Dunkirk to convey the unmistakeable notion you are in the presence of true cinematic greatness.

This is what a masterpiece looks like. Sounds like. Feels like.

Allied troops await yet another attack from above by German planes in Dunkirk.
Camera IconAllied troops await yet another attack from above by German planes in Dunkirk. Credit: Supplied

Not only is Dunkirk one of the finest movies to happen along in the 21st century so far. It is one of the greatest war movies of all-time, period.

Acclaimed director Christopher Nolan has crafted a complete vision here. A vision that not only captures the sweeping historical significance of the subject at hand, but also its intimate human essence.

It is late May 1940 in the small French coastal town of Dunkirk. An estimated 400,000 Allied troops, most of them British, have been penned in by the Germans on a swath of beach marked only by a solitary pier.

The waters lapping the shoreline — which sits barely 40km from the comparative safe haven of England — are too shallow to effect a traditional rescue by Navy vessels.

The sun is out but the forecast is bleak for any British fighting man in 1940 France in Dunkirk.
Camera IconThe sun is out but the forecast is bleak for any British fighting man in 1940 France in Dunkirk. Credit: Supplied

All who stand shivering on those windswept sands are sitting ducks for sustained bombing attacks from overhead by Nazi fighter planes.

If this unprecedented mass evacuation is to be successful to any worthwhile degree, it will take a miracle. This film is the chronicle of that miracle.

Had it never come to pass, there is every likelihood World War II would have ended with a very different result. And even now, we would be living in a very different world.

Make no mistake. This is a gargantuan undertaking for any filmmaker looking to do justice to what transpired at Dunkirk. So it is downright astonishing to witness the immense storytelling risks that Nolan as writer and director takes with this material.

There are no backstories in play. No on-the-spot exposition in the dialogue. No space is allowed for convenient cliches or any other narrative shortcuts.

Instead, Nolan audaciously divides the story among three competing time frames of radically differing lengths.

Across the space of a week, we will follow a young British soldier named Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) as he moves from one hotspot to another up and down the Dunkirk beach.

His is a marathon bid to get away from this hell on earth by any means necessary.

Across the space of a day, we will remain aboard the Moonstone, a small wooden yacht that forms part of a British civilian armada on its way to retrieve as many soldiers as humanly possible.

Academy Award-winning actor Mark Rylance is a member of the standout ensemble from Dunkirk.
Camera IconAcademy Award-winning actor Mark Rylance is a member of the standout ensemble from Dunkirk. Credit: Supplied

The Moonstone is piloted by Mr Dawson (Mark Rylance), a stoic, humble patriot who has already lost one son in the war, and has brought along a teenage two-man crew to help him on his noble mission.

Finally, across the space of one hour, we are cooped up in the cockpit of an RAF Spitfire with a masked pilot named Farrier (Tom Hardy).

With fuel supplies dwindling and fellow wingmen falling all around him, Farrier stays locked in battle with the Luftwaffe bombers to bring some measure of protection and respite to his countrymen below.

We are cooped up in the cockpit of an RAF Spitfire with masked pilot Farrier, played by Tom Hardy.
Camera IconWe are cooped up in the cockpit of an RAF Spitfire with masked pilot Farrier, played by Tom Hardy. Credit: AP

The sophisticated manner in which these three time frames not only overlap each other, but also underscore the overall magnitude of the Dunkirk retreat casts a transfixing spell.

Unusually for a war picture, Nolan holds back from unleashing a visceral onslaught of battlefield forensics at any point. The full horror of war is forcefully implied, but rarely directly depicted here.

Nevertheless, the powerful reactions that Dunkirk elicits from the viewer are studiously accumulated and honourably earned.

In addition to the uniformly fine performances of the Dunkirk acting ensemble, a pivotal role in the movie is given to its highly emotive sound design.

A pulsing music score is fused with a naturalistic sound mix to achieve an effect that is positively symphonic in both scale and impact.

The fear, the despair, the confusion and the minute threads of hope to which each man on that beach is clinging comes through with a clarity and force that is relentless.

And the agonising wait goes on in Dunkirk.
Camera IconAnd the agonising wait goes on in Dunkirk. Credit: Supplied

The same state of mind shared by those 400,000 souls on Dunkirk beach becomes a similar preoccupation of anyone immersed in this extraordinary viewing experience: before you can live to fight another day, you must first fight to live another day.

Originally published as Dunkirk is a modern masterpiece