Nolan's Twisted Telling of Dunkirk

Christopher Nolan didn’t shock anyone by shocking everyone in his newest movie Dunkirk.  Dunkirk focused on the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of British and French troops form the beaches of Dunkirk after they were surrounded during World War 2, how every Christopher Nolan put his own unique spin on the movie.  Rather than just following one person throughout the story Nolan chose to have the story focus on 3 different groups, one soldier who needs to evacuate, 2 pilots that are giving the evacuees air support, and a family who are taking their own boat over the chanal to aid in the evacuation.  To add to the quickness these three stories weren’t synced up or in time with each other.  Each story started from a different point during the evacuation leading to the audience seeing the same scenes multiple time from a different perspective. The part when the plains flew over the boat in the below scene was shown twice, once from the perspective of the plains and once from the perspective of the boat.

The above scene also illustrates 2 more key differences from most World War 2 movies.  The first is Nolan's choice to not honor the Nazis in any way by deliberately removing them from the movie(which is quite unique for a World War 2 movie).  At the beginning of the scene one pilot mentions “Dunkirk is so far why didn’t they load at Calais?” at which the other replies “The enemy had something to say about that.”  Notice how the pilot says “enemy” not “Germans” or “Nazis”.  This is not a coincidence but rather a direct choice by Nolan to make sure the Germans get no credit or honor in this movie.  This continued through out the rest of the movie by making sure no german soldiers were in frame and for the few seconds they were in frame they were horribly out of focus.  The second difference illustrated here is the overall theme of the movie.  Unlike most war movies that either try to show the horrors of war or try to make the soldiers look like heros, Nolan decided to focus on the power of determination and what people will do to survive.  The dog fight shows this lack of focus on the horrors of war by the way it was shot.  Rather than making the scene stressful and full of blood, the dog fight was sort of relaxing.  It seemed more like a relaxing dance rather than a fight.  Also when the plain finally goes down it doesn’t go down in a huge explosion filled with blood and gore but instead it sort of just falls into the sea like a disappointing firework.

Overall I like this movie and would give it a Good Good rating.