RELATIVE AUTONOMY: MEDIA, FILM & POLITICS
  • blog
  • about
  • Writing

evacuated: christopher nolan's dunkirk

30/7/2017

 
Picture
According to my late mother, my grandad was evacuated on 'the last boat out of Dunkirk'. I didn't discuss this with the old guy before he died - I was too young and lived too far away from him - but after his death I read more about Operation Dynamo and often wondered about his story. Christopher Nolan's much-heralded extravaganza is the latest of several attempts to put that story on the big screen.

It's only fair to begin by saying that I'm no great fan of Nolan's work. I found Interstellar (2014) overblown, and several critics have - rightly, I think - identified films such as The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) as politically conservative. Let's just say I prefer Nolan's early work. Nevertheless, stylistically, the new film is innovative and sometimes captivating: throughout Dunkirk, sea and sky twist and spiral in a mesmerizing kaleidoscope of blue-grey fractals. And Nolan builds tension well, emphasizing the soldiers' desperate plight by showing men in various types of trap: Harry Styles and company are trapped in a boat that is being shot at by the enemy; a Spitfire pilot is unable to escape from the cockpit of his sea-ditched plane as the water level rises; a traumatized and unpredictable soldier (Cillian Murphy) is locked inside a room below deck on a rescue boat - and presumably locked inside himself, too. All are encased and in danger.

On the other hand, we are hardly invited to empathize with these imperilled men. The ensemble nature of the film - together with Hans Zimmer's bombastic musical soundtrack - leaves little room for expressions of interiority or, indeed, for any sort of character development; as one might expect from a film shot on 70mm, this is experiential, immersive cinema rather than character-driven drama. Of course, ensemble war films can work well: one thinks here of The Thin Red Line, whose metaphysical voiceovers provide a ruminative and arguably subversive perspective on war; but in Dunkirk there is no such narrative device to shed light on the soldiers' feelings or thoughts, making this a rather unengaging film at the emotional level.

The film’s ideological register, meanwhile, is distinctly British-patriotic. While the opening scene (easily the film's most exciting) fleetingly depicts some glowering Frenchmen manning the town's barricades, the very significant French presence on the beach at Dunkirk is all but ignored (for that side of the story, see Henri Verneuil's superior, irony-laden 1964 film Weekend at Dunkirk). Whether in the air with an impossibly deadly Spitfire ace played by Tom Hardy (who single-handedly seems to down the entire Luftwaffe), at sea with saturnine sailor Mark Rylance, or on the beach with the harried and frustrated evacuees, we see through British eyes. At times the national-chauvinist sentiment grates: Rylance, sailing towards a deadly warzone, finds time to wax lyrical about the beauty of the overhead Spitfires 'with their Rolls Royce engines' and the film ends, all too predictably, with the words of Winston Churchill, solemnly read aloud from a newspaper by a returning soldier.

None of the soldiers, meanwhile, expresses a view about the political causes of their plight and there is thus no counterweight to the film's patriotism. Indeed, while Dunkirk is a film about an inglorious defeat, the mood slowly lists towards sentimental nationalism (recalling a motif from Interstellar, 'Home', as uttered by Kenneth Branagh's naval officer Commander Bolton, becomes the film's most resonant utterance). Evacuated of the French allies, the German enemies, and any political frame of reference beyond Churchillian bluster, Nolan’s film feels strangely insular and abstract (perhaps, as Adam Nayman suggests, Nolan should be seen as a Platonic rather than a humanist filmmaker). And so, for all its audio-visual Sturm und Drang, Dunkirk is ultimately a rather tame affair in which character development and political context are sacrificed for grand spectacle and bland sentimentality.

Comments are closed.

    Archives

    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010

    Categories

    All
    5G
    9/11
    Adam Curtis
    Advertising
    Afghanistan
    Alastair Campbell
    Angelina Jolie
    Anti-fascism
    Ashley Madison (hack)
    Aung San Suu Kyi
    Barack Obama
    Bbc
    Black Lives Matter
    Bnp
    Bosnia
    Brexit
    Burma
    Cancel Culture
    Censorship
    Channel 4
    Charlie Hebdo
    China
    Christopher Hitchens
    Christopher Nolan
    Class
    CNN
    Conspiracies
    Cornelius Cardew
    Covid-19
    Czech Republic
    Daily Mail
    Dalai Lama
    David Berman
    Donald Trump
    Economics
    Egypt
    Environment
    European Union
    Extinction Rebellion
    Facebook
    Falklands
    Fascism
    Feminism
    Film
    Free Speech
    Gaza
    Google
    Greece
    Greta Thunberg
    Guy Hibbert
    Hillary Clinton
    Hong Kong
    Immigration
    Internet
    Iran
    Iraq
    Isis
    Israel
    Itn
    Japan
    Jeremy Clarkson
    Jeremy Corbyn
    Jia Zhangke
    Johann Hari
    John Molyneux
    Jordan Peterson
    Katie Hopkins
    Ken Loach
    Kony 2012
    Labour Party
    Lawrence Hayward
    Libya
    Malala Yousafzai
    Marcuse
    Margaret Thatcher
    Marxism
    Mental Illness
    Music
    Myanmar
    Neoliberalism
    News International
    New Statesman
    New Zealand
    Niall Ferguson
    Noam Chomsky
    Norway
    Ofcom
    Osama Bin Laden
    Owen Jones
    Pakistan
    Palestine
    Paul Mattick Jnr
    Peter Bowker
    Peter Kosminsky
    Populism
    Press Tv
    Quentin Tarantino
    Racism
    Reality Tv
    Red Poppy
    Reith Lectures
    Rihanna
    Riots
    Robin Williams
    Russell Brand
    Russell T. Davies
    Scotland
    Silver Jews
    Single Mothers
    Sky Tv
    Slavoj Zizek
    Stephen Fry
    Stephen Poliakoff
    Stereotypes
    Strikes
    Suicide
    Syria
    Television
    Terrorism
    Terry Eagleton
    The Express
    The Guardian
    The Mirror
    The Sun
    Thomas Piketty
    Tony Grounds
    Tunisia
    Vaclav Havel
    War
    Washington Post
    Winston Churchill
    Wire
    Yugoslavia

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.