Movie Review: The War That is not About Winning but About Survival!- Dunkirk

***Spoiler Alert!***

How do you top yourself when your filmography consists of movies like Memento, Inception, The Dark Knight and Interstellar? You make Dunkirk!

Probably the only director who's got great following (pun intended!) in a country that worships stars on screen but ignores the makers is Christopher Nolan. There are many factions like We believe in Nolan or Nolanites that completely believe in his ability to make a groundbreaking movie. And the genius delivers. Every single time! When the audience were still scratching their heads trying to figure out the science behind Interstellar, Nolan started working on his next venture, a World War II drama, Dunkirk. This project was the most doubted in all of Nolan's other projects due to unrecognizable star cast and relatively weak scope of originality in the story department as it is based on a true story. Against all odds, Nolan proves yet again that he's on the path to greatness, probably the best director of this generation.

Dunkirk, a port area in France is surrounded by Nazi Germany forces during World War II trapping over 400,000 French, Belgian and British forces. Germany plans devouring each one of them from air as Britain tries to evacuate them through the waterways. The movie follows Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), a Britain soldier who teams up with Gibson (Aneurin Barnard) as Gibson is burying one of his comrade. The evacuation is depicted with three parallel narratives, The Mole, a pier on the beach is a story of a week, The Sea, the story that happens at the sea in a day and The Air, the story that happens in the sky, at a duration of an hour. Putting all of them together, the story of survival and resistance is depicted with utmost detail and nerve wrenching thrill. With Kenneth Branagh, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy and Cilian Murphy supporting the narrative whenever needed, the movie turns out a solid one. 

Nolan have set a new high when we speak of war movies. We have war movies with monologues and courtrooms trying too much to argue with audience to take a side. We have war movies painting one side as good and the other as bad. In a world that forgets war itself is a bad thing, Nolan sticks to his narrative. He sticks to Dunkirk, the story of an evacuation. He doesn't deviate to make out one side good or the other bad. He doesn't try to make political statements or cram paragraphs of dialogue. He doesn't make it a character driven story. He puts it all out at the audience with minimum dialogue. The audience is immersed into the movie subconsciously. Hans Zimmer's score compensates masterfully for the lack of dialogue, hitting all the right strings in the audience head to feel for the narrative. The union of Nolan and Zimmer once again gives us a music score like never before.

Though we do not have many great actors in the movie and one of the great actors wearing a mask all the time, we can still connect with the characters. We feel the paranoia. We feel the struggle. We feel the terror and we feel how the war has changed them. We understand that morals can go to hell when survival is at stake.

Highlights:

• Narrative
• Music
• Direction
• Cinematography
• Screenplay

The amount of detail that's put into the movie is tremendous. Already very well known for his eye for detail, Nolan gets all his facts right before diving into the project. Due to the war and many ships that were sunk in the sea, the beach of Dunkirk is hit with sea foam from the tides. We can see the sea foam all the time during the mole. It doesn't end there. The sea foam is wheatish in color, true to it's facts. This is just an example of the amount of detailing that has gone into making Dunkirk.

Anticipating Oscars:

Best Movie- Nomination (Can be a win too!)

Best Original Score- Win

Best Direction- Win

Best Cinematography- Nomination

Best Sound Editing- Win

Best Production Design- Nomination

Verdict: The Best of 2017 So Far!