DUNKIRK

The necessary war films are usually split into two camps. There is the "war as hell" circuit, which takes on the realism (and, sometimes, hyperrealism) of battle. It's an engrossing feat, often hard to take our eyes off of because it is so immersive. The most notable example that comes to mind  is probably Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998), or the D-Day experience alone.

Then there's the category of "war as philosophy." These are films that take their time, and express war in no less a hellish portrait, but is driven by character, thought, and anything to make sense of it. Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998, as well) charged John Toll's camera to cut around the trees and greens of Guadalcanal to follow a sizable group of soldiers, fighting while figuring out the meaning of it all.

Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk belongs to the first camp, without question.

So why even mention the first? Nolan, whose efforts fluctuate for me (The Dark Knight Rises was always one that troubled me, though I did enjoy all the same), hopscotched over my expectation for this film. A usually conceptual director, from crime and punishment in The Dark Knight (2008), dream and reality in Inception (2010), even memory and time in Memento (2001), I was thoroughly taken aback by Dunkirk 's straightforwardness.

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This does not mean there are no creative flourishes. The main contribution is probably the film's attention to time. At 106 minutes, Nolan's shortest in a long, long time, you feel as though the film could be longer. Not in a way that leaves the audience wanting, but that Nolan clearly plays with time like an accordion. My guess is that the film could've been longer and equally effective, but Nolan condenses it into a race against time, probably the film's greatest innovation.

The three-act structure (land, sea, and air) is not designed to give attention to any one character. It allows the effectiveness of Nolan's creative team to shine through the fog of war - especially found in longtime collaborating editor Lee Smith's pacing. Hans Zimmer's score, inflicted by a ticking clock, similar to the typewriter effect in Joe Wright's Atonement (2007), also adds to the idea of time's relativity (even if the music felt a bit too modern for my taste).

Hoyte Van Hoytema's photography adds to the mix meaningfully as well. Wide shots on land, medium shots in the boats, and close, claustrophobic shots in airplane cockpits all tailor to Nolan's stark vision of war. Dunkirk also features Nolan's most raw use of sound design, screeching and harrowing with purpose.

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So is Nolan's less-affectionate filmic prose wrong? Certainly not. I think those who think like me will be waning off of the high Nolan brought in Interstellar - so kind, profound, and no less challenging. My heart craved to connect to one of his characters in Dunkirk, but this was also a selfish choice on my part. Although taking on the persona of war's brutality like Saving Private Ryan, Nolan's picture remains equal parts distant and impersonal like The Thin Red Line. Instead of character, the focal point is how hope tries to pierce through the brittle hopelessness locked away by time.

To take on the moral of the film, Dunkirk is certainly "enough," a term coined to embody what the survivors went through, and how their experience pays off. Now, for me, it will take its time to settle in - that, after a decade of Nolan revealing his heart in his films, Dunkirk reverts back to his chillier methodologies. I will prefer his heart. Still, he manages to shine through and become so enveloped with this particular project, in all of its stages. So much that one cannot help but appreciate and be so exasperated by war, all because of the effort he took on.

***1/2