‘Dunkirk’ offers spotty history but stunning visuals

With “Dunkirk,” Christopher Nolan has put his distinctive stamp on the genre of World War II movies.

For starters, in his depiction of the epic 1940 rescue of more than 300,000 surrounded British troops from the movie’s namesake beach, except for a fleeting scene at the very end, the faces of their German attackers are never so much as glimpsed.

Overhead, Stuka bombers dive toward the exposed soldiers on the beach and Messerschmitt Me109 fighters weave and jink in the gunsights of RAF Spitfires trying to shoot them down. At sea, we see is a torpedo track from a submerged U-boat speeding toward a British ship.

This gives a curiously depersonalized aura to the action that is quite different from what is usually found in movies such as “The Longest Day” and “A Bridge Too Far,” where the focus shifts back and forth between combatants on the opposing sides.

That odd depersonalization also extends to the Brits.

The foot soldiers are for the most part unnamed and the two main soldier characters don’t speak during what seems like the first third of the movie. The fact they are played by British actors Fionn Whitehead and Aneurin Barnard, both unknowns in this country, adds to the sense of anonymity.

The faces of the Spitfire pilots are obscured by oxygen masks for many of their scenes.

Only in scenes aboard a private yacht taking part in the evacuation do we encounter well-defined characters. As the yacht’s skipper, Mark Rylance has the most meaningful role as a steady, self-possessed civilian who answers his country’s call to go in harm’s way to rescue the trapped men.

“We have a job to do,” he says simply. “There’s no hiding from this.”

Another way Nolan breaks ranks from traditional war movie structure is the way he juggles time.

One minute we’re in the midst of a daylight dogfight between the Spitfires and the Me 109s, the next it’s nighttime aboard an evacuation ship under fire, and then abruptly we’re back to daytime action aboard the Rylance character’s yacht. The transitions are jolting.

The actual evacuation lasted from May 26 to June 4, 1940, and Nolan needed to compress events to tell his story, but his odd pacing is frankly confusing.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that Nolan, who also wrote the script, doesn’t reveal why the Germans didn’t simply order their tanks and ground troops to attack the trapped men, as the British rightfully feared they would.

Lack of helpful historical context, including information on how the Royal Navy and a flotilla of civilian boats brought off the virtually miraculous rescue, also hurts the film.

Visually, “Dunkirk” is simply stunning.

Its opening scene shows a British squad moving cautiously through the deserted streets of Dunkirk, pausing to read German surrender leaflets, dropped from unseen aircraft, fluttering down like snowflakes. The sole surviving member of the squad emerges onto the beach and Nolan widens his scope to reveal a vast vista of long parallel lines of soldiers stretching down to the sea, the troops standing in eerie silence as they anxiously await rescue.

There is nowhere to hide on that beach when the bombers attack, and when a rescue ship is sunk and the oil-soaked waters ignite in flames and men face the fate of either drowning or being burned alive (or both), the terrible toll of war is made vivid.

For all the unconventionality of its storytelling, “Dunkirk” ends in a rousing triumphant fashion that is very traditional, with Winston Churchill’s famed speech, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds … we shall never surrender.”

Thus did Churchill give hope to the British people and help turn what was really a defeat of the British military into an inspirational moment that restored the nation’s morale and gave the people the will to endure and fight on.

This story was originally published July 20, 2017 at 10:16 AM with the headline "‘Dunkirk’ offers spotty history but stunning visuals."