By Nadia Ranaputri
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| Source: IMDB |
Director:
Christopher Nolan
Cast: Fionn Whitehead, Tom Hardy, Harry Styles, Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Jack Lowden, James D’Arcy.
Cast: Fionn Whitehead, Tom Hardy, Harry Styles, Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Jack Lowden, James D’Arcy.
After taking on the Dark Knight, create a world of
infinite possibilities from dreams, and travelling through space and time,
Christopher Nolan ventures in to a particular event that happened sometime
during World War II.
Dunkirk
is set during the days of World War II, where a group of Allied soldiers
seek retreat in the beaches of Dunkirk whilst surviving from an ongoing fleet
of Germans that could attack from every corner. With almost every attempt at an
evacuation bombarded by German bombs, the soldiers have to spend every second
of their life surviving whilst gradually seeking help and opportunities to
escape the oncoming attacks.
Told in three different perspectives that are
interwoven during one event, Dunkirk
doesn’t focus on one particular arc or one particular character in the span of
its 106 minute runtime. In fact, it feels as if Dunkirk has no main character, putting its focus various arcs that
are told from the perspectives of various grounds: on land, on air, and on sea; which are told brilliantly through a non-linear
storyline that eventually come together as the film progresses. Similar to what
Ridley Scott did with the first Alien,
Dunkirk spares itself of character
introductions and information, and like Scott’s Alien, it plunges us right into the main course, or in Dunkirk’s case, plunges us headfirst
into the war just as if our heads had been pushed in ice cold water without
fair warning. The characters we see are eventually at stake the moment the film
opens.
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| Source: Den of Geek |
Dunkirk
isn’t the war epic with heroic scenes to make the audience cheer; it is the
complete opposite of it. It’s instead filled with endless soldiers constantly
running for their life from attacks. There are no heroic feats where someone
stands up from themselves and show the others how it’s done. They are on the
run, and they are trying to save themselves and whoever comes with them. It is
more than just a war epic. Dunkirk
goes beyond what one expects from a war film. It doesn’t glorify the epic scale
of war and heroicness; it glorifies the reality that this was what soldiers had
to go through, an event that traumatizes them and has scarred them for life.
There’s little hope for them as they are forced to run for their lives each and
every second that they stay on war-torn territory.
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| Source: Cinema Vine |
Despite the action being contained on a minimal
scale that unlike Mel Gibson’s war epic Hacksaw
Ridge; doesn’t delve much into the gore, Dunkirk still manages to pack a riveting punch with its fair share
of action from aerial dogfights to sequences of absolute peril, and an equally
riveting impact to us as the audience as much as it did on the characters. Through
it, Hans Zimmer’s score flows through every act like a hazardous ticking bomb
that wonderfully intensifies the scenes even further.
Dunkirk
also has incredible cinematography that is best watched on a 70mm scale (or in this case, IMAX). Every scene is beautifully shot, from wide-shots on the
ground, wide-shots on the air, close-ups, to hand-held. Dunkirk is truly an
immersive experience that kicks us right into the action and keeps us there for
the span of its runtime. While Dunkirk
focuses on the evacuation of thousands of soldiers in peril, it’s a small part
of an already bigger war to come. It’s more realistic than dramatic, and more
contained than epic, but that was what truly made Dunkirk an experience. It is possibly Nolan’s best film to date, but
one thing is certain: it is the best film I’ve seen by far this year.
Stars: 4.7/5
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