I love to go to the movies, but my seemingly boundless physical inertia keeps me screening films from the comfort of my couch unless a true outlier comes into my life. However, over my summer in Los Angeles, my cousin, with whom I was staying, worked at the local movie theater, a five-minute drive away. After a full week of the latest releases like Baby Driver and the latest Planet of the Apes we rushed in to see Dunkirk, which led to our fiercest, but not our longest, cinematic debate of July.
My cousin was underwhelmed by the film because in his opinion the film’s structure prohibited emotional attachment to the individuals we saw portrayed because we never got a chance to know them individually. Rather, it was almost entirely nonstop action after the film’s initial commencement, and the dialogue was minimal to say the least. He additionally thought that these decisions by Nolan reduced his ability to empathize with the characters in a meaningful way because they were overwhelmed by the spectacle of the piece. This meant that in the balance of the story, individuals were given less attention. I however, while agreeing with his analysis of the film’s focus, disagreed as to its effect on the viewer and what Nolan’s directorial intention may have been.
It seemed to me that the fact individual humans were dwarfed by the combat was in many regards the point of the film. This movie didn’t read like his previous works in which he focused on specific characters and their evolution over time in the face of superhumanly long odds. This was no Memento or The Prestige in which the audience was being actively bonded with the protagonists and shown depths of their interiority that only film as a medium can capture and display. Here instead, Nolan seemed to be doing the opposite, and intentionally. By making a conscious decision to rework the war movie formula he presented battle in a new way that struck me as a departure from much of its genre. For example, the classic war film Saving Private Ryan, consciously and intentionally draws the viewers’ attention to the horrors of war in direct relation to the individual. Humans are horribly and bloodily butchered in all manner of traumatizing ways, and the camera forces you to look at it in excruciating detail. The camera swings around grotesque scenes where young soldiers hold their now detached limbs in anguish while still others are mowed down by machine gun fire all across a red misty canvas. I pointed out to my cousin that in avoiding these tropes, Dunkirk opted instead to present the events of this battle with a sense of historical reenactment that was not simple entertainment. I said that the film isn’t interested in forcing you to grapple with the brutal realities of war for individuals, it is instead showing you something so massive in scale that it cannot be fully appreciated by the casual viewer. I demarcated this difference in form and content, and suggested that perhaps his perspective might be informed by his preconceived expectations about the structure and focus of war films. This film relies more heavily on the viewer being able to separate out and individually note different elements of each shot, which neither of us had been expecting, so I saw how perhaps a perceived bait and switch had alienated him.
A scene I suggested as evidence of my theory was when the young British soldiers are trapped in the hull of a grounded civilian boat when they begin taking on machine gun fire. The bullets pierce the hull, water starts pouring in, and because the soldiers have no way to escape without being shot down they must plug up the holes with their fingers to avoid drowning, all the while as more shots whistle through the boat. This scene was perfectly emblematic of my perspective because the camera made no attempt to focus the viewer on the specific men being injured and killed by the firing. The attention was instead on the situation as a whole and the onus of actively participating in the that portrayal is squarely on the viewer. Additionally, it served to disguise the scope of the violence on screen by showing it as it occurs and not providing additional commentary. The lack of gore and extreme close ups of wounded men belies the film’s brutality and creates a separation between the audience and the film that only the viewer can close.
I articulated these points less succinctly and significantly more loudly than I have here, and despite my exquisite communication skills I think my cousin and I were simply on different pages. For me, this film has found room for innovation while operating in a genre that has a great propensity for stagnation. That alone held my attention.
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