I think "Dunkirk" is a film that directly appeals to the senses.
Obviously different from many adrenal-themed war films, what "Dunkirk" wants to convey is undoubtedly a sense of coldness. Of course, there are also many cool-toned war films. Ang Lee's "Billy Lynn", Eastwood's "American Sniper", including "The Hurt Locker", all want the audience to experience confusion and anxiety. rather than hot-blooded.
But the coldness of "Dunkirk" is not the microscopic coldness of human nature, mind and soul in other war themes. The film does not want to explain the identity and history of any soldier, and refuses to communicate with the audience the feelings and understandings of the protagonists. Only everyone keeps running and breathing.
Run and breathe on the vast coastline, on the wider sea, and in the wider sky.
It's a kind of macro coldness rarely seen in war movies.
I personally think that Nolan tried his best to create such a cold feeling, so that the film appeared a little inconsistent and unnatural. The temperature of blood in war, the cry of soldiers, and the deafening bombardment naturally contradict the macro sense of coldness. In order to overcome this, the 400,000 people trapped on the beach in history, the more than 800 ships dispatched to rescue, more than 800 German fighter planes and more than 200 British fighter planes are almost invisible in the film. We can only see fighter jets in twos and threes fighting in the air, with a warship intermittently appearing on the MSC line, and the beach that is almost only crowded at the beginning of the film. The battle is not fierce, and the escape is not tense. This emptiness, quiet unreality, is so anomalous for a $150 million war drama.
The most crowded and lively scenes in the film almost all appeared in the trailer. The rest are only tiny individuals under the vast sky.
And in the wider space, the smaller people feel the deepest helplessness. As long as there are bustling comrades in arms and partners who can talk to each other, even if there are fierce battles and hideous enemy troops, the heart can be filled. But often there is nothing in the film, just the sea water silently washing the boots of dead soldiers, and the empty shots, the reeds, the sea breeze.
This is what Nolan wants to convey to the audience, the status quo in the eyes of the soldiers, and the status quo in their hearts. Even if there are a few legion people around them, it seems that there is no one. So the director does not need to let the audience know who each soldier is, because they face the same situation, which is like the emptiness that the astronauts feel in the universe in "2001: A Space Odyssey", so empty that life seems to be diluted.
For the Anglo-French forces retreating at Dunkirk, they had no idea what was going on. In just one week, the German army had broken through the Maginot Line, Belgium surrendered, and France fell. But they have no idea why this is so, nor do they understand the strategy of the motherland. There were no broadcasts, no newspapers, not even officers, they just kept running for their lives in the empty streets, into the empty beaches, and into the empty seas. Nothing leaves a soldier more confused than "no direction, no mission, no order."
In this vast expanse of white, except for the non-stop clockwork and occasional noise, it is almost dead on the beach.
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