Aeroplane September 2017

RIGHT:

Tom Hardy in his

role as RAF Spitfire

pilot Farrier.

MELINDA SUE GORDON/^

WARNER BROS PICTURES

28 http://www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE SEPTEMBER 2017

I

t will have been hard for anyone

with an interest in World War

Two history to avoid the increasing

hype around Christopher Nolan’s

Dunkirk recently. Expectations were

undoubtedly high for the big-budget

dramatisation of the moment when

hundreds of thousands of British

and French troops escaped almost

certain destruction by a rampant

German military. For the most part,

the film meets expectations admirably.

Cinema-goers looking for stunning

nautical and aerial action, executed

substantially ‘for real’ in a way that

recalls the 1960s epics, will not be

disappointed. Neither will those who

go looking for a thoughtful, human

take on the events of 1940.

Nolan’s use of unconventional

narrative techniques is familiar to

filmgoers, and in Dunkirk, as with

Memento, Inception and Interstellar,

he plays with the passage of time.

There are three narrative strands: ‘The

Mole’, centring on the breakwater

representing the only means of

transferring men directly to larger

ships; ‘The Sea’, depicting the passage

across the English Channel, and

‘The Air’, following a vic of Spitfires

setting out to provide air cover. Each

strand takes place over a different

length of time — a week, a day and

an hour, converging with stomach-

churning inevitability towards the

same denouement. The mismatch

in timescales may lead to occasional

moments of confusion, but the other

side of the coin is the ability to

witness the same events from different

perspectives, which does wonders

in cutting the distance between

protagonist and audience.

Each strand has its own small

groups of characters negotiating the

perils of land, sea and air: Fionn

Whitehead’s Tommy and a waxing

and waning knot of soldiers; Mark

Rylance’s Dawson sailing his motor

yacht Moonstone with the armada of

‘little ships’ and a shivering soldier

plucked out of the water along the

way; Tom Hardy’s Farrier and Jack

Lowden’s Collins with the section of

Spitfires; the two senior officers on the

Mole, Kenneth Branagh’s Cdr Bolton

(based on several historical characters

including James Campbell Clouston)

and James Darcy’s Col Winnant. This

gives Dunkirk both its epic sweep

and its intimacy. We follow no single

character. Rather, it’s an ensemble

piece, in which most of the members

of the ensemble converge but never

DUNKIRK FILM

We follow no single character. Rather, it’s an ensemble piece, in which most

of the members of the ensemble converge but never quite meet. The inevitability

of events instead provides the narrative thread, and it works

26-31_AM_DUNKIRK_Sept17_cc C.indd 28 31/07/2017 10:49