MAIN PICTURE:
Fionn Whitehead
plays young British
soldier Tommy,
part of the British
Expeditionary Force
awaiting evacuation
from Dunkirk.
MELINDA SUE GORDON/
WARNER BROS PICTUREShttp://www.aeroplanemonthly.com 29quite meet. The inevitability of events
instead provides the narrative thread,
and it works.
The film opens surreally in a
deserted town, soldiers mutely
studying German leaflets promising
certain destruction. From there, the
Dunkirk beach (playing itself in an
important nod to authenticity — even
the respected 1958 feature was filmed
at Camber Sands) appears in its
nightmarish glory. Thousands of men
queue silently as though on a parade
ground. “Grenadiers here, mate”,
Tommy is told as he attempts to join
the end of a queue. Stretcher-bearerstrudge through wind-whipped sea
foam. Hardly anyone speaks for the
first quarter of an hour, the silence
broken instead by Hans Zimmer’s
eerie, ambient score and the ever-
present ticking of the clock; before,
that is, the Ju 87 ‘Stukas’ arrive to
shatter the pregnant tension.The aerial sequences are
breathtaking, especially on an IMAX
screen where they become immersive.
The effort to use authentic aircraft
where possible — this must be the
first time since the Second World Warthat two Spitfire Ias have appeared
together on film — and to shoot in
the air with an ingeniously modified
Yak-52TD trainer rather than in front
of a studio green screen, is utterly
justified. The so-called ‘Yakfire’,
bulky IMAX cameras attached to the
fuselage in various positions, served as
a cameraship for the dogfight scenes,
in which it was able to get in close
to the fast-moving fighters. It was
most innovatively used, however, as
a stand-in for the Spitfires, with its
cockpit modified to closely resemble
that of the fighter, fake exhaust
stubs attached to the cowling and
an authentic paint job. Through
artful filming angles the results are
surprisingly realistic. It’s quite possible
for the viewer to believe that Tom
Hardy really is flying his Spitfire.
Indeed, the viewer may sometimes
feel as though they are flying it.
The physics of flight may be
stretched a little for dramatic purposes
once in a while (and in one particular
sequence, the disconnected timelines
serve to exacerbate this), but this is no
Pearl Harbor with X-Wing fighter26-31_AM_DUNKIRK_Sept17_cc C.indd 29 31/07/2017 10:49