Dunkirk and the Tension of Cinema

The increasingly rare must-see-in-theaters…

Visceral. That’s the word I keep coming back to when thinking about Dunkirk. It’s the word that lingers in my head some two full days after seeing the film. It’s a brilliant piece of filmmaking.

And it’s one that demands to be seen in theaters. I know I said the same thing about Christopher Nolan’s last film, Interstellar, but it’s arguably even more true here. That earlier film was grandiose in the way that space epics filled with CGI are grandiose. Dunkirk is almost the opposite.

CGI is at a minimum here and as such, the visuals are arresting. And given that it was shot in 70mm (and IMAX), it might be the most visual film of all time. Especially when you consider just how little dialogue there is in the film. So little that the score is the far more important audio component (you could argue this is true in many great films, but there’s no argument here).

That. Ticking.

The last specific compliment I’ll pay to the movie is how restrained it is. For a film about war, there is decidedly little gore. There is violence in the form of bullets and bombs dropping from the sky, but most of it is left in your head. This creates a continual sense of dread. And tension. It’s the equivalent of only getting a glimpse of Jaws versus the shark being the main character on screen. This is how you create terror — in the mind of the viewer, not right in front of their face.

This tension works here as well because the film is heroically short. Certainly by the standard of other Nolan films, and also by the standard of most epic war films these days. Two and a half hours of such tension might be too much. Three hours would be over-kill. One hour and forty-six minutes works. It’s amazing what you can do when you cut out backstories and let the story speak for itself.

And this can work when the story actually speaks for itself three different times, from three different perspectives, at three different speeds.

Unsurprisingly, Dunkirk had a fantastic first weekend at the box office. Except that it is kind of surprising in 2017. Because this is neither a sequel nor a franchise — nor is there any hope of that for Hollywood (unless Nolan decides to turn his talents to another battle in World War 2). Instead, Dunkirk is the type of movie Hollywood needs in order to continue to prove the value of cinema — as in the actual venues.¹

Previously, only the superhero movies — and a few others here and there — were pulling their weight in this regard. But those won’t last forever. That well will eventually be tapped out. Then it’s back to the drawing board, or back to the home. At least until Christopher Nolan makes another film.

¹ Something which Nolan cares very much about.