Why Nolan's 'Dunkirk' is different to other war classics
- By Christopher Georgiou & Zhang Rui
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E-mail China.org.cn, September 8, 2017
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Director Christopher Nolan, his wife and producer Emma Thomas appear on the red carpet for the premiere of "Dunkirk" in Beijing, Aug. 22, 2017. [Photo/China.org.cn] |
Without a host of A-list celebrity actors, the movie reinforced the historical reality of the heroic achievements made by very ordinary members of British society, such as fisherman and boat owners who came to rescue.
With the main protagonist of the film Tommy, being played by Fionn Whitehead, Nolan explained that, "it was important when casting for that role to have somebody, young, fresh and unfamiliar. When you first see Tommy you don't have any expectations that he is going to win the war by himself - you just want him to survive."
The movie cleverly uses three parallel and simultaneous storylines to tell the story from a week before, until the day of the final evacuation; - the fighter pilots of the Royal Air Force (RAF); the army soldiers being evacuated from the beach; and the ordinary sailors coming to the rescue. This provides a thread to the narrative tying the main parts of the story together as well providing an immersive experience for the audience to appreciate the various challenges of the operation.
"What's interesting to me is the very simple story, where you have 400,000 men on a beach, and the enemy closing in on all sides. So we try to use starkness and minimalism to make it clear and to tell a subjective story, from the point of view of the people who were actually there. So at the end when the soldiers read the newspaper, that's how they would have found out what happened," Nolan explained.
With such a major and meaningful historical event, the lack of character development, storyline and perhaps narrative could be an injustice to "Dunkirk." However, "Dunkirk" was different to other classic war movies which usually have these components. The format of the movie added a unique tension which was complimentary to the real life events.
Nolan explained that, "We looked at other films and how they were filmed, including 'Saving Private Ryan.' There is no point trying to compete with that film as it was so well done. I was looking for a different type of intensity, what's unique about the ‘Dunkirk’ story is suspense."
"The structure of the film is based on musical principles whereby we are continually accelerating the action to reach the crescendo, while another element of the story is beginning its crescendo. That's why the film is quite short. I wanted to make a film with very little modulation so the film is pitched to a level of intensity and doesn't really vary. So I wrote the script in only 76 pages – relatively short, with the idea being to involve the audience in the physical processes of the characters," he added.
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