‘Dunkirk’ is a great revisit for Chris Nolan fans
‘Dunkirk’ is a great revisit for Chris Nolan fans
I watched the film as I waited for local cinemas to be able to show ‘The Odyssey’ in its 70mm glory. The result was my favorite stream of the week.
The quest to see “The Odyssey” in IMAX 70mm in my hometown is becoming quite a long one. While we are blessed to have a theater with the necessary hardware where I live, the darn thing keeps breaking, and the longer I’m forced to wait, the more I keep hearing about how 70mm is the only way to really see the movie.
Since I’ve had no luck screening Christopher Nolan’s newest movie, I’ve turned to giving some of his other works a re-watch while I wait. This week, I turned on Nolan’s 2017 World War II movie “Dunkirk.” I remembered liking the movie after seeing it in theaters, but my revisit of “Dunkirk” topped the expectation set by that memory and was easily my favorite stream of the week.
Rent or purchase ‘Dunkirk’ from Prime Video
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“Dunkirk” tells the dramatic story of the evacuation of the British army from the beaches of France in the early days of World War II. The movie follows the evacuation from three different perspectives: a soldier waiting to be taken off the beach, a pilot sent to cover the fleeing army from the air, and a civilian boat sent to help accomplish one of the true miracles in military history.
I majored in history in college, and World War II was always a period of intense interest for me. I was well grounded in the story of Operation: Dynamo — the effort by the British government to evacuate its army from France in May 1940 after the country’s conquest by Nazi Germany — before seeing the film, and was ready to pick it apart from a historical aspect.
Instead, Nolan was able to dramatize the historical events without making a cartoonish war film on the level of “Pearl Harbor.” The tense drama of “Dunkirk” reaches intense levels at times, but it always feels like an authentic experience of war instead of a manufactured crisis that’s only intended to advance the story.
The unique narrative structure of “Dunkirk” may throw some viewers, but I find it quite immersive. The movie’s three main narratives are told over different periods of time, and sometimes intersect with each other. Admittedly, this asks a lot of the audience, who has to keep track of what’s happening when and which characters are where. Honestly, it’s one of my favorite aspects of the movie; I always appreciate a title that doesn’t spoon-feed its audience with exposition to tell them what’s going on. Nolan puts his incredible talents to show viewers what’s going on in “Dunkirk,” and the results are admirable.
It would be unfair to single out anyone from the film’s ensemble cast; Fionn Whitehead, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Barry Keoghan and Jack Lowden all crush it in the movie, but there’s not a single bad performance in the group. It’s a veritable who’s who of British, Irish, and Scottish actors, and even Harry Styles turns in a superb performance.
The real trick in streaming “Dunkirk” is that, unfortunately, it’s not available to stream with a subscription at the moment. You can easily rent the movie from Prime Video, YouTube, Google Play, and other digital platforms, and I highly recommend doing so if you’re stuck waiting to watch “The Odyssey” but want a Chris Nolan fix, like me.
Rent or purchase ‘Dunkirk’ from Prime Video
From $4