[CRITICAL] DUNKIRK

Director venturing of its kind in genre, Christopher Nolan tackles this time in the war film about the evacuation of the troops stranded at Dunkirk.

Considered, rightly, as a filmmaker sophisticated, but cold, Christopher Nolan has passes a milestone essential with Interstellar in bringing in his movie a dose of emotion that head past his ambition of formal to other heavens. At the time of his new project gargantuan, DUNKIRK, the expectations are as big as the fears. Because the movies of Nolan, although generally effective since the beginning, can sometimes boitiller when he finds himself buried under a deluge of ambitions – in short, there has never been a writer great (despite a sense sharpened by the concept) and demonstrates a few gaps in terms of staging.

Ambition, DUNKIRK in lack decidedly not. Or of sophistication. Parachuted in the middle of a war, the spectator enters the film without any references. Glued to the basque of a young soldier managing to escape an ambush in which all his comrades die, one wanders without being able to define a precise objective in addition to the concept of survival. And this is exactly what the film wants to put in scene : the survival of soldiers in hostile terrain, at the mercy of the enemy. An enemy that we all know but we never will. By providing an online story, traditional, Christopher Nolan is already avoiding many of the problems but reduced its angles of approaches. Dry dialogues and stripped of frame written, the film imposes a major challenge : to do everything to go through the image and the sound. Therefore, this form of pruning of the narrative makes DUNKIRK a sensory experience breathless, you are grabbing at the throat not to loosen the embrace during 1h47. Music is omnipresent as a Hans Zimmer flamboyant, Christopher Nolan and takes several fates for staging this grim hell. But away from the avalanche of tripe proposed by Mel Gibson, DUNKIRK would be somewhat the slope motion of Thou shalt Not Kill. Wider audience from this point of view, the film does not forget to be demanding in its form, highlighting the combination picture/sound for each individual, on his seat, feeling intensely the sensations. And the power of the montage – Nolan loves to play with the temporality – is a wonderful setting, as the film juggles between 3 characters, between past and present, and to refrain from explanations in good and due form until the audience understands by it-even the small armoury that was imposed. We count many of the fittings are bright, whose apotheosis is the final, where everything is joined, and that only the premium. Thought with precision crazy to allow a immersion maximum, the stage multiplies the strokes of genius and makes emerge within horizons depopulated (earth, sky and sea) of the questions deeply human. It is this that is remarkable ! The complexity of the processes does not obstruct in any way the emergence of emotions. And vice-versa. It is a paradox : the cinema of Nolan touches on a form of fullness impressive in denying the beaches wordy explanatory and concepts in favor of a form of abstraction virtually unheard of in his work. What a pleasure to see him abandon the great barnums exceeding 2 hours for the benefit of a cinema just as picky but more direct. As if Inception had been boned, and there remains only the virtuosity of visual (and sound). The movements of the camera, the characters, the assembly is held in a straight line, uncluttered, honest, and drawn by a Nolan determined to refuse the twists and turns unnecessary. Has the image of the plane of Farrier (Tom Hardy), slim in charge of a specific mission which it will not deviate during the whole movie. This vehicle is a metaphor for moving to any DUNKIRK, spinning right in the middle of the action before you offer a landing appeased.

In contrast, on the sea, Dawcett and his boat allow Nolan to continue his momentum humanist ofInterstellar. Not surprising that it is embodied by an actor like Mark Rylance, resurrected by Spielberg lately in a similar vein (The BGG, The Bridge of Spies) and that the bonhomie physical to excel in the roles of characters deeply brave. A force to run behind a cinema kubrickien (you think about it, during the whole of the projo), Christopher Nolan succeeds especially to get closer to any part of the filmography of uncle Steven, in the last third, where the human is put forward. Before the flight film, in front of le montage alterné, in front of the music. It touches on this feeling end, close to the naivety, where a small flame springs forth due to the force of the soul of Man. And this, without over-writing, just by a combination of ups and downs. In the year known to the film of war and, more generally, to the blockbuster, rare are those who can claim to offer such sensitivity formal mixing big show and “maneuvers auteurisantes” – to be savored all the more because every year we are bombarded derivatives Marvel to the schemes agreed. With DUNKIRK, Christopher Nolan has been successful to a degree that borders on vertigo.

Maxime Bedini