'Dunkirk' Spoiler Review: Never Surrender

"What I wanted to do was use the physics, use the geography...the main events, the movements and try to put those together as the backbone and the basis of the storytelling," Nolan says of the film in The Making of Dunkirk. "So the film is designed to be experiential; the characters that arise from that, the fictional stories we follow...they're really there to guide you through the geography of events."Dunkirk opens almost like a dream, awash in unreality and uncertainty. A group of British soldier wander the seemingly deserted French seaside town of Dunkirk, their backs to the camera, their identities a mystery. It's May 1940, nine months after World War II began. The German army has invaded France, cutting off the British and French armies, stranding 400,000 men along the French coast. These British soldiers wander the much-too-quiet streets, their guard seemingly down as papers drift down from the sky like strange snowflakes. The German's are dropping these propaganda leaflets – ominous warnings to the British troops that they're situation is hopeless. "WE SURROUND YOU" screams the text on the leaflets, complete with black arrows representing the German forces all pointing toward the shores of Dunkirk. "SURRENDER + SURVIVE!"Before we have a chance to learn who any of these wandering British soldiers are, they're slaughtered. Gunfire begins, picking them off one by one. They fall dead and unnamed in the streets, as only one scrambles to safety. This is Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), who escapes the carnage by diving over a barricade set up by other British soldiers. Tommy wanders beyond the barricade, down a narrow street, and comes out to a sight that catches both him and the audience off guard – the ocean is here, cold and gray and vast beyond a beach choked with men. Troops have been ordered to wait on the shore for evacuation across the channel.Home is only twenty-six miles away. It seems almost comically close, yet to the troops waiting on the shores of Dunkirk it's a distance stretching across a gulf of eternity. Because as they wait, defenseless, the German Luftwaffe are free to dive-bomb them into oblivion. The Germans come in piloting their single-engine Stuka planes – planes that emit a terrifying wailing siren, like the shrieking of demons.We're less than ten minutes into Dunkirk, and Nolan has already made clear the fact that this is a film that will refuse to relent. There's no peace here, no respite. Death is a constant, driving force, pushing the players around like pieces on a chessboard. Hovering just beyond all that death is home – so close and yet so far. "You can almost see it," several characters say throughout the film, gazing across that wide blue gulf.Nolan, a fan of twisty narratives that play with the concept of time, sets Dunkirk across three distinct locations and storylines. "The Mole", for the soldiers stuck on the beach, set over a period of one week. "The Sea", with characters racing towards the beach to lend assistance, taking place over one day. And then "The Air", with two Spitfire pilots cruising the sky above over a timeline of an hour. Unlike Nolan's previous films, Dunkirk is an ensemble narrative – there's really no main character here, but instead a group of people scattered across the story all with one common goal: survival.Tommy is the closest we come to a main character, but like almost all the characters in Dunkirk he remains mostly unknown to the audience. It doesn't matter who he is, or where he's from. All that matters is where he's trying to go – away from Dunkirk. While Germans bomb the beach, Tommy runs for cover, and encounters Gibson (Aneurin Barnard), another soldier burying a body in the sand. There's very little dialogue in Dunkirk, which keeps the film lean and also benefits a sort-of twist late in the film involving Gibson. The character never says a word for almost the entire film, yet because the dialogue is so sparse and the understood bond between Tommy and Gibson is so simple and effective, we almost don't notice. Because Gibson is actually a French soldier posing as British, wearing the dog tags of the British soldier he was burying when Tommy first encounters him.A third soldier joins Tommy and Gibson in their quest to get the hell off the beach – Alex, played by former One Direction singer Harry Styles. Alex is the more confident of these three soldiers, or least the one better at pretending he's confident. Tommy seems impossibly young – too young to be at war, and Gibson appears almost shell-shocked. Alex, however, is almost at home among all the chaos. It's a veneer that will eventually crack.Try as they might to get off the beach, the three soldiers inevitably end up back there. Tommy and Gibson pose as medics, carrying a wounded man to a hospital ship, as the wounded are being evacuated first. It's an action that has terrible consequences after a dive-bombing sinks the ship, all but ensuring the injured man they carried on board has drowned as the ship disappears beneath the murky waters. Later, when Tommy, Gibson and Alex end-up on board another ship, a torpedo sinks it, resulting in one of the most harrowing sequences in Nolan's career. Anyone with a phobia of drowning might want to stay away from Dunkirk, as the prospect of such a painful death looms throughout the entire film. Nolan keeps the camera inside the ship as it floods completely, soldiers who were one minute enjoying tea and toast suddenly kicking and flailing for dear life, their cries muffled by water filling their lungs.Tommy, Gibson and Alex escape the sinking ship, but now they have only one place left to go: back to Dunkirk. To await rescue that seems more and more unlikely to come. Also on land are Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) and Colonel Winnant (James D'Arcy), representing the navy and the army respectively. These two men oversee the ever-mounting tensions at Dunkirk, looking out at the sea, hoping for rescue but not very confident rescue will come. And if and when it does come, will anyone even still be left? The clock is ticking, after all.

"The Air" sequences of Dunkirk are the most literal representations of Nolan's much-favored "ticking clock" narrative. While "The Mole" and "The Sea" are set across a week and a day, respectively, "The Air" takes place just over the course of an hour. The timeframe is compressed, and the concept of time running out is represented by the constant burning of fuel.In the air, two Spitfire pilots – Farrier (Tom Hardy) and Collins (Jack Lowden) – engage in dogfights against the German Messerschmitts, who seem to materialize from nowhere at times. During several battles set breathtakingly against the wide-open sky, both Farrier and Collins' planes are damaged. Collins eventually has to make an emergency landing on the sea, a decision that leads to another terrifying near-drowning sequence as the pilot becomes trapped in his cockpit as water floods in. He's rescued at the last minute by the crew of the Moonstone, who happen to be near by when the plane ditched into the sea.Farrier, meanwhile, remains airborne, fighting off more planes whenever they should materialize. However, his fuel gauge has been damaged to the point that he can't be 100% sure how much fuel he has left. Sooner or later, it will run out. Like the passage of time, it's inevitable.Dunkirk is not a traditional war film – there aren't the type of thrilling ground battles that audiences have come to expect from the cinema of World War II. The only truly action-based sequences occur in the air, and even these are detached and economical. There's no hint of personal grudge in these sequences – the enemy is never truly glimpsed, save for their planes. Yet Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema create edge-of-your-seat scenes that quicken the pulse. The air-based gunfire is loud – you can practically feel it rattle in your head as the bullets cut through the sky. And that sense of ever-depleting fuel is always on the periphery. Nolan doesn't even need to cut to the damaged fuel gauge to drive this point home – we can sense it, and the anxiety that grows from it.Hardy has made a habit of hiding half of his face in certain roles, be it as Bane in Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises or as Max in Mad Max: Fury Road. The actor does it again here, most of his face hidden behind his flight mask. And once again, Hardy proves what a skilled actor he is by fully emoting behind such a mask. Of all the characters with few lines in the film, Hardy's Farrier has perhaps the fewest, yet he delivers a bravura performance through intense brow-furrowing based action. Hardy has incredibly expressive eyes, and he puts them to great use as he looks out from the cockpit of his plane.Some of Dunkirk's most powerful moments come from Hardy's scenes, such as near the end, when his plane has finally run out of fuel and yet he continues to glide through the air over the beaches. There's an eerie silence to these scenes, as we've grown so used to the rumbling of the engines. These are moments of serenity mixed with the anxiety of knowing that sooner or later, this fuel-less plane will have to come down.And it eventually does, with Farrier landing on a mostly empty beach as the sun sinks into the horizon, resulting in stunning magic hour imagery of Hardy standing by his burning plane, waiting for unseen German soldiers to come capture him. Because while the day may be ending, the war goes on.