Nolan puts his stamp on the war film with 'Dunkirk'

The release of a new Christopher Nolan film is its own type of blockbuster event. He attracts crowds more than any other big name in cinema, including Spielberg, Scorsese and Tarantino, and he creates imagery best seen on as big of screen as possible.

“Dunkirk” is a war film in the definitive Nolan style — it’s a massively scaled, exhausting assault on your senses, breaking traditional narrative form and jumping between a half- dozen lead characters. Like his other recent films outside of the Batman universe (“Inception” and “Interstellar”), “Dunkirk” functions like a puzzle box, providing small bits of information that (hopefully) clicks together by the end.

Nolan has a way of sometimes oversaturating his movies, particularly in action sequences. In “Dunkirk” he’s being purposefully bombastic, throwing the viewer into intense battle sequences on the land, sea and air (the movie somehow still manages a PG-13 rating). “Dunkirk” runs under two hours, but it’s an exhausting experience all the same, especially with Hans Zimmer’s piercing musical score blasting on top of the explosions and gunfire.

The film essentially tells three stories — one of British soldiers trapped in the seaside town of Dunkirk after the invasion of France by the Nazis, one of a British civilian boat captain traveling across the sea to rescue the soldiers, and a mission depicting British pilots trying to provide air support for the rescue.

The movie intercuts between the stories, with the land storyline taking place over one week, the sea adventure taking place over the course of a day, and the air mission taking only an hour. For most of the time, the stories are quite easy to follow, though the timeline gets more complicated near the end when the three stories begin to overlap.

One could credit Nolan for balancing the three elements so cohesively, though at times it seems like the non-linear structure exists to cover the fact that two of the three stories aren’t as compelling as the third. The air sequence, featuring Tom Hardy as a Royal Air Force pilot, gets to be repetitive, despite some of the best airborne cinematography ever committed to film.

The land storyline, featuring Fionn Whitehead and Aneurin Barnard as two soldiers trying desperately to escape the beach via anything that can float, is by far the most enthralling. Boy banders will also enjoy One Direction’s Harry Styles in this sequence as a fellow soldier who tags along with them. All three actors are solid, as is (predictably) Kenneth Branagh as a British Commander overseeing the evacuation from the pier.

The sea sequence, featuring Mark Rylance as a small boat captain who takes his son on the rescue mission to Dunkirk, works enough despite the presence of a few extraneous characters, and the scenes depict an interesting part of World War II history.

From a technical perspective, “Dunkirk” is masterful, and Nolan shows confidence and control over his storytelling ambitions. The film also deliberately avoids many of the problems in his last film, “Interstellar,” by focusing less on vague themes and big speeches, dropping the exposition and letting the action and chaos onscreen be the lasting impression to viewers.

For as much as I appreciate the non-linear choices and the unique approach to the war film, I’m not sure if the “Dunkirk” puzzle clicks together as well as Nolan intended. While there may be a time and place where the stories finally connect in the climax, there isn’t much accomplished that couldn’t be done with a more traditional approach. Rather than feeling the impact of the stories connecting, I was wishing the movie would settle down and focus on one set of characters – specifically the soldiers on the ground.

Nolan loves to intercut action with action, and “Dunkirk” is an entire movie comprised of three action scenes carefully spliced together. It’s amazing how coherent he manages to make all three, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have been more effective as three separate stories.

Maybe a second viewing could solidify some of my feelings. The film has received widespread praise from critics and moviegoers, and its technical prowess is undeniable. I’m just wondering if the story would have been more impactful with less fiddling and showmanship.

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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com