Dunkirk (2017) * * *

Directed by:  Christopher Nolan

Starring:  Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy, Harry Styles, Kenneth Branagh, Fionn Whitehead, Cillian Murphy

Dunkirk is among the most frustrating good movies I've seen.     It is masterfully made on a technical level; capturing the confusion of such an unprecedented situation.     The evacuation of nearly 400,000 British soldiers stranded on the beach of Dunkirk, France was, as Winston Churchill called it, "a miracle of deliverance," while also quick to point out how the entire episode was "a colossal military disaster,"    Fortunately, Hitler made a grave tactical error by not devoting the Luftwaffe to wiping out the stranded men, save for a plane or two.    Hitler's assumption was once the British left France they would never return.    

However, while Dunkirk is superbly handled in a technological way, it is missing the human element to pull it through.     Say what you will about the romance between Jack and Rose in Titanic (1997), the device gives the disaster human dimensions and a vested emotional interest.     Dunkirk gives us anonymous soldiers who don't even have names or distinct personalities.     As the film opens, the camera follows one soldier making his way through the town of Dunkirk while avoiding enemy fire.    He soon joins the hundreds of thousands of men on the beach and we barely see him again; he is lost in the sea of humanity, boats, planes, and battle. 

The subplot which has the most drama involves the civilian boat requisitioned by the British navy owned by Mr. Dawson (Rylance), who bravely steers his boat towards the inferno with the mission of rescuing as many soldiers as his boat could hold.    He brings along with teenage son and his son's friend, both of whom want to help despite Dawson's warnings.     They pick up a shell-shocked soldier (Murphy), stranded on some plane wreckage in the middle of the sea, who is not keen on returning to Dunkirk.    Rylance powerfully and matter-of-factly states, "There is no hiding from his, son.   We have a job to do,"    There were many more boat owners like Dawson who were untrained in military evacuations and evading enemy planes and gunfire, yet they pressed on in service of their country.     Dawson is sensitive to the feelings of the soldier, mind you, but doesn't allow them to refrain from his patriotic duty, which we learn has personal roots. 

Dunkirk's best moments occur when the very unpredictability of the rescue mission itself rears its ugly head.     Soldiers who board a ship thinking the worst is behind them soon have to swim away from danger after the ship is destroyed by a torpedo (and may not be rescued again).   Are there two German planes ready to pick them off from the air, or ten?     The British have, from my count, two planes to track and destroy the German planes, one flown by Farrier (Hardy), who except for a moment or two, is hidden behind a mask and battling Germans while flying dangerously low on fuel.     The air battles are not like Top Gun, which had a video game feel to the fights, but are filmed in a mass of confusion and dread.     If there was CGI used in Dunkirk, it is difficult to spot.     Much of it seems very real.     The reason for the lack of air support is explained as the British needing its planes and pilots for the impending Battle of Britain.    

We witness Commander Bolton (Branagh) standing at the edge of the pier wishing for a mass evacuation while realistic about its success probability.     The tantalizing, yet disheartening truth known to everyone in Dunkirk is how close home is, but yet they cannot get to it.    "You can practically see it from here," Bolton says and we sense the despair in his voice.     But, there is a mission to be accomplished, and the men must be made to feel as if getting home is simply a formality.   

Therein lies the rub.     The human insight is only sporadically explored because the film chooses to exhibit the physical hell of the evacuation.     The men who die or are in imminent danger seem like a mass of nameless, faceless souls and thus their perishing doesn't hit us so hard.     Perhaps that is Christopher Nolan's intent; to show us the hows and whys of the mission with the belief that we may not be able to handle the emotional impact.     This may even be correct, but I would've liked to see Nolan try more.    Then again, maybe Nolan realizes, as do we, that even though many of the soldiers were ultimately rescued, it is early into a war which would last another five years.     It is more than likely these same men would soon be pressed into battle again and even more likely many of them would not come home again.