The Miracle Of Dunkirk

Christopher Nolan Turns One of World War Ii ’s Most Dramatic Events Into a Cinematic Masterpiece

- Stephanie Zacharek

MOST DAYS WE APPEAR TO LIVE IN A WORLD gone mad, a time and place in which ignorance of history is treated as a kind of virtuous purity. But sometimes, cosmically, the right movie arrives at just the right time: and right now Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk feels like a salve. Its visual and sound effects are elaborate and impressive. This is a grand spectacle, not an empty one, a rare example of the Hollywood blockbuster dollar well spent. Dunkirk is extraordinary not just because it’s ambitious and beautifully executed, but because Nolan, who both wrote and directed it, has put so much care into its emotional details—and has asked so much of, and trusted, his actors. As great filmmakers before him—Lewis Milestone, Sam Fuller, Brian De Palma—knew, you can’t tell a story of war without faces. Faces carry history. They’re genetic maps, but they’re vessels of spiritual memory too. Dunkirk, set against events that happened over 75 years ago, is like a message from a lost world. If the setting feels unfamiliar to you, don’t worry, trust the faces.

Dunkirk, in theaters July 21, is a fictional story set amid the real events of late May and early June 1940. The capitulation of Belgium left Allied troops trapped between German forces and the French coast. The U.S., still in the grip of isolationism, would not enter the Second World War until the following year. Driven back by the enemy, Allied soldiers became stranded on the beaches of Dunkirk. Against all odds, some 338,000 were rescued. The backbone of Operation Dynamo, as the mission was called, was a flotilla of about 700 small fishing and pleasure boats, many captained by their owners—private British citizens who made the treacherous English Channel crossing to assist military vessels in bringing the troops home. That rescue came to be known as the Miracle of Dunkirk.