BSA 104 (Scriptwriting) Week 5 : Dunkirk Review

Dunkirk is about the battle fought at Dunkirk during WWII, it follows British and French Soldiers stationed at Dunkirk who have been pushed to the Dunkirk shore line, as they attempt to escape Dunkirk.

The famous evacuation of over three hundred thousand men that occurred at Dunkirk during WWII is chronicled through the eyes of a civilian boat, small group of British soldiers and two fighter pilots.

The film was technically impressive, but I found myself detached from the characters (if you can call them that) and their plight. It kept me interested and my attention never wavered (unlike some other member(s) of the audience), however this was not because of the story or characters  (if you can call them that), rather due to the non-linear structure. Dunkirk is an engaging movie for the wrong reasons, the story and characters are severely lacking in personality and development. If I was to see this film again, I imagine that it would not be as enjoyable as it was the first time around. This is because the only thing that kept me engaged was the way the story was told, Nolan jumps between three different timelines, each of which takes a different amount of time to unfold. 

The three intersect with each other at different times, seeing an event from one perspective before it repeats ten or fifteen minutes later from another character's point of view was enjoyable and provided a level of interactivity, as the audience figures out how and when certain events take place. A good example of this structure being used to it's full effect (spoilers here) is about halfway through the film when one of the fighter pilots spots a sinking ship with oil polluting the water. Soldiers struggle in the polluted ocean down below, I couldn't help but wonder whether these were the same soldiers that we'd been spending so much time with in one of the other story-lines. This kept me engaged until I saw those soldiers perspective, who did end up in that exact situation. It's engaging because you wonder how it will happen and which characters will walk away from it with their lives. It's an interesting way to tell a story that I haven't seen done before.

Knowing exactly what happens, how and when, would remove this element of mystery, so seeing it a second time would leave me with just the story and technical aspects. One of which is done exceedingly well, and the other is hardly present.

It's takes a minute to define who exactly the main character is, Dunkirk is an ensemble piece displaying different performances and characters. It's always hard with these movies to properly determine who the audience cares for most. For Dunkirk I think it's the character of Tommy played the by the relatively unknown actor Fionn Whitehead.

The reason I think he is the main character is because we start the movie with, he's the first POV character we get. I think this is important to keep in mind in screenwriting, the way the movie opens and who it opens on is important in how the audience perceives the film from that point onward. I've seen this discussed quite a bit recently on the internet, people are looking at films like Passengers (2016) and Reservoir Dogs (1992) and seeing how different the movie would feel if it opened on a different character or different scene.

In this video essay the non-linear structure of Tarantino movies is discussed and the writer touches upon how changing the sequence in which events happen changes the feel of a film.

Fionn also happens to have the most screen time, his is the longest story. The marketing also heavily advertised him. The problem with him being the main character is that he isn't much of a character, this is a good example of an audience surrogate character.

Fionn Whitehead was the only actor to get a traditional character poster

I didn't care much for Tommy, he doesn't have much that makes him an individual, at any point during the film he could have been replaced by another faceless soldier and I don't think I would have cared. Nolan does try and make us care for him somewhat when he doesn't betray the French soldier, it's interesting because he is a very active character, always trying to survive and finding a way out.

He's effectively placed apart from the mass of other soldiers, but watching it I never connected with him. It didn't help that the characters surrounding Tommy are much more interesting:

In comparison to Tommy all the other characters feel like they have a personality. Harry Styles is somewhat of an antagonistic character - the selfish character so often represented in disaster movies - but he's interesting to watch because of this, Tom Hardy is capable and therefore easy to support, the young man on the boat (Barry Keoghan) was easily relatable with his desire to help in the war effort.

There is a distinct moment in which I cared most about a character, this was when the French soldier's identity was revealed and the others wanted to kill him. It was a very engaging scene to watch, probably the most engaging in the entire film, because it had an underdog and a conflict that was closer to home.

A big reason I wasn't that invested in this is because the conflict is so impersonal, the bad guys never show their faces. The scene with the French soldier was much more tense to watch than when the pilot was drowning or when the boat was sinking. I think this is because it features actual people, we see their faces, are familiar with their personalities and they actually talk about it. There's a sense of consequence and multiple possible outcomes.

 The scene was of course improved by the ticking time bomb element with German soldiers shooting at the boat, but by this point it's been done so many times I think I'd become numb to it. The action in Dunkirk is very one-note and lacks variation, it's always something slowly getting closer, or slowly sinking. I recently saw this video about tension on Youtube:

I'd never thought of all the different kinds of tension there are, looking back its disappointing that Dunkirk didn't do more with the amount of time it had. A movie like Dunkirk is in the unique position of making the whole film tension with no need to worry about story, it seems like a waste of potential not to make the most of it.

If I saw five or so of these types of tension in Dunkirk I think the movie would have been much more engaging, instead Dunkirk only does one type. It does that type really well at time, but exhaustion sets in quickly and the film becomes predictable as we start to notice the framework.

Dunkirk is a movie that is actually a bit too simplistic, technically it's beautiful but it was really hard for me to properly engage with it. Maybe if I knew about Dunkirk beforehand and had a sense of British patriotism it would have been a better experience. As it stands I really enjoyed the experience, especially seeing it cinemas with the sound design and score by Hans Zimmer, but I can't imagine revisiting it any time soon.