Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/858250
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 6 AUGUST 2017 32 This Week IT seems that whenever a direc- tor wants to truly show off their mettle, they tend to go to war. Not literally, of course, but cin- ematically. And what 20th cen- tury conflict is as safe to tackle as the second World War, the one war nearly everyone agrees was, ultimately just? Steven Spielberg has his WW2 film (Saving Private Ryan), as does Terrance Malick (The Thin Red Line) and even Quentin Tarantino (Inglorious Bastards), and now it's the turn of Christopher Nolan, whose angle on the conflict is perhaps unlikely - Dunkirk. But first, a spot of history. The events of Dunkirk – a town in northern France, close to the Bel- gian border - took place in 1940. The British Expeditionary Force, dispatched to France in the pre- vious year, was forced to retreat by the Nazis. The result was hundreds of thousands of Allied troops stranded on the miles of beach, making easy prey for Ger- man machineguns on the ground and bombers in the air. Eventually Operation Dynamo came to pass, where the Little Ships, a flotilla of 700 small, civilian craft evacu- ated over 300,000 men back to England, bringing what Churchill described as a "miracle of deliver- ance." It is an unusual war story for any director to adapt, even as it makes sure part of the British mythol- ogy surrounding WW2, and No- lan tackles it through an unusual structure. It consists of three plots ("1. The Mole," "2. The Sea," and "3. The Air."), each respectively taking place over a week, a day, and an hour. The Mole is a con- crete jetty jutting into Dunkirk Harbour; crossing the English Channel is the Moonstone, a Lit- tle Ships skippered by her owner, Dawson (Mark Rylance); mean- while in the air a Spitfire pilot (Tom Hardy) pursues a German bomber as he runs dangerous- ly low on fuel. All throughout Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) overseas proceedings as a couple of British soldiers (Fionn Whitehead, Harry Styles) try to sneak on one of the ships evacu- ating the wounded off the shore. Thus an elemental tryptich of land, water and air is formed. In interviews Nolan has de- scribed Dunkirk less of a war film and more of a survival film, and that is very much the case. This is no tale of heroism or derring- do; its various protagonists are hardly sketched out enough to merit the description of charac- ters, as if the business of staying alive has drained them of all that makes them human. Take the Moonstone's first rescue, a name- less, shell-shocked man (Cillian Murphy) whose first, eventual utterance is "U-boat." This is the essence of Nolan's film making in Dunkirk, which is as stripped down as it possibly be - there is no place for most of the tropes of the genre here, be it troopers spout- ing one-liners or black humour, strategists making plans or even most of the violence and carnage so typical of the genre. Instead, what we have is a tale of men try- ing their utmost (and sometimes failing) to survive in a bleak, im- mense landscape. The enormity and scale of it all is staggering, be it the countless troops making their way through the beach, the ships and boats bobbing through an uncaring sea or the tiny air- craft, seen overhead, chasing each other. The result is a film of pure tension, eminently bolstered by Hans Zimmer's most minimal- ist soundtrack yet. The music's main motif is a constant ticking, rendering the cinematic experi- ence near unbearable at times. And that is probably the point - as the film deftly flips between loca- tions and timeframes, the viewer ends up feeling just like the troops on the shore or the Hardy's pilot in the air, desperately checking his Spitfire's fuel gauge. As worthy as a piece of film mak- ing Dunkirk is, one has to admit Nolan ends up victim to at least a couple of traps, the chief of which being the conclusion's sentimen- tality - after all, it fails to show any of the politics behind the "colossal military disaster" that was the Al- lied assault preceding the events at Dunkirk. One can also argue Nolan presents an all too sani- tised and bloodless view of the war, especially since the Nazis – ultimately the reasons behind the global conflict - are little more than an abstraction of machine- gun fire and Stuka bomber. That said, Dunkirk remains a remark- able work of a rare ambition in both visuals and storytelling, one that's well worth watching on the biggest and loudest cinema avail- able. And while the Churchill speech in the end remains mawk- ish it still manages to bring some level of relief. IN CINEMAS TODAY Embassy Cinemas Valletta Tel. 21 227436, 21 245818 Dunkirk (12A) 10:30, 13:45, 16:05, 18:25, 20:45 Despicable Me 3 (U) 10:00, 12:10, 14:20, 16:30, 18:40 Baywatch (15) 16:10, 18:40, 21:10 Spider-Man: Homecoming 3D (PG) 10:35, 14:15, 17:45, 20:40 War for the Planet of the Apes (12A) 10:00, 13:15, 18:15, 21:15 Cars 3 3D (U) 13:45, 16:05, 18:20, 20:35 Girls Trip (15) 13:30, 16:05, 18:40, 21:15 Valletta Living History (U) 10:00, 10:45, 11:30, 12:15, 13:00, 13:45, 14:30, 15:15 Eden Cinemas St Julian's Tel. 23 710400 Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (U) 14:05, 16:10, 18:15, 20:30, 22:35 Fireman Sam: Alien Alert! The Movie (U) 14:15, 16:00, 18:00 Wonder Woman (12A) 20:30, 23:15 War for the Planet of the Apes 2D (12A) 14:30, 17:50, 20:45, 23:35 Despicable Me 3 2D (U) 14:10, 16:15, 18:25, 20:35 Cars 3 3D (U) 11:15, 14:10, 16:30, 18:50, 21:10 Baywatch (15) 14:00, 16:25, 18:50, 21:15 Spider-Man: Homecoming 3D (PG) 14:30, 21:10 Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge 2D (12A) 14:00, 16:25, 18:50, 21:15 Baby Driver (15) 14:00, 16:20, 18:45, 21:10 The Midwife (12A) 14:00, 18:45 Dunkirk (12A) 14:10, 16:30, 18:50, 21:15, 22:45 The Last Word (15) 16:30, 21:15 The Big Sick (12) 14:00, 16:25, 18:50, 21:15, 23:45 Empire Cinemas Bugibba Tel. 21 581787, 21 581909 Despicable Me 3 2D (U) 11:15, 14:00, 16:30, 18:40, 20:45 Baby Driver (15) 11:00, 13:30, 16:00, 18:30, 20:55 Spider-Man: Homecoming 2D (PG) 11:00, 14:00, 18:15, 21:00 Spider-Man: Homecoming 2D (PG) 11:00, 14:00, 18:15, 21:00 Cars 3 2D (U) 11:15, 14:00, 16:15, 18:30 Dunkirk (12A) 11:15, 14:00, 16:20, 18:40, 21:00 War for the Planet of the Apes 2D (12A) 21:00 The Emoji Movie 3D (U) 11:15, 14:00, 16:30, 18:40, 20:45 Girls Trip (15) 10:45, 13:20, 15:55, 18:30, 21:05 By Marco Attard ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ OPERATION OVERLORD ★ ★ ★ ★ BATTLE OF DUNKIRK ★ ★ ★ BATTLE OF THE BULGE ★ ★ SBATTLE OF FRANCE ★ BATTLE OF CRETE FILM DUNKIRK ★ ★ ★ ★ Dunkirk - survival film For the curious, that is indeed Harry Styles of One Direction fame. Dunkirk remains a remarkable work of a rare ambition in both visuals and storytelling