Dunkirk (2017)

DUNKIRK  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Christopher Nolan
    Fionn Whitehead, Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh,
    Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Tom Glynn-Carney,
    Barry Keoghan, Damien Bonnard, James Bloor
"Dunkirk" is like the Normandy Beach sequence in "Saving Private Ryan", if that sequence was the whole movie and went on for 106 minutes, For viewers who have never been shot at or  bombed, it's probably as close as a movie can get to duplicating that experience. It'a not all bullets and artillery fire, but it sure feels that way. It's intense. The film tells three stories simultaneously, each playing out on a different timeline. In one (a week), a grunt soldier played by Fionn Whitehead tries desperately to get off the beach and onto a boat any way he can. In another (a day), a civilian, played stoically by Mark Rylance, joins a convoy of commandeered boats to help with the evacuation. In the third (an hour), an RAF pilot played by Tom Hardy tries to provide air cover by knocking out as many German planes as he can before he runs out of fuel. Amazingly, the narrative works. Cutting from story to story and back again, you always know exactly where you are. The dialogue is spare. The actors, with a few notable exceptions, are not well known. The scale is both intimate and epic. There's no backstory at all. Not every character behaves heroically, but every character behaves in a believably human way. I watched it on an IMAX screen, which might not be necessary, but to really appreciate "Dunkirk", a big screen of some kind and a good sound system are essential.