dir./written by Christopher Nolan
In recent years, superstar director Christopher Nolan has fancied himself a technician. The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar were undeniably theatrical experiences, and now, his Dunkirk is the first major film to be shot with IMAX cameras. Nolan has gone as far as to refer to his films as "theatrical experiences," and would implicitly prefer if you saw this new one on the format which he designed it for. However, the risk of designing a film around technology is that it will lose its power in a lesser format, so for all of Dunkirk's acclaim, I approached with trepidation.
In truth, appreciation of Dunkirk is likely to come easy no matter what format it's experienced in, as while the sound and image of the IMAX cinema serves to enhance the film's cacophonous, claustrophobic beauty, those elements are built into the film enough that they will come across clearly no matter how diminished they may be. Dunkirk is a harrowing, disorienting, and genuinely astonishing experience, and it successfully recreates the sheer panic which must have accompanied this evacuation. It looks and sounds like a masterpiece, and had it just a little more of a human core or fully resisted patriotic sentiment, it would be there. As is, it's merely excellent.
