DUNKIRK

                We all remember the beach scenes in Saving Private Ryan (released nearly 20 years ago now, just saying); how kinetic and traumatic they were.  An explosion of violence which rattled the bones and scarred the mind.  That depicted the Allies re-entering Europe.  Spielberg chose to ignore the involvement of virtually everyone and gave the cinema-going world the enduring impression that American soldiers were the only ones storming those beaches, the only ones facing those guns, the only ones dying face down in the surf.

                Well, Dunkirk, shows us those same beaches (in essence) three years earlier - when the Allies were leaving Europe.  Again, the focus is very much on the suffering of one country’s soldiers; in this case: the Brits.  But the frantic, panicked pace of those first twenty minutes of Ryan, is replaced with a more morose, contemplative take on the folly of war.

                Unlike Ryan, this film’s tone doesn’t vacillate between celebratory and maudlin - it starts off morose, and pretty much stays that way.  Dunkirk has a very Northern European feel about it.  It’s like one of those Scandinavian films filled with miserable, wintery people standing in grey windswept landscapes, shivering.  Tarkovsky films are equally light-hearted.  So, you wouldn’t know that these events were being played out in early summer, as the grey and blue filters on the lenses and the relentless knifing wind give the film a bleak, almost apocalyptically wintery feel.

                But then, it isn’t a film about a roadside picnic, it’s about the rout of civilisation, about the thin brown and blue line that stood between Britain and the extinction of our culture ... And how that line was broken.  There are no glorious battles in this film, just a few ugly skirmishes and a couple of aerial dog-fights - which keep us close and in the cockpit, so we can feel the claustrophobic vulnerability of the flyers in their crates.  Nolan wants this to feel like a documentary or - better still - like a lived experience.

Tommy, spending a week along among 400,000 fellow soldiers.  There's no camaraderie, no esprit de corps ... There's just fear and the ferocious desire to survive.

                Fionn Whitehead initially takes the lead.  His character isn’t named in the film, but is generally referred to as ‘Tommy’; although this, I suspect, is meant to make him appear as an Everyman rather than a specific real person.  From his first moments, Nolan isn’t interested in making the boy charismatic, nor even sympathetic.  He spends the first five minutes of the film running away, and his major preoccupation seems to be in finding a quiet corner for a shit.  Not really the intro to a superhero type!  After this, the boy’s one and only consideration is getting out of there.  He has no discipline, no chain of command, no plan, just a relentless drive to escape.

                But nothing Nolan does is accidental.  He wants us, from these opening scenes, to see the soldiers as boys, too young to be burdened with the responsibilities which have been foisted upon them, too confused to understand the significance of what is happening, too scared to think straight.

Our Boys ... Not wreathed in glory ... Not giving Gerry what for ... They simply want to go home.

                This isn’t a war film, in the traditional sense, nor is it an anti-war film ... It’s a dispassionate depiction of a complicated and clumsy evacuation.  Coming in at a brisk 106 minutes, the film is terse, one could even say sparse, in its depiction of character and incident.  Like the soldiers trying to shelter from the knifing wind on that featureless beach, we viewers are told only what we need to know - and sometimes not even that.  Tommy overhears the brass helpfully discussing the way Churchill expects only one in ten of the troops to be rescued.  That’s the reality of the situation ... The Battle of Europe was lost and the plan was nothing more sophisticated than to rescue enough soldiers to wage the Battle of Britain.

                We are repeatedly told by Lord Sir Kenny Branagh - as Commander Exposition - that there are 400,000 men on the beach - are there are certainly a lot ... But that many?  The scenes of long snaking lines of men, patiently waiting rescue, are iconic (in the real sense of the word) and epic (especially when you understand that Nolan refused to use CGI to fill-out his crowd scenes) ... But those big, bleak, empty spaces don’t feel like they’re hosting almost half a million troops.  I found that strangely distracting ... Possibly because Nolan had gone to such lengths to give his film the ring of truth, and this just struck me as a false note.

Doing things old school.  Shooting on film.  On location.  Letting your extras give wooden performances ...

                Nolan is the heir to the Kubrick “Blank Cheque”.  This was the unique position that Stanley Kubrick enjoyed at Warner Brothers in the 70s and 80s, whereby he could spend as much money as he liked, take as long as he liked, produce whatever he liked; and Warners would patiently wait until he was good and ready to hand the film over ... No American film studio that I can think of, at least since the days of Charlie Chaplin, has invested so heavily in the vision of a single artist, with so little control over that investment.  Given the billions that Warners earned from Nolan’s Batman films (2005, 2008 and 2012 respectively), they have decided to extend him a similar consideration.

                Nolan is aware of this, so reflects the debt he owes to Kubrick in the odd symmetrical tracking shot, as well as in the cold efficiency of the story telling.  The characters are given no back-story, sometimes no name, no context and, often, no significant dialogue.  The film is really a montage of moments rather than a coherent narrative. 

                As a sensory experience, it is immersive and visceral, the sound effects surround you - and, unlike Ryan, it’s not just the rattle of the guns and the percussive thump of the explosions - it’s also the haunting wail of the Stuka sirens, the drumming of a damaged Spitfire motor, the echoing screams of men trapped in a sinking ship.  The lack of dialogue for extended tracts mean that your attention jumps around, taking in everything, filtering nothing.  It genuinely is a sensory overload - particularly when seen on the overwhelming size of an IMAX screen.

                Dunkirk is a masterclass in visual story-telling - Through careful positioning of the camera, and editing, he gives us just enough of what we need to follow the various story threads.  Without really being given a lot of clues, we can follow the stories as they overlap at different paces and at different times.

                This is experimental film-making - subjective film-making - Nolan constantly gets his unwieldy IMAX cameras up close and personal.  Tom Hardy - as the fighter pilot Farrier - gives his entire performance in close-up, with only his eyes visible.  When Collins, his wingman, ditches, and the cab begins to fill with water, we experience this in the most intimate, physical way. 

Nolan keeps asking Tom Hardy to show less and less of himself in each film ... Next time, expect to see just his little finger.  Or, maybe, like Michael Caine in this film, he'll be reduced to an uncredited voice-over cameo.

                This being a Christopher Nolan film, he couldn’t resist the temptation to tamper with the timelines.  The three stories take place over a week, a day and an hour respectively and they intercut and overlap, but not in chronological order.  We see Collins’ crash from two different perspectives, but at two different points of the narrative and it’s a classy job of writing and editing that the viewer can still follow this on a single viewing.  The editing also extends and amplifies the drama by cutting away from each story at a tense moment - to extend the tension.

                This disjointed structure works with the subjective point of view to make the film immersive and dizzying and, at points, unbearably tense.  Hans Zimmer’s music is a relentless ticking clock - which quickens the pulse and draws the viewer inexorably into the film’s grip.

                Mark Rylance is the plucky sailor who answers his country’s call, to sail his little ship over the Channel.  “We aren’t the only ones to answer”  he tells his son.  Really?  Cos we don’t see any evidence of this.  He is literally the only civilian ship making the crossing - In hindsight, I realised that, as Tommy is Everysoldier, Mr. Dawson is Everysailor - standing in for the dozens, hundreds, who answered the call.

Mark Rylance bravely leading the flotilla of ... Hang on ... Where are they?

                Despite Rylance’s typically poignant performance, I felt that this story was the weakest of the film.  There is an unnecessary addition of a melodramatic sub-plot, featuring Cillian Murphy’s unnamed soldier - this really isn’t needed, it makes the extraordinary more mundane.

                When Farrier overflies the beach - the lines are short and few and far between.  It really doesn’t look like 400, 000 men ... It really doesn’t.  Anyway, his plane flies overhead, silent, engine stilled; this moment is genuinely eerie.  Then, somehow, Farrier manages the physically impossible - to turn his powerless plane round - without it dropping out of the air - Just in time to do a Han Solo and kill the Hun.  At this moment, the film abandons its documentary tone and ascends to the mythic.

                As the film reaches its conclusion, back on English soil, the beaten troops shuffle like zombies down the sidings to the waiting trains.  As articulated by the lad I’m forced to conclude is (in real life) some kind of pop star, there is a sense of regret, even of survivor guilt ... He looks at the people outside the train and bemoans: “We let you down.”  There’s no cheering, no celebrating, not even much relief.

Christopher Nolan giving Harry Styles ... one direction.  Thank-you.

                Meanwhile, still over in France, Farrier, the noble fighter pilot, stands alone on the windswept beach, warming himself on the burning carcass of his Spitfire.  This image serves several purposes.  To see the symbol of British victory, the Spitfire, burning on a foreign shore, this is not an accidental image on which to close.  Nolan has not bought into the simplistic, patriotic narrative of the war, he’s shown it as a tragedy inflicted on young, confused, terrified men, whose greatest achievement was simply staying alive.  And Hardy being surrounded by the Germans and taken prisoner ... Well, that just offers up the possibility of Nolan’s next film.

                Tom Hardy starring in the remake of The Great Escape, anyone?

If just one image could sum up Nolan's complex, nuanced, highly critical view of the war ... It could be this one: A British Spitfire, burning on a French beach.  Apparently, when this happened for real, the pilot just left the plane there and it became a tourist attraction and playground for the local kids.  A fate somewhat lacking in the symbolism of simply torching it!

Dir: Christopher Nolan

Script: Christopher Nolan

Dur: 106 mins

Cert: 12A

DARK KNIGHT RISES

First thoughts.  That’s what this piece will be.  Half-formed, poorly-considered thoughts.

Having maintained my usual exhausting self-imposed media blackout on this film … I went to see it today as cold as anyone could.  I haven’t opened a copy of ‘Empire’ in months, have avoided some of my favourite websites and found myself sitting in the cinema with my fingers in my ears going “La-la-la” while the trailer played.  (If you think I’m joking … You don’t know me that well).

So, I’m not intending to spoil the film, but by merely talking about it, I’m going to … So, if you have any ambition to watch this film … Don’t read on.

Give yourself the chance to see the film …

Okay?  So, I’ll assume you have seen it if you’re still here.

So when is a trilogy not really a trilogy?

I was reasonably indifferent to Batman Begins (2005).  I enjoyed it but, y’know, it wasn’t the ‘Batman: Year One’ I’d been hoping for.  And it had Liam Neeson, which, in his post-Phantom Menace, (1999) pre-Taken (2009) ‘wilderness years’ was rarely a great thing.  Then there were the unconvincing sets (The Narrows) and dodgy special effects (all that mono-rail stuff … please).  But it did have the relationship between Wayne and Alfred and Lucius Fox.  It had the development of the armour and the Tumbler.  It had some pretty bloody spectacular location photography (fighting on a frozen lake, etc).  It at least attempted to be a grown-up superhero film.  A first for a DC-owned property, in my humble opinion!

Then The Dark Knight (2008) arrived.  It was a phenomenon.  Everything that I felt was wrong about Begins was right about this film.  Everything that I had thought right about Begins was even more right.  Gone were the dodgy sets and effects … This time it was shot on location and the effects were practical … where practical.

You won't hear any mentions of either The Joker or Arkham in this film.  No joke.

My straw-poll survey made The Dark Knight the second favourite film of the decade and it was my second favourite too.  It remains my absolute favourite superhero film … And I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Marvelite.

TDK (as its friends call it) was such a profound leap forward from BB (as, I suspect, no one calls it) it vastly surpassed my expectation.  As such, The Dark Knight Rises was almost bound to be a disappointment … Simply because it couldn’t possibly exceed the now stratospheric expectation.

I knew this going in.

As he did with TDK, he begins by catching us off guard.  Whereas that film’s prologue was a bank heist, this film has a full on Bond-movie pre-title sequence, complete with jaw-dropping aerial stunts.  I don’t suppose Nolan is pitching to direct the next Bond but, if he were, this audition would doubtless secure him the job.

Then we go into a lengthy, but necessary process of catch-up.  It’s been eight years since Bats took the fall for the now-sainted Harvey Dent … Eight years when he has not once donned the cape and cowl.  So far so very ‘The Dark Knight Returns’.

If you felt Bats coming out of retirement rang a few bells ...

If you’ve never read Frank Miller and Klaus Janson’s definitive vision of The Batman (the one that effectively made every subsequent story unnecessary) then treat yourself.  The build-up to Bats’ inevitable return is mythical and his arrival is seismic.  Sadly, by comparison, Batman’s return in this film is something of a damp squib.

Anyway, as before, Nolan has lifted elements from a variety of Batman comic-books, 1993's 'Knightfall' by Doug Moench and Jim Aparo, of course, Miller’s 'Dark Knight Returns', touches of Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke's revamped version of Catwoman and, as usual, the atmosphere of the Loeb/Sale stories.  He also refers back, often in cunningly subtle ways, to his own previous films (the burning bat symbol, the frozen river, the circular pit) all of which is mixed together with an awareness of the world-wide audience’s rage at the elite rich having destroyed our economy in the years since the last film came out.

There was clearly no plan at the beginning to make a trilogy – hence the clear visual and tonal difference between the first two films, but, never-the-less, Nolan (and his fellow script-writer, his brother, Jonathan Nolan) have woven enough of the thematic fabric of the first film into this third to create a satisfying conclusion.  Very much in the way the Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995) ties up the threads of Die Hard (1988).

Problems there are, certainly.  Small problems, such as … Why is Wayne limping for the film’s first half hour and where does the limp go?  How come a punch in the back cures a shattered spine?  Who is in charge of The Pit and why is it there?  And Matthew Modine … Ehm … Why?

Then there are larger problems … Such as my failure to connect with Bane.  Maybe it is because muscle is inherently less interesting than cunning.  Where The Joker was an evil genius, expressively performed by Heath Ledger who was inspired by the opportunities the role afforded him … Tom Hardy is literally muzzled as Bane.   

Hardy, no stranger to out-methoding Bale put on two stone of muscle for this.  Bale grew a tache.

His scenes with Batman are perfunctory and largely consist of them whacking each-other in a, frankly, not very cinematic way.  Nolan has never really made a big deal out of the fight scenes with these films.  I’m not complaining, particularly, since fight scenes hardly constitute the intellectual high-point of a movie.  Maybe some of the limitation is brought about by Bale’s insistence on doing most of that sort of stuff himself, maybe some of comes about because the IMAX screen of which Nolan has become fond, doesn’t lend itself to rapid editing and whip-pans.  Whatever the reasons, the fights have never been the point of these films … So, to reduce Batman and Bane’s conflict to a street-brawl seems anti-climactic, as though it is beneath the dignity of both characters.  And there is some dignity to Hardy’s performance of Bane, even if it is stifled by that (never fully explained) mask.  It is also worth mentioning that the slightly fuzzy vocal effect they have put on Hardy's voice makes some of his dialogue difficult to follow.  So, if you have no idea what he's saying, don't worry, you're not alone.

Okay so, unlike, say, Darth Vader, he can at least use his eyes … Which he does, to great effect.  There is some humour here, not least in his Yoda-like dialogue delivery … But times several I found myself wondering if the dialogue was being added afterwards and Hardy was mere miming.  He seemed like the passion and aggression that his physicality demanded was lacking.  Sadly, Hardy is perfectly cast in this role, but is simply not allowed to play to his considerable strengths.  Watch Bronson to see him being uncontrollably physical and truly, disturbingly terrifying.  Here, only in his final scene with Batman does he become a fully rounded character but it is too little too late.

So I was disappointed with Tom Hardy … Not disappointed by him so much as for him.  

Notice how the eyes seem to follow you round the room ...

Maybe if this film hadn’t been shackled to its 12A certificate and, therefore, it’s need to not upset anyone above the age of five, maybe then we could have seen Bane let off the leash.  Maybe characters we are supposed to be invested in could be allowed to die on screen.  Maybe the realistic vision could be permitted some realistic blood-letting.  But none of that is directly Nolan’s fault, that is down to the MPAA and the BBFC who censor the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

But what about the story?  Does it have the multi-layered complexity of TDK?  In spades!  Lesser film-makers would have made massive set-pieces, if not entire movies out of sequences which Nolan references in passing – such as the blowing-up of the bridges, or the trapping of the entire police-force underground.  Indeed, the number of plot-threads is actually too mind-boggling to follow in a single viewing.  This is not helped by the way that the film’s structure seems to fly apart in the third act.  Our hero is lying on his back on the other side of the planet while, in the space of a montage, three months passes and Commissioner Gordon is leading a resistance movement in the unruly streets of chaos-riven Gotham and them … It’s three weeks after that and a few hours till a nuclear bomb is going to turn Manhattan Island (sorry, Gotham Island) into Hiroshima 2.0.

But, hang on, didn’t The Joker mine the bridges last time?  Well, he said he did … But we didn’t see any blowing up.  Here we do.

Sorry … Did you mention a nuclear bomb?  Yep.   Another touch of the old Bond movie!  Mixed-in (had they but known) with a touch of The Avengers.  That, I confess, was a bit of a stretch.  For a series that had striven to be real, to pitch realistic characters with realistic motivations against each-other in realistic ways … The nuclear stand-off and its resolution was pushing things a bit.

Okay, so I had problems with the film … Problems which may evaporate with a second viewing.  But there were also pleasures.

What's new, pussy-cat?

Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle is a pitch-perfect delight.  She isn’t there as cheese-cake.  I didn’t notice a single lingering shot of her arse in her tight costume.  She doesn’t need Bruce to come along and rescue her … indeed she does the rescuing … And no one, at any point, even contemplates calling her ‘Cat Woman’.  Oh.  Thank.  God.

Joseph Gordon Levitt is spot-on as John Blake a character who takes up the campaigning reigns of a younger Jim Gordon, who is now polluted by the lie he has been telling about Harvey Dent all these years.  Indeed, as the film proceeds, he evolves from being a proto-Gordon, to a proto-Bruce Wayne … And there will be much interweb speculation about where that particular story thread will lead.

Rather like Bale before him ... The uncomfortable teenager has all grown -up and is an action movie star in the making.

Michael Caine succeeds (once again) in bringing a lump to the throat as Wayne’s Better Angel, constantly telling him the unvarnished truth … Even if one or two of his exchanges did echo with the recent memory of Martin Freeman’s astonishing turn as John Watson in the TV version of Sherlock.

I loved the way that this film (inadvertently) turns over the coin to its scarred side and shows us what a big city is really like.  In The Amazing Spider-Man (as well as in Raimi’s more fantastical versions of the story) we got New Yorkers pulling together to protect their own.  But Gotham, as seen by Nolan (and, before him, Frank Miller) is a very different kind of New York.  Here, when the ‘ordinary Gothamites’ are cut loose … They just ransack the place, freeing prisoners, setting up kangaroo courts and hanging ‘the guilty’ from bridges.  This is a city where freedom from the shackles of law-and-order simply means anarchic self-destruction.

I loved the hectic, dizzying pace of the third act, with its echoes of Robocop (1987) and Escape From New York (1981).  I loved the sheer scale of the visuals … From the size of the sets (the huge, Goya-esque court-room … The multi-story sewer … The run-off where the police are trapped … The Pit) as much as the audacious way the locations are shot (as often as not from the air).

Half upside-down insect / half helicopter hybrid ... If I can't have Deckard's Spinner - I want that!

I love The Bat.  I love the fact that they don’t call it a Bat-Wing and I want one!

I love the ambition of taking a superhero movie and making it about class-war, terrorism, social group-dynamics, personal-morality and war!

I love the fact that the last act rambles over five months, has none of the unities script-writers are trained to observe, and yet still hangs together as an energetic and epic story.

I love the fact that the film has about four false endings and I only guessed two of them.

I haven't mentioned The Bat Pod ... But Selina Kyle just looks too cool on it to ignore.

Ultimately, this is not as satisfying an experience as The Dark Knight.  It strives for so much scale the human element gets lost.  It strives for so many narrative threads that the coherence gets lost.  It lacks the charismatic heart The Joker gave to the last film and it lacks his clearly-defined motivation.  We never do really know why Bane is doing what he’s doing.  But it is an experience, a truly epic experience full of ideas … And there are precious few of those in most $250 million movies.

If Nolan has failed it is only partially and it is only because he was too ambitious.  And God bless him for it.  That ambition worked in The Dark Knight and gave us the first IMAX block-buster.  It worked in Inception and gave us the most intelligent block-buster probably ever … And it works here more than it doesn’t.

None of that 3D nonsense for our Christopher.

More than anything else … I love the fact that this is in 2D.  And always will be.

I also love the fact that, in a few days, I will be seeing it again on an IMAX screen!  So I might be back with more …

When you have seen the film you, if you're anything like me, probably like to peek behind the curtain to see how it was done.  Well, rather conveniently, this 13-minute-long making-of has been on-line for a while.  Just the job.

… Meanwhile, as you may know, there has been a typically American tragedy at a midnight screening of this film.  In a town apparently just fifteen miles from Columbine, another psychopath starved of publicity has decided to make himself famous in the wrongest way possible. 

The news media, which is whacking itself dry with excitement over this, is sparing is no lascivious detail of what they are already calling ‘The Batman Killings’.  Indeed, as I type this, they are telling us that the perpetrator was made up to look like The Joker.  This will, inevitably, re-ignite the Media effects Debate that rages on year-after-year and which I will, in all likelihood, be evoking to my Media students at some point in the future.

Over at Zap 2 It, they have noticed that Miller's 'Dark Knight Returns' chillingly dealt with this issue (including the notion of the media's culpability) in its Arnold Crimp tableau:

The message here is that a deranged mind - and let us not forget that no-one chooses to be mentally ill - will take inspiration from any source, will confuse and misinterpret that inspiration and will fit it into a skewed reality.  Wiser voices than mine have noted, many times, that you cannot legislate for the infinite variety of human personality.  But one thing we can do, is not obsess over the details. 

Earlier today, a friend and ex-student reminded me of this … It’s short, it’s pointed and it’s the single most coherent comment I’ve ever heard on this type of atrocity …

For now, if you were intending to go and see The Dark Knight Rises … or any other movie … Go.  Don’t let the weakness of one mad individual, or the cumulative weakness of one mad society, dictate your actions.

If you want to know more about violent crime in American – watch Bowling For Columbine and if you want to understand the irresistible power of the media over our minds … I urge you to look up the name Adam Curtis.