Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dunkirk’ on HBO Max, a Sight-and-Sound Spectacle That May Be Christopher Nolan’s Masterpiece

Some of us are still straightening out our warped cerebrums after watching, appreciating and/or enduring Christopher Nolan’s latest outing, Tenet, so maybe new HBO Max addition Dunkirk will offer a palate-cleansing reminder that the director can make a movie that doesn’t require charts and graphs and complex equations and constant use of the pause and rewind buttons in order to comprehend it. The 2017 film — a BOATS movie (Based On A True Story) with actual boats! — stood among the year’s best, stacking up eight Oscar noms and three wins, quite deservingly for editing and both sound categories, since it offered the type of rousing sensory experience that maximized the theatrical experience. For that reason, I hesitated to watch it again at home; now let’s see if it holds up on the smaller screen.

DUNKIRK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Pamphlets flutter to the ground. A British soldier, Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), picks one up. Nazi propaganda: it says “you’re surrounded.” He and a few other stragglers make their way down the abandoned streets of Dunkirk, France. Shots ring out. Some get picked off. Tommy survives, makes it over a sandbagged blockade that might just be the last flimsy roadblock between encroaching German forces and the sitting-duck British and French forces squatting on the beach and waiting to be shipped across the English Channel to relative, and likely temporary, safety in the U.K., assuming their boats don’t get bombed by airplanes or torpedoed by U-boats. Tommy comes across a French soldier (Damien Bonnard) and helps him bury another man. They remain partners in desperation for the rest of the film. Waiting with the hundreds of thousands of men on the beach seems like a good way to die, so they each grab one end of a stretcher and make their way up a lonely and godforsaken pier, the mole, to a boat transporting the wounded, a maneuver they hope allows them to get away from this hell, but they’re kicked off as soon as they deposit their suffering cargo and, moments later, watch as the ship is attacked and sunk. They’ll have to find another way across.

On the U.K. shore, Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) and his son Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney) prep their weekender boat for an arduous trek across the English Channel. A call went out for civilian help. Those with watercraft are asked to rescue the British soldiers stranded at Dunkirk. The Navy is stretched thin and smaller craft can efficiently pick up men directly from the beach. Peter’s friend George (Barry Keoghan) joins them, helping load the boat with extra lifejackets. They make their way across the rough waters. Mr. Dawson points out how the sound of British Spitfire airplanes overhead offer “the sweetest sound you could hear out here.” Maybe the buzzing roar is aesthetically pleasing to him. Maybe their presence helps ward off enemies who might attack them. Maybe it reminds him of something he experienced, or once loved. It’s probably all of this.

In the air, one of those Spitfires is piloted by Farrier (Tom Hardy). He’s one of a trio of pilots defending the soldiers on the beach and boats in the Channel from attacks. He knocks some of the Luftwaffe out of the sky — a couple fighters, a bomber — and is soon the only British plane left. His fuel gauge is broken, so he charts its use manually on the instrument panel with a piece of chalk. He banks and glides, chases and eludes. He finesses the throttle. His thumb hovers over the gunfire button. He mumbles to himself a little. He may be the last line of defense for countless countrymen.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Dunkirk debuted a few months prior to Winston Churchill bio Darkest Hour, and they share a dovetailing narrative. Atonement featured a memorable scene on the beach at Dunkirk that’s one of the great virtuoso single-take shots of the last couple decades. It also brings to mind Saving Private Ryan, Patton, The Longest Day, The Bridge on the River Kwai and many others, since it’s destined to be one of the great World War II movies — if not war movies, period — ever.

Performance Worth Watching: Some take umbrage with Nolan’s characters here, saying they’re underwritten. I assert that the dire immediacy of the situation requires the melodrama of backstories moot, rooting our emotional concern in simple survival, not just for the handful of men central to the narrative, but the hundreds of thousands on the beach. As ever, Rylance is a gem of an actor, giving a minimally written character significant depth with his nonverbal performance. He conveys a bounty of traits — wisdom, weariness, grief, hope, warmth, concern, pride — with his facial expressions and in the margins of his line-readings.

Memorable Dialogue: Mr. Dawson takes stock of the shellshocked soldier they just rescued from the water: “He’s not himself. He may never be himself again.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Hopefully your screen is large and your audio setup is decent, because they’ll make your Dunkirk viewing that much more enjoyable. (Nerdy but relevant aside: I watch stuff on a modest home theater with three audio channels and a 65” plasma screen. RIP plasma!) I was delighted to experience a goosebump-ridden visceral response similar to that of my three-years-ago theatrical viewings as Hans Zimmer’s signature droning score rumbled from the speakers and the ratatat of machine guns and the ping ping ping of bullet casings and the gurgle of propellers in the water and the unmistakable growl of fighter plane engines and the soundtrack’s persistent and almost subliminal tick-tick-tick-ticking of a clock — because time itself is a character here — fill our ears as long expanses of dialogue-free narrative puts us as Right There as nearly any film can, right there in your living room, right there on the beach at Dunkirk, right there in the choppy English Channel, right there in the cramped cockpit.

Such gloriously effective sound is the key element of Dunkirk’s realism and immediacy. Few films are so convincing in their physical construction; fewer still are so sonically detailed. Nolan’s army of appreciators know he isn’t content to create a straightforward, linear narrative — he has a reputation to uphold, so he ingeniously manipulates timelines and intertwines the three points-of-view until they converge into one breathless, climactic moment. He then offers a denouement that’s poetic in its temporary peacefulness, but laced with melancholy and foreboding, because the Germans were soon to encroach upon England, and the citizens and soldiers knew it. The film is poignant and thrilling in equal measure. It’s Nolan’s most brilliant narrative gambit in a career defined by his ability to surprise us.

Our Call: STREAM IT. I stand by my assertion that Dunkirk is Nolan’s masterpiece. Suffice to say, if you haven’t seen it, you should, and if you have, it’s absolutely worth seeing again (and probably again and again).

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Where to stream Dunkirk