Nolan’s 10th symphony a triumph

DUNKIRK photo 3 - soldiers

A scene from the Warner Bros. Pictures action thriller "DUNKIRK."

A heart-pounding thriller bespoke in war film couture, “Dunkirk” uses an age-old genre to fully realize the potential of traditional movie making in all its vital, cinematic ways.

Christopher Nolan has masterminded a strange, wondrous contradiction for his 10th film.  It’s at once a summer tentpole blockbuster and a staid indie-style character study. It’s Baroque and minimalist. It oscillates between a 110-piece orchestral extravaganza and a living room chamber music performance.

Stretching the music metaphor further, Nolan composes and conducts the proceedings symphonically in four movements that work concurrently yet at different rates of speed.

The first movement, lasting a week, centers around three army soldier grunts stuck on the beaches of Dunkirk, France, with the merciless German army marching dreadfully closer, and the Nazi air support dropping death from the skies on them as they await rescue, except a major  rescue doesn’t seem to be coming.

The Brits, you see, have decided to preserve their Navy to defend the British shores against a possible future attack rather than risk their assets on rescuing these 300,000 souls. Here, these three young men (boys, really)  illustrate that sometimes war is not about glory or fighting, but rather, simple instinctual survival at all costs.

The second movement, lasting a day, covers a civilian man, his son and a family friend, who sail their yacht toward Dunkirk to help any way they can to help the British forces. At the time, civilian boats on the southern coast were registered with the government so that they could be conscripted for wartime need.

Since the Navy can’t devote its full resources to the rescue, it’s up to a ragtag collection of pleasure boats and fishing vessels to rush to their aid. Here the movie explores the vanishing point where societal roles of fighters and civilians blur.

The third movement, lasting an hour, follows three Royal Air Force pilots who start a flight mission to Dunkirk to offer air support for the helpless soldiers. Here, Nolan puts us in the cockpit of a British Spitfire pilot as he defends his fellow army and navy brethren from the Germans.

The film starts quietly, slowly in a near-disjointed manner like an awakening or birth. It’s more of a tone poem than a clear narrative. With three storylines that move at three different gaits, we get echoes of the timeplay in Nolan’s previous works — the relativity of “Interstellar” and the dream within the dream within the dream of “Inception.”

Several scenes from each movement intersect during the course of the film. That is, we see the same events from multiple viewpoints — land, sea, air.

Eventually, all three storylines come together, coalescing into a propulsive, fourth movement that has both a stirring, satisfying finish and an emotionally-moving denouement.

Behind it and under it all, is a meticulous soundtrack by the legendary Hans Zimmer. Nolan deploys Zimmer’s work to match his script and vision note for word, sound for image.

Speaking of image, we are treated to wide, high angle shots of beaches and seas, to thrilling, dizzying aerial dogfights, to torpedoed ships sinking shockingly-quick into the depths like a dying animal, of soldiers running, ducking and dodging gunfire and bombs.

Shot almost entirely on IMAX, this is a movie that begs — no, demands — to be seen in a theater (sorry, couch streamers). Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema (“Interstellar”) takes full advantage of the film production’s technology to give us a striking visual experience. Nolan’s previous cinematographer Wally Pfister (the “Batman” movies, “Insomnia”) graduated to the director’s chair, and Van Hoytema has been no downgrade since.

The massive spectacle of a Nolan event often gives short shrift to the cast members, and it happens here too, but credit is still due.

We get strong performances from just about everyone, from Nolan regulars Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy, to Shakespeare-on-the-Hollywood-and-Vine talent Kenneth Branagh, Mark Rylance and James D’Arcy and to a trio of newcomers, Fionn Whitehead, Aneurin Barnard and Harry Styles (he of the boy band that your teenaged daughter/niece/cousin loves), who play the soldiers in the first storyline.

But the ensemble cast is secondary to the wizard-behind-the-curtain machinations of the 21st century’s top Movie with a capital “M” director. The true star of this film is Nolan, and he has given us a triumphant masterpiece.