Wartime Terror And Valor Thread Together In Nolan's Gripping 'Dunkirk'
Christopher Nolan's taut, suspenseful film tells three interwoven stories of a massive troop evacuation during World War II.
Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan's enveloping and prismatic World War II movie, is the prequel — historically speaking — to Battle of Britain. That film, a jolly, G-rated celebration of British pluck from 1969, features an all-star cast, some of whom still show up in Nolan movies to this day. It made the deadliest conflict in human history seem about as scary as a V-E Day Parade.
But a month before the start of England's 1940 campaign to defend itself by air, British forces retreated from Dunkirk by sea. With 400,000 troops stranded onexhausting, I reckon. With James Cameron having exiled himself to Pandora and Peter Jackson passed out on the Shire, Nolan is more or less the last auteur buster of blocks still standing.
