the British army, stranded on the
beach along with thousands of
his comrades. In the air is Spit-
fire pilot Farrier (Tom Hardy),
one of the few Royal Air Force
pilots charged with taking on
the German bombers intent
on sinking the ships and boats
headed for the rescue mission.
In charge of one such vessel is
Dawson (Mark Rylance), who
picks up a shellshocked survivor
of a sunken rescue ship (Cillian
Murphy) along the way. One of
the men in charge of the evacua-
NJ STAGE 2017 - Vol. 4 No. 7
tion is Navy Commander Bolton
(Kenneth Branagh), the Blighty
whose cliffs he can see through
his binoculars seeming a million
miles away from the horrors of
the French beach.
Dunkirk is a resolutely old-
fashioned epic, unconcerned
with the dos and don’ts of con-
temporary Hollywood storytell-
ing. Nolan’s quartet of central
characters don’t provide distinct
subplots so much as distinct per-
spectives. The director isn’t con-
cerned with telling a story, pre-
INDEX
NEXT ARTICLE
24