‘Dunkirk’: What the Critics Are Saying

War is hell, as everyone knows. War movies, on the other hand, are another story — and with reviews for Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk beginning to emerge, it’s looking as if this re-creation of the Dunkirk evacuation of 1940 has left critics near-unanimous about one simple fact: This movie is a masterpiece.

Don’t just take my word for it. “Dunkirk is an impressionist masterpiece,” writes The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy, who goes on to add that “Nolan has gotten everything just right” in the movie. McCarthy takes particular note of the contributions of cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, production designer Nathan Crowley and costume designer Jeffrey Kurland. “All of Nolan’s films are intensely visual, but it’s fair to say that Dunkirk is especially so, given the sparseness, and strict functionality, of the dialogue,” he argues. “This is not a war film of inspirational speeches, digressions about loved ones back home or hopes for the future. No, it’s all about the here and now and matters at hand under conditions that demand both endless waiting and split-second responses.”

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Time Out‘s Dave Calhoun agrees, writing that “the power of Christopher Nolan’s harrowing, unusual dramatic re-creation is that it tries — with real success — not to make any of this feel like just another war movie. Instead there’s an uneasy sense of a bloody, strange event unfolding in that unknowable way that those on the ground might have experienced it. Dunkirk is awe-inspiring and alienating, as it should be.”

That’s a theme touched on by IndieWire‘s David Ehrlich, who writes, “Few movies have so palpably conveyed the sheer isolation of fear, and the extent to which history is often made by people who are just trying to survive it — few movies have so vividly illustrated that one man can only do as much for his country as a country can do for one of its men. But Nolan, by stressing that grim truth to its breaking point, returns from the fray with a commanding testament to a simple idea: We may die alone, but we live together.”