By the time Branagh does help us to understand the larger picture, it’s because he’s staying on the beach, hoping to get the French soldiers out next. When Kenneth Branagh finally shows up as a commander, he’s just clinging to hope like the rest of them. We’re right there with the soldiers, who don’t know whether someone’s coming to save them or not. Instead, Nolan gives his audience the credit we deserve and explains nothing. A far weaker adaptation would cut to Winston Churchill ordering the navy’s requisition of civilian boats, or bring a general in to tell us how important the army is to the war effort. In Nolan’s vision of Dunkirk, the focus never leaves the ground and the individuals at the center of the story. Nolan’s true trick with Dunkirk, and the advantage of the multiple perspectives he employs, is to show all the ways the operation was a massive logistical undertaking and impressive feat of coordination, while at the same time an absolute horror show and chaotic mess.

The story of the rescue at Dunkirk is already one of the most incredible, fascinating, and miraculous moments in modern history, but in the hands of Nolan, it’s equal parts panicked and inspiring. Dawson (Mark Rylance), his son Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney), and Peter’s friend George (Barry Keoghan). We follow soldiers (Fionn Whitehead and Harry Styles) stranded on the beach for days, a pilot (an excellent Tom Hardy) who arrives for the climactic last few hours, and the home-boating crew of Mr. Image: Warner Bros.īecause, it seems, he’ll never tell another story straight on, Nolan breaks the rescue narrative up, showing it from different perspectives and different time periods.

With Nazis encroaching from every side, most of the British army seemed hopelessly trapped, and the war doomed - after all, how could England defend itself without an army, let alone fight to help liberate the rest of Europe? But in the eleventh hour, a daring rescue plan came through to save the continent when hundreds of civilians sailed the channel to help rescue their boys.

Christopher Nolan’s only a few weeks away from premiering his newest movie, Oppenheimer, which means it’s the perfect chance to catch up on his best one: Dunkirk, which is now streaming on Netflix.ĭunkirk tells the true story of the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of British soldiers stranded on the French beaches of Dunkirk toward the beginning of the second World War.

World war ii navy ship movie on netflix