Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk is pretty atypical for a Hollywood-mounted World War II movie. There are no American troops and the movie depicts a crushing defeat for the Allies. On top of being an atypical war movie, Dunkirk is also pretty atypical for a Christopher Nolan movie. There’s plenty of breathtaking IMAX cinematography, but there are no gonzo sci-fi concepts like dream heists or time-traveling bullets.
Despite breaking the Nolan mold in a few key ways, adapting a true story with a decidedly unambiguous ending, Dunkirk still exhibits plenty of the director’s familiar trademarks. From breathtaking practical effects to shaky handheld camerawork to meddling with the flow of time, Dunkirk is full of Nolan’s favorite stylistic tricks.
Manipulating Time
There’s nothing that Nolan loves more as a filmmaker than using the power of cinema to manipulate the flow of time. In Tenet, he used a black-market time machine to send bullets and plot points back in time.
Dunkirk doesn’t feature time travel, but it does feature Nolan’s signature time-bending. The three parallel storylines are cut together as though they’re concurrent, but one of them takes place across a week, one of them takes place across a day, and the other takes place across an hour.
Shaky Handheld Camerawork
Nolan is renowned for using shaky handheld cameras in his action scenes. His cameras barely captured the action during Batman’s frenzied fight scenes and they frantically follow the unpredictable events of the dream world in Inception.
The more intense the action in Nolan’s films is, the shakier the cameras are. Dunkirk recreates a desperate wartime evacuation, so the camera is rarely still. IMAX cameras are incredibly heavy, but Nolan insists on camera operators carrying them by hand to create this cinematic effect.
Music By Hans Zimmer
Although he’s recently switched to working with Ludwig Göransson, Hans Zimmer was Nolan’s original go-to composer. Zimmer composed the scores for The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, and indeed Dunkirk, and received Oscar nominations for the latter three.
Zimmer’s signature wall-of-sound compositions brought the intense action of Dunkirk to life. This music paired beautifully with Nolan’s visuals to put the audience in the soldiers’ shoes.
Good Things Come In Threes
Nolan is a steadfast believer in the “Rule of Three.” The most crucial aspects of Nolan’s stories tend to come in groups of three. The Dark Knight trilogy follows a traditional three-act structure. The illusions in The Prestige are pulled off in three parts (the pledge, the turn, and the prestige).
Fischer’s dream in Inception is split into three distinctive levels: the city, the hotel, and the mountain. In Interstellar, the characters visit three planets: Miller’s planet, Mann’s planet, and Edmunds’ planet. And, of course, Dunkirk is separated into three simultaneous story threads following troops on the land, in the air, and at sea.
Changing Aspect Ratios
Nolan tends to change the aspect ratio within his movies. This isn’t The Grand Budapest Hotel; it’s more of a side effect of using a few different cameras. Nolan’s penchant for shooting action with IMAX cameras means that the aspect ratio is constantly changing.
The same thing can be seen in Michael Bay’s movies, but thanks to Nolan’s sharper editing, it’s not as distracting in his films. Nolan’s ever-changing aspect ratios can be found in Dunkirk, Tenet, Interstellar, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises, among others.
Recurring Actors
Like many auteurs, Nolan has a recurring company of actors. From Marion Cotillard to Joseph Gordon-Levitt, if Nolan gets along with an actor and they do a great job with his dialogue, he’ll bring them back for different roles in future projects. Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy have each appeared in a bunch of Nolan’s movies (including a Batman villain role for each of them). The two actors star alongside newcomer Fionn Whitehead in Dunkirk. Murphy plays a shipwrecked soldier and Hardy plays a fearless fighter pilot.
Nolan regular Michael Caine has a vocal cameo as “Fortis Leader” in reference to his role in Battle of Britain. After playing Commander Bolton in Dunkirk, Kenneth Branagh reunited with Nolan to play the villainous Andrei Sator in Tenet.
Mind-Blowing Practical Effects
If it’s possible to pull off his ambitious set-pieces for real, then Nolan will pull it off for real. The director often opts for practical effects over Hollywood’s usual copout CGI. He’d rather get a stunt team to crash a plane into a hangar or flip a giant truck on the streets of Chicago and simply point a camera at it than paint in the effects digitally in post-production. As a result, Nolan’s action sequences are infinitely more compelling than the average blockbuster spectacle.
From sinking a real ship to setting off bombs on the beach, Nolan staged almost all of the action in Dunkirk for real. The production team essentially paid to re-enact the evacuation and then surrounded it with cameras.
