Even though Christopher Nolan has never done a war movie before, he's jumping in headfirst and taking chances with Dunkirk.
Nolan told French magazine Premiere this week about his latest film that will be released this summer, but based on his hints, it sounds like this will be a major departure from Nolan's normally straight-forward, exposition-heavy films. He explained (translated from French) about the film's unique three-pronged plot-structure:
"The film is told from three points of view. The air (planes), the land (on the beach) and the sea (the evacuation by the navy). For the soldiers embarked in the conflict, the events took place on different temporalities ...On land, some stayed one week stuck on the beach. On the water, the events lasted a day [maximum]; [a]nd if you were flying to Dunkirk, the British spitfires would carry an hour of fuel. To mingle these different versions of history, one had to mix the temporal strata. Hence the complicated structure...[e]ven if the story, once again, is very simple."
Nolan also added that, in comparison with many of his past films, Dunkirk has very little dialogue:
"The empathy for the characters has nothing to do with their story. I did not want to go through the dialogue, tell the story of my characters. The problem is not who they are, who they pretend to be or where they come from. The only question I was interested in was: Will they get out of it? Will they be killed by the next bomb while trying to join the mole? Or will they be crushed by a boat while crossing?"
(H/T Premiere)
