STACK #158 Dec 2017

DVD&BD FEATURE

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The Great escape

Christopher Nolan takes on one of the most crucial events ofWorldWar II in Dunkirk . Words Paul Jones

W hat is the measure of a good film? Its cast and director? The studio behind the production? How well it performs at the box office? Whether or not an aggregated review score rates highly as a percentage on a website? My litmus test is far less complicated: if I’m still thinking about the film a week later, then it’s classified as a winner. Four months after seeing Dunkirk at the media screening, I’m still thinking about it. This month not only brings the joy of Christmas, but Dunkirk finally lands in-store at JB. Historical drama is new territory for director Christopher Nolan and taking on the biggest seaborne evacuation in history could, understandably, be conceived as sheer lunacy for the filmmaker. However, undeterred by the scale of the ambitious production, Nolan set to work recreating the great escape of the British

Expeditionary Force, intent on keeping the CGI effects to a minimum. Consequently, Nolan shot actual aerial photography using vintage aircraft. He built a full-scale ship that could be sunk and used cutouts for the troops on the

on the war genre that rewrites all the rules. Codenamed Operation Dynamo, Dunkirk was an unmitigated disaster despite being pushed as a morale boosting victory. When Germany invaded the Netherlands, Belgium and France in early May 1940, a series of decisive victories spearheaded by Hitler’s relentless armoured divisions forced the British Expeditionary Force (400,000) and French armies back to the coast. The town of Dunkirk became the focus of a frenetic evacuation. In just over a week, 338,226 personnel escaped across the channel utilising navy and civilian craft. The British prime minister had predicted that only 30,000 would be rescued in the lead up to the mass exodus. “Like with most British people, Dunkirk is a story I grew up with,” says Christopher Nolan, talking during a Los Angeles press junket. “As children, we received a very simplified, almost mythic, fairytale version of what happened

I’ve never quite understood why a modern film hadn’t been made about it

beach as opposed to rendering the soldiers on a computer. All of this, alongside the director’s reliance on performances to tell the story instead of a detailed script, and a brilliant score from Hans Zimmer, help create a modern innovative take

However the rising tone, for example, is simply a limited series of cycling tones each separated by an octave and played at different volumes. These volume changes force the listener to concentrate on certain notes while ignoring the others. Thus the illusion of a continuous rise is created.

Zimmer deployed this audio trick with startling effect in Dunkirk, raising the tension to fever pitch with this seemingly incessant sonic crawl. Nolan also recorded his pocket watch and sent the recording to Zimmer, who put it in the score to add to the drama.

Lion King, Black Hawk Down, Inception ), the score uses an audio illusion known as a Shepard tone. Think of it as the Penrose stairs or the barber’s pole optical illusion. The Shepard tone gives the illusion of a tone either continuously rising or falling.

Dunkirk ’s Shepard Tone A significant aspect of portraying the desperation and futility of the evacuation from the beaches in Nolan’s Dunkirk is the pulsating score. Written by Hans Zimmer ( The

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DECEMBER 2017

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