There were reports on Twitter yesterday of keen Harry Styles' fans waiting outside the first press screenings of Christopher Nolan’s latest film, Dunkirk. The crowds weren’t there to hear the verdict on the film (very good) but to ask one all-important question: would Harry’s character survive to the end? We’re not going to tell you that (OK, if you REALLY want to know you can look down at the bottom of this story. BEWARE SPOILERS) but we can tell you that the heartthrob displays real acting ability in his first big-screen role, which should delight not only his fans but all film lovers.
Dunkirk, as some of you may remember from GCSE history, was the site of a massive evacuation effort in the early days of World War II. Some 400,000 British, French and Belgian troops were pushed back by the invading Nazis to a tiny area of the French coast, but there they stalled, with their backs against the sea, German planes dive-bombing the crowds and little help in sight. There weren’t enough naval transports to evacuate so many, especially with U-boats active in the Channel and the Luftwaffe attacking from the air. So the men endured, moving as many as they could onto whatever would float and hoping for some sort of miraculous deliverance from this nightmare.
The film’s lead, to the extent that there is one, isn’t Harry but a newcomer called Fionn Whitehead, who plays Tommy (the traditional nickname for British soldiers). He meets Styles’ Alex maybe 20 minutes into the film as the pair escape one of the many mini-disasters that punctuate their ordeal, and the pair try to find their own way off the beach as some of their fellow soldiers give up, or obey orders and stand waiting for deliverance.
That’s not just one thread of the story, however, and all the threads happen (confusingly) at slightly different times and different paces. In the skies over the Channel, Spitfire pilots Farrier (Tom Hardy) and Collins (Jack Lowden) are trying to protect the evacuation ships from German aircraft, against a far more numerous German force. And civilian Mr Dawson (Mark Rylance) is a weekend boat owner who steers his own little ship across to France to assist with the evacuation and carry away as many of the men as possible, with only two teenage boys for help.
The history on Dunkirk is an inspiring one, a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat, and was used for British propaganda almost immediately by Winston Churchill. It’s already been turned into films like 1943’s Mrs Miniver, which focused on the wait back home, and 1958’s Dunkirk. But there’s no question that this one goes further than any before to show the ordeal that the hundreds of thousands of men on that beach suffered, and the strength and ingenuity it took simply to survive. Famous actors occasionally pop up to explain what’s going on – Kenneth Branagh plays one of the leaders of the troops, with James D’Arcy as his right-hand man – but the focus is on the desperate infantry men just trying to make it home, and luckily those young, sometimes untried actors shine.
Styles slips naturally in among the other soldiers: they’re basically all chiselled of jaw and sharp of cheekbone, so he just looks like a slightly handsomer member of the same gang. But his performance is good too, especially given what must have been difficult filming circumstances. As you’d expect of a story about trying to get off a beach onto a ship, there are many scenes where soldiers are soaked with cold water, in imminent danger of drowning or actually immersed in the uncaring sea. Styles also gets one of the more fraught confrontations of the film, and manages convincingly. Expect more film work to follow this one. Fionn Whitehead too comes out of this as a name to watch: his eyes those of a man pushed beyond endurance and willing to do whatever it takes to get across the sea.
The film’s success is, in a way, a shame. Those of us with a twisted disposition were sort of hoping there’d be a flame war between Harries / Directioners and Nolanites, two of the most fervent fandoms on the internet and two groups with little overlap. On the one hand, (mostly) teen and 20-something women who know a good tune when they hear it; on the other, 30-something men who like Batman but also want to cultivate a reputation as intellectuals. Alas, Nolan has done right by Styles and vice versa, so the Great Cultural Civil War will have to wait for another day, perhaps when Quentin Tarantino casts Louis Tomlinson in his next crime epic and kills him in the first act.
In the meantime, whether you’re a Harry-bo or not (we’re still trying to settle on the collective noun), Dunkirk is riveting: almost unbearably tense and quietly powerful. Nolan used real planes for many of the flying scenes, and shot with IMAX cameras for massive impact. The sight of thousands of men lined up on the beaches, waiting for ships that don’t come, will stick with you for weeks afterwards. See it on the biggest screen possible.
READY FOR THAT SPOILER?
Harry makes it to the end. Enjoy!
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