Dunkirk: The Blood-Dimmed Tide

That it's taken me almost a full week to process my reaction to Dunkirk should say a lot about the effect of the film. I'll usually watch a movie like this twice, once for the experience, a second time for the craft but my first thoughts after exiting the theater was that it was going to be a long time before I am prepared for that repeat viewing. No, I went in thinking this was going to be another war flick, another Nolan vehicle with some clever structure or idea that would engage my brain but about a third of the way into the story a thought surfaced like an enemy submarine in my mind: I am not prepared for this. And then it got worse. This is not to say it's bad or torturous, just that it's the most mature, relentless, grueling film that Chris Nolan has made so far, it fully establishes him as one of the preeminent writer/directors working today and if it doesn't snag him his Oscar in one of the two big categories I'm burning the whole building down to the ground.

Part of the reason I wasn't prepared for Dunkirk is that it's been a long time since I went to the theater to see an actual film film, as opposed to a Marvel movie or a popcorn summer comedy blah blah blah. I watch the heavier stuff at home where I can pause and control the pace or take a minute to distance myself from the ending of, let's say, Okja, that had me blubbering like a small child whose balloon had floated away. Instead, Nolan takes one of his greatest skills, building and compounding tension until it reaches some breathless, seemingly unending stress test, that he normally reserves for the second or third act of his movies and just does that from frame one of Dunkirk. The entire movie is an escalation of suspense that is a little difficult to watch at times as the existential nightmare relentlessly closes in on these laconic, defeated soldiers waiting on the beaches of France. Stylistically, this is going to be called a minimalist masterpiece in visual storytelling, deservedly so, but the real literal unseen champion of the film is also in the sound design which is fucking terrifying.

The other thing that left me unprepared was my familiarity with both the history of the event and with war films in general. How much suspense could a movie create if you already know how it's going to end? A lot, it turns out. Particularly if there is no grand or epic score from James Horner or John Williams to tell you what to feel and when. Dunkirk is unique in that sense, it hits none of the normal beats that a war movie will do. No one is in charge, not really. There's no funny guy, or tough guy, or a hero type. To be completely honest, there really is very little actual combat that takes place outside of the aerial dogfights and nary a word of exposition or personal history from any of the principle characters. We never actually see the German army, which I found incredibly refreshing, too many WWII films turn into Nazi fetishism. Instead, the audience is left with the grim realities of the world coming apart at the seams. Something I like to keep in mind whenever I start a new book or a show on the subject, is that we view the second World War from the perspective of the victors. But, at the time, success, and as in Dunkirk, even survival, was far from certain. Before the events of The Miracle of Dunkirk, as Nolan points out, it was truly the darkest hour of Western Civilization to this point in history. If a killing blow had been struck, as it almost certainly was about to be, England and the rest of the United Kingdom have no standing army to defend against invasion. If England falls there is no need for legitimate defenses on the Western Front and Nazi Germany turns the full brunt of its forces on Russia and, instead of being stopped within sight of Moscow's towers, rolls on through, potentially knocking their last remaining foe out of the fight, thus completely securing Fortress Europa. This is assuming the North African campaign takes on a lower priority since the oil fields needed by the Reich would be supplemented by the Caucuses regions in….

Anyway. After a few days I changed my mind, I will be seeing Dunkirk again in the near future, specifically, in the theater because that's what the movie is designed for. Nolan is a film purist, a snob in the right kind of way who is keeping the actual medium (as opposed to digital) alive, and who rails against Netflix's distribution model or lack thereof. His theater is a sacred place and this is perfectly true of his latest. It feels important and it was difficult trying to start a review of a movie that just needs to be experienced, because that's what it was, an experience. Afterwards, I felt like I'd been through some shit, as opposed to having just sat in a comfortable chair eating a soft baked pretzel with a beer. The best description and compliment I can give Dunkirk is that after a good movie, I can talk about it freely, I like selling people on something that deserves to be seen. A really good movie will make me think and I'll compose some pretentious think piece on the themes and concepts explored. But this film left me speechless. I was sobbing a little with all kinds of emotions while I tried to remember where I parked my car and I made it about five minutes up the road before I broke down into an ugly cry. And what followed was that remarkable release of emotions, of, again, that tension, and it was as cathartic of a feeling as I've had at the theater in a long time. After years of being coddled and tickled by summer blockbuster fare and tentpole franchises, it feels good to be reminded what cinema and Christopher Nolan are capable of. Is this my favorite film of his? No. I probably won't throw it on in the background while I fold laundry or nurse a hangover some day. Is this his best film so far? Almost certainly, and that's saying quite a bit. Just. Be prepared.

Interstellar: This Would Be A Good Death…

Revised for accuracy. Given recent personal experiences I’ve had a hard time finding a way to conclude this piece, which by my own admission rambles and meanders on rhetorically. You can only smack the hell out of a laptop so hard it resets so many times before you realize there is really more wrong with the user than the hardware. This stems from a lack of confidence, a fear of sentimentality, and a true monster: a loss of purpose. I don’t know how to say ‘I have a friend who is seriously ill and it scares the shit out of me’ in any way that isn’t cliche or trite. So fuck it, that’s there and it’s going to affect my inadequate writing. Go see Interstellar.

It becomes more and more difficult to write about film in the age of the Internet. Hyperbole and knee-jerk reactions rule the collective consciousness. Commentary runs rampant before a movie comes out, cast and crew and plot details are picked clean for meaning months before a movie is released and we go into a two hour feature with opinions firmly established and expectations in mind. I wonder what it must be like to either go back in time or forward, away from this period of instant gratification and short attention spans. When we would and might tell stories on a stage with a handful of actors and the most basic of props; human stories about love and fear and the nature of life and of being alive. I can only wonder what the perspective was and might be in reference to a film like Interstellar, a film that aspires to be both deeply personal and grounded as well as vastly real, tragically and terrifyingly large in relation to the nature of the Universe and all of its barely comprehensible, terrible majesty. I can only look stupidly on as the ideas and utterly fascinating spectacle of what space and time and science can render in the human mind glance off the popular imagination and spin away into relative obscurity. Replaced by the inanity of a Kardashian or a gesture of political hackery, dismissed with an off-hand ‘SUCKS’, or ‘IT’S OKAY, NOT AS GOOD AS GRAVITY’. And the world spins on. No, Interstellar is not a perfect film in my humble opinion but it’s more than all that. And in relation to that not too distant past and potentially not too implausible future, Chris Nolan is a kind of sorcerer and he created an incredible, bracing story about the mortality of the human race. A prescient one that it’s audience may or may not be worthy of.

My biggest problem with this film and Nolan in general is his affinity for exposition. It’s apparent and necessary in his film Inception but here it’s almost like he has no trust in the general public to take things on faith. There are two kinds of dialogue in Interstellar, expository scene chomping and emotional scene chomping. This is where my only real disappointment came from, his endless need to telegraph what the audience should be thinking and feeling at all times which makes a kind of sense based on what I’ve read of his directorial style. He’s methodical and precise, clear and detached, processing what needs to be done as it’s happening and this comes at the expense of spontaneity, of genuine chemistry developing on screen. This feeds into my other big problem I have with him, the man has no sense of humor to speak of. There are a few attempts made throughout this film that really require a mental moment to review, oh, this is meant to be funny, that was supposed to be a joke. Comedy is timing and context and not his gift at all. I cannot fathom why the artificial intelligence is voiced by two of the least intelligent sounding voice actors I have ever heard in mainstream cinema. I couldn’t place it during the movie but afterward it hit me:

 

The thing is, when Interstellar is focused on its actual points it is pretty devastating. It’s like looking through a telescope where everything on the other end is hypnotic and stunning, it’s star-stuff, the heavens and hell made amalgamate but then you take your eye off the lens and suddenly you’re looking at the absurd collection of protein and calcium that talks to you and smells good and loves you and is so real and important that your own existence becomes a secondary priority to their well-being. It’s love and it’s gravity. Thematically they are exchanged in this film as, theoretically, the only two forces we know that can transcend both space and time. And I believe in that idea. That they are interchangeable philosophical concepts, the behavior is the same, they are equally dangerous and critical. Life saving, life altering. Maybe time altering. And maybe I’m looking for that meaning to be there and that feels right, too. I feel like looking for that is what we’re here to do.

Lately, it feels like there is a kind of pall hanging over us all right now. Where social media has increased public awareness of things like political correctness and class division, we’re also coming to terms with the reality of climate change and human rights atrocities, the wild injustices that still run rampant, things we’re not capable of handling or ameliorating in an immediate or realistic sense. We’re becoming vividly aware of a kind of imbalance, of a trend towards entropy that is not going away no matter how many times we re-tweet or Like a good cause. Perhaps it’s just me but sometimes it feels like the demons are running amok and our captains are as lost as the rest of us. That there are no more heroes, that we are bailing out water and no one seems to be able to right the ship.

So there is this quote that has been on my mind a lot recently, referenced by Kevin Smith and it applies to this film. It’s from The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. Bruce Wayne is speeding towards his eventuality, his car on fire and his enemies closing in, hurling to what he refers to as a ‘good death’. But at the last second he pulls away and fights on. A good death but not good enough, he realizes. Not good enough. I loved Interstellar. It paints with broader strokes than I would like but it also inspires and aspires to something pretty large and significant. Something that is nearly absent in popular culture with the exception of Cosmos: curiosity about the nature of the Universe and a need to explore the unknown for the greater good. Where is Star Trek and The X-Files and The Twilight Zone? Where are the pioneers and the adventurers? How have our imaginations stagnated to such a degree that we no longer look to anything that isn’t familiar for comfort. I read once that Ray Bradbury insisted so vehemently that Fahrenheit 451 is not about censorship that he walked out of a lecture full of students who insisted it was. His assertion was that his novel is actually about the dumbing down of American culture through television. He imagined rooms with entire walls for screens with an endless amount of hollow entertainment, he saw a docile, apathetic society that ignores an impending apocalypse and he saw it in 1953.

I think there are a few heroes left. I don’t know if there are enough but I have a better idea of what that word means, expounded in the words of a father in relation to his children.”When you become a parent, one thing becomes really clear. And that’s that you want to make sure your children feel safe. You cannot go and say to them that they are not safe and someone is going to save them.”

That kind of accountability is not superhuman or abstract, it’s real and palpable, scary but more important than it seems. It can extend beyond family, and it absolutely must in darker days. And when it comes to love, real love, not the playful, aw I love you kind of silliness, the kind that keeps you up at night and is the first thing you think about when you wake up, this accountability is as powerful as anything else in the Universe, Black Holes be damned. Maybe I bring a pessimistic perspective to Interstellar but it comes with an idealistic heart. That we may not be in as bad a shape as it seems, sometimes. Maybe the world isn’t spinning off the rails just yet, but I’d rather not wait until it is for us to realize that this Pale Blue Dot (Google it, young ones) is all we have right now. Emphasis on we and that this matters, all of it. It’s a pretty damn beautiful Dot in my humble opinion, we are a fascinating species capable of as much wonder as horror and if we have lost our purpose and this is the best we could do, this would be a good death.

But not good enough.

 

Man of Steel: The Hero We Deserve

I had lowered expectations of a new Superman film, particularly from Zach Snyder, who is definitely a skilled technical director but has zero capacity for compelling emotional drama. Specifically in a story about an essentially invulnerable super human hero with no discernible weaknesses and an unerring moral compass, I was not expecting much from the least sympathetic character in the comic book universe. The one saving grace I was looking for came from the influence of Christopher Nolan in the executive producer role, someone I consider to be one of the most talented and original storytellers in film today. I was looking for his fingerprints, for his capacity to find the most engrossing elements of a story and make them fascinating and relatable, even in the strangest setting. What I found was the expected parallels to Christ treated with equal parts predictability and conscience. I found, in spite of some excessively mind-addling special effects, a good story and an honorable treatment of a superhero that has been too often overrated and too eagerly dismissed. Something we have forgotten while mired in the hubris of Tony Stark, the Messiah Complex of Bruce Wayne, and the fallibility of Peter Parker, is that although it is acceptable for our heroes to have flaws, they are also something we can idealize. They can be someone we can look up to for being better than who we are, without resentment. As both his fathers try to impress, he is an alien to us but he can show us, if he chooses, how good we can be.

Superman has a fear of being rejected and further alienated by humankind if he reveals his true nature and, without the intervention of General Zod, he would have continued in his isolation indefinitely. The choice he makes to surrender himself is both fitting given his nature and the logical way for him to enter our world, it makes perfect sense, particularly in the chosen setting. Hovering over the arid desert, he presents himself in true biblical fashion, returned from isolation at the convenient age of 33, like Christ. And like Christ, he has his moment in the garden of Gethsemane, visiting a Catholic priest for guidance. In the bible, this was the place of Jesus’ betrayal and, like the Son of God, he knows his decision will pave the way to his own end if only to save the people of Earth. The allusion is treated bluntly but there is a depth of feeling here I wasn’t expecting. Like Jesus, Kal-El’s mind is already made up but he needed the words to find his real conviction. Even though the decision was already made for him, he still needed the counsel of an ordinary man to steel his resolve. Because, although we know he is invulnerable and incredibly powerful, he doesn’t, not yet. This is that heroism that exists in those rare individuals, the firefighters, the police officers, the soldiers that run towards danger instead of away from it, unlike the rest of us. The difference here is that he is doing it alone, without a brotherhood or a family, for no other purpose than that it is the right thing to do.

A big question surrounding a Superman film is this: why do we care about this perfect indestructible being? When will we ever believe that he is in danger or worry at all? The answer, as has been addressed in previous films, is in the lives of the people around him. Will he or won’t he show up in time and, in previous films, he always does. Previous films still carried the stigma of camp, the violence portrayed had no real significance or effect. If people died off-screen it was barely supplemental. The only lives that mattered were the principal characters and Man of Steel capably confronts this in its depiction of our military forces failing miserably against superior technology. Casting easily recognizable faces in secondary roles had a powerful effect. And while saving Metropolis and Smallville (heretofore known as Product Placement-ville, Sears, 7 Eleven, IHOP) Superman effectively pulverizes both. The falling skyscrapers and ensuing chaos were pretty horrifying in context, they had a Cloverfield vibe that I really enjoyed. Showing how the ordinary citizen deals with these super beings beating the living hell out of each other in the middle of a major metropolitan city is shown with vivid deference to actual disasters. With the falling ash, the concrete and steel rebar, all the awe and wonder of seeing this other-worldly spectacle evaporates in the ensuing melee. Superman is not there for everyone. Many people die. To quote a more cleverly written film, the definition of a hero is someone who gets other people killed. The reality that if war of an advanced alien culture took place in the middle of a metropolitan city is perfectly realized, we wouldn’t stand a chance.

It is a good thing that we embrace our heroes along with their failures, it says a lot about us as a people and where we are as a civilized culture. Where Batman, Iron Man, and Spider Man are real human beings trying to be accepted and assume responsibility for their demons it is important to realize that there are still higher ideals that we can aspire to. It has become cliche to ask What Would Jesus Do as it has evolved into the world of bumper sticker philosophy and coffee table wisdom but dismissing this ideology because of its trite and possibly pedantic nature is to also deny a truly humane and powerfully positive edict towards living an honorable and good life that has endured for two thousand years. However misdirected organized religion can be, the fundamental message is a personal one, to be interpreted as such. This does not come from a practicing Christian or a particularly idealistic perspective but what I will say that is there is nothing wrong with having someone to look up to, someone who always makes the right choice. These ideas are epitomized in Jonathan Kent and Jor-El; how lucky is Superman’s Universe that these two men were the ones guiding him. Instead of dictating his behavior or badgering him, they gave Kal-El the opportunity to choose for himself, only informing him of what consequence is. Further, what responsibility he has.

This should be the enduring message of how Superman needs to be interpreted in the following films and in pop culture in general. There will not always be a perfect savior that is going to save the day when we need them, he simply can’t be everywhere all the time. He will fight the big fights, the ones that are above and beyond us, but in the mean time we can aspire to be as good as he always will be. And when hope is lost and there is no one to fly in and save the day, ask what he would do. I think he would say, in your darkest hour, when no one else is there, that means it’s your time to be the hero.