Dunkirk is a 2017 war film produced, written, and directed by Christopher Nolan that depicts the Dunkirk evacuation of World War II from the perspectives of people on the land, sea, and air. It features an ensemble cast including Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles in his feature film debut, Aneurin Barnard, James D'Arcy, Barry Keoghan, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, and Tom Hardy.
The film portrays the evacuation with little dialogue, as Nolan sought instead to create suspense through cinematography and music. Filming began in May 2016 in Dunkirk and wrapped that September in Los Angeles, when post-production began. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot the film on IMAX 65 mm and 65 mm large-format film stock. Dunkirk has extensive practical effects. It employed thousands of extras as well as historic boats from the evacuation, and period aeroplanes.
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, Dunkirk premiered at Odeon Leicester Square in London, a few days before its release in the United Kingdom and United States on 21 July 2017. It grossed over $530 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing World War II film until it was surpassed by Nolan's Oppenheimer (2023). Dunkirk received praise for its screenplay, direction, editing, score, sound design and cinematography; some critics called it Nolan's best work, and one of the greatest war films as well as one of the greatest movies of the 2010s. It received various accolades, including eight nominations at the 90th Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. It went on to win for Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Film Editing.
Plot While the film is shown in a nonlinear narrative, including the action of one week on the beach, one day in the rescue flotilla, and one hour of the air battle, the following is the chronological order of events that happen in the film.
In the summer of 1940, during the Battle of France, Allied soldiers retreat to Dunkirk. A British soldier named Tommy loses his squadmates and flees through the perimeter held by French troops to the beach, where thousands await evacuation. He helps another soldier, Gibson, bury a body and survive a Luftwaffe dive-bomber attack. They rush a wounded man on a stretcher onto a hospital ship at the single, vulnerable mole, overseen by Commander Bolton, available for embarking on deep-draft ships, but are ordered off again. Together, they hide underneath the pier in hopes of sneaking back on, but the ship is sunk by German aircraft.
Tommy saves a Highlander, Alex, from being crushed by the wreck of the sinking ship. Tommy and Gibson submerse themselves underwater and masquerade as some of the boat’s survivors in order to be let onto the next available ship. That night, the three board a destroyer, but it is hit by a U-boat torpedo before it can depart. Gibson saves Tommy and Alex while escaping the sinking ship by opening the door to below-deck, and they all return to the beach.
The Royal Navy requisitions civilian vessels in England for the evacuation. In Weymouth, civilian sailor Dawson and his son Peter set out in his boat Moonstone, rather than let the Navy commandeer her. Their teenage hand George joins them on impulse. In the English Channel, they save an officer, now shell-shocked after surviving a U-boat sinking. Realising Dawson is going to Dunkirk, the officer grows fearful and Peter locks him up. He escapes, urging they turn back, and tries to wrest control of the boat; in the scuffle, he elbows George, who falls down a staircase and suffers a severe head injury.
Three Royal Air Force (RAF) Spitfires fly towards Dunkirk to provide cover for the evacuation, limited to one hour of operation by their fuel supply. They engage in a dogfight with a Messerschmitt Bf 109. After shooting it down, one of the pilots, Farrier, has his fuel gauge smashed and cannot read how much he has left. He and the second Spitfire pilot, Collins, determine their leader has gone down and fly on with Collins radioing Farrier about their remaining fuel. The crew of the Moonstone witness the two RAF pilots protect a minesweeper from a bomber escorted by fighters: Collins's Spitfire is hit and he ditches. Initially trapped in his canopy as the plane sinks, Collins is saved by Peter.
Becoming increasingly desperate, Tommy, Alex and Gibson join Highlanders in a grounded trawler in the intertidal zone outside the perimeter, hoping the tide will float them home. After its Dutch sailor returns, Germans start shooting at the boat, and water enters through the bullet holes.
Alex, attempting to lighten the craft to keep it afloat, accuses Gibson (who has been silent the entire time) of being a German spy despite Tommy's defences and pleas. He turns the rest of the soldiers against Gibson, using the logic that he must either speak German, or can only speak English with a very thick German accent. Scared for his life, Gibson reveals he is actually French, meaning that he took on the identity of the buried soldier in hopes of being evacuated earlier.
During the scuffle to try and force Gibson out, all the soldiers are thrown to one side, which dislodges the ship and allows the tide to finally lift the trawler. The group has to eventually abandon the boat, as they cannot stop the intruding water after taking more hits. As they leave, Gibson is entangled by a chain, and drowns with the sinking ship.
Farrier, knowing his fuel is running out, decides to keep flying to chase down German aircraft. He engages a German bomber attacking a destroyer. The ship is bombed and sinks, but Farrier is able to down the plane before it can attack the escaping crew. The crashing plane ignites the oil on the water, but members of the crew, as well as Tommy and Alex, are saved by Moonstone, which had manoeuvred to save the men in the water.
Alex points out to Peter that George has already died of his injuries when they are all asked to be careful below-deck. Shortly after, the shell-shocked officer asks Peter if he will be okay, to which he lies and assures him that he will be alright. Dawson has Moonstone evade an aerial attack using a technique taught by his deceased elder son, a pilot lost at the start of the war.
Farrier reaches Dunkirk just as his fuel runs out, shooting down a dive-bomber approaching the mole to the jubilation of the soldiers below.
Once Moonstone makes landfall, the shell-shocked officer and Collins part ways with the Dawsons, as Peter honours George's desire to do something useful enough to be mentioned in the paper by arranging a publication of his obituary. At the same time, Tommy and Alex board a train with the other evacuees.
With over 300,000 men successfully evacuated, Bolton chooses to stay and oversee the French evacuation next.
Upon reaching England, Alex requests a newspaper from a young boy at the train tracks. He cannot bear to read it, fearful that they will be spit at in the streets for failing. Instead, they are actually heralded by the public upon their arrival at Woking.
Farrier glides safely onto the beach; however, he is far beyond the perimeter. After destroying the Spitfire to prevent it from falling into enemy hands, he is captured by German forces.
Tommy reads the paper for Alex, which is quoting Churchill's address to Parliament, pledging that Britain will fight on.
Cast
Additionally Luke Thompson appears as a warrant officer who tells a group of French soldiers they are not allowed on the ship. Harry Collett also appears as a minor unnamed child character.
Production
Development
Director Christopher Nolan conceived the film in the mid-1990s, when he and his future wife Emma Thomas sailed across the English Channel, following the path of many small boats in World War II's Dunkirk evacuation. Nolan considered improvising the entire film instead of writing a script, but Thomas convinced him otherwise. In 2015, Nolan wrote a 76-page screenplay, which was about half the length of his usual scripts and his shortest to date. Its precise structure necessitated fictional characters, rather than ones based on eyewitnesses.
The story is told from three perspectives—land (one week of action), sea (one day of action) and air (one hour of action). Nolan structured the film from the point of view of the characters, intending to use visuals rather than dialogue and backstory. He wanted to incorporate throughout the film what he calls his "snowballing effect," where several seemingly disparate storylines connect, that he had previously used only in the third acts of his other films. Nolan said that he approached research as though it were for a documentary, and was attracted to the subject matter because of its inversion of the "Hollywood formula", depicting a military retreat centered on the Franco-British forces in place of the typical heroic narrative of victorious Americans.
Nolan postponed Dunkirk until he had acquired sufficient experience directing large-scale action films. To convey the perspective of soldiers on the beach, for whom contact with the enemy was "extremely limited and intermittent", he did not show Germans on screen (several Germans who take Farrier prisoner are out of focus). He omitted scenes with Winston Churchill and generals in war rooms, as he did not want to get "bogged down in the politics of the situation". Nolan showed key members of the crew eleven films that had inspired him: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), The Wages of Fear (1953), Alien (1979), Speed (1994), Unstoppable (2010), Greed (1924), Sunrise (1927), Ryan's Daughter (1970), The Battle of Algiers (1966), Chariots of Fire (1981) and Foreign Correspondent (1940)—only two of which are war films. Other film influences include A Man Escaped (1956), Pickpocket (1959), and Saving Private Ryan (1998). The historical consultant was author Joshua Levine, who also wrote the book adaptation, Dunkirk: The History Behind the Major Motion Picture. Levine accompanied Nolan while interviewing veterans. During these interviews, Nolan was told a story of soldiers seen walking into the sea in desperation, which he incorporated into the screenplay.
The production team and scouting locations were chosen before Nolan and Thomas solicited Warner Bros. Pictures to make the film. Nolan and his production designer Nathan Crowley toured the beach of Dunkirk while location scouting, and decided to film there despite the logistical challenges, discarding Suffolk as an alternative. Crowley set up a makeshift art department in Nolan's old garage, as is tradition, and colourised black-and-white photographs to better understand the visual representation. The design aesthetic was made to look as contemporary as possible. Hoyte van Hoytema, who had previously collaborated with Nolan on Interstellar, was chosen as the director of photography. The Hollywood Reporter stated that Nolan made a deal with Warner Bros. to receive a $20 million salary plus 20% of the box office gross; however, Vanity Fair reported that Nolan agreed to a low upfront salary in exchange for a large backend percentage.