The similarities between Sam Mendes’ 1917 and Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk are immediately evident. Both of them are made by British directors, with a predominantly British cast, and are about particularly British events in either of the world wars. Both of them also have a ‘gimmick’ in the way in which the film is told. 1917 is made to look like one continuous shot and Dunkirk has Nolan’s characteristic playing with time – by dividing the film into three interwoven stories that all last different amounts of time; an hour, a day, a week. They also both received plenty of plaudits upon release, both winning three Academy Awards. Yet to me, though I like 1917 very much, Dunkirk is clearly the superior film.
One cannot begin discussing these films without at first talking about the techniques deployed in them. 1917’s one-shot effect earned it much praise and is quite the technical achievement, leading to Roger Deakins’ second Academy Award for Cinematography which is certainly deserved. But what does this actually do? It is meant to force you as a member of the audience to view everything through the eyes of the soldiers. However, it is more than this: you feel as though you cannot escape the danger that certainly lies before you. You, like the soldiers, are being forced to continue on the treacherous journey and, in a sense, it does achieve this. One does watch the film, with the ability to see as much as they can, only knowing as much as they do which together creates the feeling that you are being continually propelled through the story, whether you like it or not. However, what the film did not do for me that Dunkirk does do, is ignite a sense of claustrophobia, of panic or of real tension. I felt like I was gliding toward an end, yes, but nothing more – certainly not being rapidly flung forward or being thrust in the midst of it. Dunkirk is another matter.
The two times that I saw Dunkirk at the cinema my heart did not stop beating at an elevated level for almost the entire 106-minute run time. They were, by far, the two most tense cinematic experiences of my life. This is because I was immediately thrust into the middle of the action. The opening shot sets up the goal of the film – to get off the beach. Yet they cannot and thus we cannot. We are stuck on the beach at the mercy of ‘the enemy’. This is made most obvious in the Stuka bombing sequence; we hear the unmissable howl of the dive bomber, everyone lays down on the beach, then we wait, hopelessly awaiting our fate. Death in this instance is entirely down to chance. The structure of the film maintains this tension for the rest of its run time. Due to the fact we keep cutting between the three different storylines, the tension can be maintained because not only is something always happening, but we see events that we know (admittedly maybe not on first viewing) we are going to have to experience again from a different perspective. Here it is appropriate to use a comment made by Quentin Tarantino when justifying, on an episode of the Rewatchables Podcast, why Dunkirk is his second best film of the decade: Tarantino made the point that it is a staple of Nolan films to end by cutting across several different events simultaneously with Hans Zimmer’s score adding to the drama. In Dunkirk, Nolan has made the entire film a typical Nolan finale. Therefore, the tension at the end of, say, Interstellar or Inception is here maintained for 106-minutes in a fashion that, frankly, only Nolan could pull off. It is also necessary to mention Hans Zimmer’s work here: the constant ticking of the pocket watch throughout certainly adds to what is already a tension ridden experience. Even though you know what is going to happen, even though you know the history, you cannot help but feel tense and anxious all the way through until the ticking finally stops.
So, there are strong similarities between the films, and yet 1917 seemingly received far more plaudits, despite being the inferior film. It won basically every BAFTA possible and was only stopped at the Academy Awards by ‘Parasite’, thankfully. I do not understand what people see in 1917. It is a good war film, yes. It is a technical achievement. But it is not brilliant, whereas Dunkirk is. Is it simply down to the film establishment’s love of Sam Mendes? Or perhaps I am missing something completely about 1917. I have seen it twice, one of those times being IMAX, but it never reached the level of great – only good. Perhaps the film has a more overt emotional swell at the end, thus heightening the perceived excellence of the film. Or maybe I am just wrong. For reasons unbeknownst to me I seem to be in the minority, but I know that I can definitively say Dunkirk is not only a better film than 1917, but also deserved a lot more critical awards and applause than it received. For once, Nolan seems to be overlooked.
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