Emotionally Gripping vs. Emotionally Hollow
A Spoiler-filled Analysis of How 1917 and Dunkirk Approach Plot and Characterization
If you appreciate watching war films, you’ll recognize that there are two recent war films perfect for a comparative analysis. Dunkirk and 1917 are two recent films that share many similarities, but yet are vastly different in how storytelling was approached in them. Both focus strongly on cinematography, action, and have little dialogue. Both were praised for their immersive cinematography and criticized for having thin plots and weak characterization (or lack thereof.) Dunkirk and 1917 are similar in many respects, but they had an entirely different emotional effect on me: 1917 was very emotionally moving at times, but Dunkirk was emotionally hollow. In this article, I’ll explore how plot and characterization were used to help create an emotionally gripping story in 1917 and a boring, somehow aimless story in Dunkirk.
First, I’d like to address some of the points that fans of Dunkirk have made about its storytelling.
Dunkirk Point #1
Christopher Nolan didn’t want to tell a conventional war story. Dunkirk is a work of experimental storytelling. Nolan has a wider scope and chooses to include more perspectives than expected. He wanted to tell a story that reflected how the many different lives of men (and a seventeen-year-old boy) were affected by decisions regarding Dunkirk. You can see how characters’ decisions affected people they don’t know personally when the three storylines — the mole, the sea, and the air — converge at the end.
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Fair enough. Cilian Murphy’s character, the Shivering Soldier, accidentally injures 17-year-old George when he and Mr. Dawson, played by Mark Rylance, get into a scuffle over where the boat should be heading. RAF pilot Collins gets shot down and coincidentally lands in the water near Mr. Dawson’s boat Moonstone. Tommy, played by Fionn Whitehead, and other soldiers get rescued by Mr. Dawson and his company after they jump out of yet another sinking vessel. RAF pilot Farrier shoots down a German bomber, which causes it to crash into the channel. The bomber’s fuel starts burning on top of the waves. Farrier ultimately helped save more lives. Ultimately, Mr. Dawson, Peter, and George helped save numerous soldiers’ lives that day.
I agree that you can clearly see how characters affected the lives of relative strangers (and this is perhaps why some find the narrative to be so compelling — it wasn’t fellow soldiers who saved others but civilians in this war story), but I don’t see the convergence of storylines involving people unfamiliar to each other to be that experimental or that interesting. It’s been done plenty of times before in movies like Pulp Fiction in ways more clever.
Christopher Nolan’s decision to not have much of a plot made the story feel directionless and at times, yes, boring, even in a war film with plenty of action. You can make the safe bet that the climax of the film will be when British soldiers get rescued by British civilians in vessels, but this predictable deus ex machina didn’t provide enough structure to the film nor did the convergence of the three storylines at the end. There are plenty of stories that do not need to be tightly plotted (stories where main characters get lost or grow up, for example), even war stories that want to emphasize the unpredictability of war. This seems to be one of Nolan’s main ideas: war is unpredictable and has no breaks. You can see how unpredictable war can be when a torpedo slams into the side of a ship, suddenly submerging soldiers eating jellied toast in the water. But here’s the problem: this kind of plot development keeps happening. Soldiers have to leave one boat for one another or another to join another boat. In the end, it becomes sort of repetitive. I already can assume how the story will end, but not necessarily who will survive. Since I didn’t care about the characters, I didn’t care who would survive and I thought perhaps the events would be varied enough to hold my interest. They didn’t.
Dunkirk Point #2
The nonlinear narrative involving three different storylines — the mole (spanning one week), the sea (spanning one day) and the air (spanning one hour) — helped viewers see the contributions RAF pilots, such as Farrier and Collins, made in fighting the Germans.
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Correct me if I’m wrong: Nolan doesn’t use flashbacks or flashforwards to reveal what characters were once like or would become. Rather, he uses a nonlinear narrative to pace the three storylines operating on three different timelines, and this helps show how much of an impact the RAF pilots made on fighting the Germans. Imagine if “The Air” storyline occurred in the last ten minutes of the film. It would give the impression that the RAF pilots came to help at the last minute, something that the soldiers stranded in Dunkirk thought was the case. So, this nonlinear narrative works as far as building suspense — the flashforwards of Mr. Dawson and the boys heading to Dunkirk is a prime example, but the problem is that you can safely assume what will happen next. When RAF pilot Collins crashes into the water, we can see that there is a boat (which I assume is the Moonstone) not far away. But why did Collins then get rescued by Mr. Dawson and company about twenty movie runtime minutes later? Why then didn’t Nolan include the presence of the Moonstone when Collins was fighting to break out of his cockpit that was quickly filling up with water? I found that part pointlessly confusing. Nolan uses a nonlinear narrative in Dunkirk not for the purpose of showing what characters were once like or would become but to build suspense. The problem is that I didn’t know enough about and couldn’t relate to the characters, not even poor George, to care if they made it back to England safely. A lot of this movie’s problems stems from its apparent lack of characterization.
While Nolan’s somewhat confusing and ambitious narrative is nonlinear and involves three different storylines, Sam Mendes and co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairnes tell a story that’s as linear as it gets. With the use of one-takes seamlessly fitted together to appear as one continuous take, the characters in 1917 can move only forward, never back. The one-takes helped convey that the soldiers had to keep moving, that time was ticking by, and that there are no breaks in war. The one-takes, far from being a distracting gimmick, fulfilled more of their purpose in 1917 than the nonlinear narrative did for Dunkirk. Schofield and Blake are given an urgent mission that requires much travel and constant movement: they must deliver a message to call off an attack before the front lines fall into a trap set by the Germans. The camera work captures the immediacy of the mission and focuses at first on these two soldiers alone. The micro-level narrative in 1917 involving two soldiers on a mission allows viewers to get to know the characters much more than the macro-level narrative in Dunkirk where the consequences of characters’ actions are revealed. The problem I believe some people had with the characterization in 1917 was that they may have expected to get to know the characters Blake and Schofield much more than they did since the camera was focused on them for so long. I’ll return to this point later.
Dunkirk Point #3
Nolan didn’t do much characterization because he wanted to make the point that there are no heroes in war stories but rather soldiers enduring the horrors of war. He wanted you to relate to the soldiers on a human level based on the suffering they endured in Dunkirk rather than their personalities, interests, or desires beyond the battlefield.
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I can relate to those characters as an intellectual exercise, but, well, the screenwriter’s got to give me some interesting reason to do that. Otherwise, it’s just a chore. If I had never seen a war movie, then, yes, I can imagine I would be able to care more about the characters and feel their suffering based on how shocking and intense the scenes would come across to me then. If I had served in the military and experienced combat, then, yes, I imagine I would find it easier to relate to these characters and care about them. (And maybe Christopher Nolan directed and wrote this film with this audience in mind. Fair enough, then.) But here’s where I go bananas: if you are taking the creative risk of forgoing characterization in order to tell a macro-level narrative that makes the point that numerous soldiers, seen not as heroes but as ordinary men, were just trying to survive, you need to characterize these soldiers to make this point. Even everyman characters need characterization. Secondly, you are not going to win over my sympathy for a character no matter how many awful things happen to that character. I suppose I should imagine how relatively innocent those soldiers were before war in order to feel their pain, but I barely know anything about them, and I felt like I wasn’t given much to relate to them.
It boggles my mind hearing the number of people justifying the lack of characterization in Dunkirk. Again, it’s fine if a story doesn’t include much characterization, but that’s a big creative risk to take as a storyteller and that in lieu of that, there needs to be something else that grabs people’s attention and never surrenders. There could be a variety of obstacles that get in the way of characters reaching their objectives/desires. There could be an unpredictable ending. There could be a richly imagined world. There could be cinematography that absolutely arrests your attention. But there are none of these things in Dunkirk.
1917, on the other hand, doesn’t have much characterization, but it’s enough. It’s characterization in combination with its comparatively more immersive cinematography, its moving score, a simple plot that gives you at least some sense of direction and some surprising developments, and an overwhelming climax, makes 1917 stand far apart from Dunkirk, despite all the “unconventional war story” rationalizations one can make.
Watching Dunkirk left me with the impression that Christopher Nolan had a vision for making an unconventional war movie about Dunkirk on three different fronts that got in the way of him telling a compelling story. Instead, it felt like a big-budget dramatization of Dunkirk that, rather than appearing in short clips on an educational program on the History Channel, was made into a feature-length film. It just didn’t work.
In response to the idea that complaining about the lack of characterization is missing the point about the macro-level narrative, let me go back to the point of characterizing soldiers not as heroes but as men just trying to survive. The problem is that they are too generic and because of that forgettable. What’s specific about a character is memorable. Sgt. Mike Horvath in Saving Private Ryan is seen collecting dirt and placing it in a container marked as “France.” You later see that he has other containers marked as “Italy” and “Africa.” That’s great characterization for you. It’s unique. It stands out. It helps you distinguish that character from the rest of the characters and is an invitation for you to imagine why he collects dirt. You can make the assumption that he’s been deployed in those areas as well. It says something about his personality. The key thing is that it is memorable. Dunkirk doesn’t give you specific details like this and because of that has forgettable characters I did not care for.
Now, let me echo the sentiment voice by Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams, in Dead Poets Society: you don’t need to calculate the perfection and the importance of a poem to measure how great it is. You don’t need to draw a graph on a chalkboard and calculate a poem’s total area of greatness in an “objective” way to determine how good a work of art is. Decide for yourself! If a story doesn’t “score high” on these storytelling elements, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a better story than one that did but felt disjointed or inauthentic or whatever reason that turned you off.
Now, I believe fans of Dunkirk will agree with this sentiment. I can see why they like the movie so much since there are plenty of other storytelling elements that Nolan excels at such as building tension. Soldiers stranded on the beach at Dunkirk are afraid of being strafed by German fighter planes and the sound design makes their attacks a truly terrifying experience, especially in the theater. The cinematography in Dunkirk is excellent, especially during the dogfights. There are sideways shots of planes flying in the sky from their perspective, which gives you maybe a bit of vertigo and the feeling that you are with them. It certainly creates an immersive experience. I know nothing about cinematography, so I can see why some people who do find it much more impressive. The action scenes are gritty and realistic, despite not being too graphic or bloody. As far as I can see, I would say that fans of Dunkirk are willing to overlook a meager amount of characterization in favor of focusing on the unpredictable nature of war that drives the narrative in addition to the immersive cinematography, and the constantly rising tension that’s enhanced by Hans Zimmer’s effectively anxiety-inducing score. Perhaps these are the things that they value in a story. In my opinion, the story needed more of a plot and greater characterization.
What Makes the Story in 1917 Work
Now here’s what 1917 got right that Dunkirk got wrong or either ignored to its detriment: characterization and its totally linear plot structure. This may not seem like much, but it made a world of difference and helped create characters I actually cared for and an emotionally overwhelming climax.
I would first like to address 1917’s approach to characterization since I believe it does more than an adequate job of characterization and helped give the movie a soul and a tenderness that Dunkirk lacked.
A story is more than the sum of its parts and every great writer knows how to break common storytelling guidelines. For example, sometimes a writer will choose not to include the transformation of a character in a story. Most people, such as myself, value a character arc in a story to show some sense of progress in order for us to find the story meaningful. Hopefully, those characters who change by the end of the story are characters we have rooted for. But sometimes writers handle characterization in a different direction.
Schofield in 1917 doesn’t change in a noticeable way by the end of the film, and that’s okay because he doesn’t need to. Sometimes writers create static characters who struggle to make sense of a chaotic or meaningless world around them to point out how messed up it is. Look at Schofield: he’s jaded and cynical and finds the war meaningless. The writerly hope with such a character who doesn’t change is that audiences will find the main character admirable for managing to maintain his identity despite living in such a senseless world. With Schofield staring at photos of his wife and children at the end, it’s clear that he’s striving to maintain his identity.
You can see characters struggle to maintain their identities in a less-than-ideal world in other movies, too, like Napoleon Dynamite. Napoleon doesn’t really change by the end of that movie. He’s still his nerdy, socially awkward self, but the great thing is that he’s at least made a friend in Deb who will play tetherball with him. Napoleon maintains his identity despite the peer pressure he faced in high school to conform. So it isn’t Napoleon who learns something by the end of the story but the people around him who do. After he showed his secret talent for dancing at the high school talent show, the school learned to accept his awkward behavior a little bit more.
Schofield doesn’t face the same kind of peer pressure like Napoleon did to conform, but his struggle to maintain his identity is greater. We don’t know much about Schofield — he’s a bit of an enigma — but we know enough. Again, enough is the operative word when it comes to 1917’s characterization. It’s characterization is, at the same time, just enough and great. Here’s what we do know about Schofield. He referred to his war medal as a “piece of bloody tin” and traded it for some wine. Here’s a great moment of characterization that deals with specific, memorable details, something Dunkirk did not do. You can infer that Schofield attached no sense of pride to receiving war medals. Schofield tells Blake as they walk toward the farmhouse that he hated going home because he knew he had to leave his family eventually. He’s close to crying when he tells Blake this. He tells Blake to keep his eyes on the ridge; he’s the more wary of the two. He’s emotionally reserved and you can see how he processes grief after Blake has died. The camera stays on Schofield when he’s riding in a truck with other soldiers. As they’re joking and giving funny impersonations of their superiors in rank, Schofield keeps to himself and doesn’t react to anything they’re saying. You can see how isolated Schofield appears in such a crowded place where the soldiers’ joking conversation sharply contrasts the grief he quietly keeps. (Sidenote: George MacKay, who plays Schofield, carries this movie with his understated performance. MacKay gets the notion that you can be emotionally reserved and appear vulnerable at the same time. Nor is MacKay chained to the idea that a soldier must appear stoic at all times.) Then the truck gets stuck in the mud, and Schofield’s one of the first to get out of the truck and push it. You can see how Blake’s death has given Schofield a sense of urgency to carry out the mission, despite getting some help via transportation. If there is some kind of change that takes place within Schofield, you could say that Blake’s death acts as the catalyst for that change. Would he have been as generous with his milk and food if Blake was with him when he came across the French woman in Ecoust? It’s hard to say.
Blake is well-characterized, too. You learn more about him based on what he chooses to talk about with Schofield. He tells him an entertaining story about a soldier whose ear got bit off by an ear. Blake points out to Schofield how many different kinds of cherry trees when they walk through an orchard full of downed cherry trees. He helps direct his eyes toward the beauty in nature. But this is also an obvious metaphor for how a person can have hope for regeneration after being destroyed. Blake tells Schofield, “Oh no, they’ll grow again when the stones rot. You’ll end up with more trees than before.” Examine this scene with the film’s ending scene and you’ll see that the movie creates a genuine sense of hope in rebirth, despite so much destruction. Blake is also naive and believes valor is worth the recognition that accompanies a war; he believes that they’ll be home before Christmas. He works as a foil to Schofield.
In Defense of 1917’s Simple Plot
Now I am going to make the same sort of rhetorical move that Dunkirk fans have made, which is one where they take a perceived flaw of the movie and argue that it actually is it’s strength. The movie succeeds not despite its simple plot but because of it. Here’s what I mean.
A story doesn’t need multiple threads in its narrative in order to be captivating. Look at Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road. It too has a simple plot and many parallels to 1917: a father and son — two people — try to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Much of the acclaim McCarthy received for the novels was for its poetic descriptions of the landscape and the relationship between the father and the son that made the story emotionally moving. It’s pretty similar to 1917’s approach to storytelling with a simple plot.
1917 shines not despite it’s simple plot but because of it. What if there were more threads in the narrative? What if we had a couple of scenes of Colonel MacKenzie and soldiers at the 2nd Devons showing them discussing their next move on the battlefield? A good director can find a way to make the inclusion of such a scene add tension to the story, but it would sacrifice the urgency of Blake and Schofield’s mission. As I’ve discussed before, the camera’s fluid, almost constant movement conveys how essential it is for Blake and Schofield to keep moving in order to deliver the message before it’s too late. Time is ticking. They have to keep moving. To add more threads to this narrative would reduce the singular importance to deliver that message in time.
1917 has the bare essentials of a story. It has a setting that doesn’t need too much exposition to establish, characters who you gradually learn more about based on their actions, an inciting incident that gives Blake and Schofield enough of a reason to carry their mission beyond just it being the general’s orders. It has an emotionally overwhelming climax that’s unpredictable (as long as you haven’t seen the trailer) and a resolution that provides some insight on what motivated Schofield to persevere. It’s what you could call minimalist storytelling. Dunkirk is too minimalist in its storytelling for me and asks viewers to work their imaginations too much to relate to its characters. On the other hand, 1917 provides enough interesting details about its characters to make you ask why and how. It also has enough of a plot structure to make you feel as if you aren’t totally lost and uncertain as to what will happen next. Even with a plot structure, it somehow manages to have more surprising moments that help convey how unpredictable war can be than Dunkirk’s seemingly plotless narrative that’s loosely structured with an ending we can predict and three storylines converging together with characters I was indifferent toward.
In 1917, there are plenty of varied surprises that convey how unpredictable war can be, both in its violence and the circumstances characters can find themselves in. Blake and Schofield almost die in a German underground barracks, Blake gets stabbed off camera by a German pilot he’s trying to rescue, Schofield happens to meet a French woman who’s taking care of a baby someone abandoned, Schofield bumps into a German soldier at night in Ecoust, he happens to find the soldiers at the 2nd Devons shortly after crawling over bloated corpses in a river, he runs the final three hundred yards to Colonel MacKenzie on the battlefield in a thrilling climax. Some of the events in 1917 are linked together by fantastic coincidences that I can understand some viewers would object to. I can’t comment on how realistic those coincidences may be, but as someone who’s read The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, it’s easier for me to suspend my disbelief. I have the notion from Tim O’Brien that some of the crazy things in war — in this case, the fantastic coincidences that link the events together geographically — are more believable than some of the things we find plausible.
Now contrast all of these varied surprises in 1917 to the events that unfold in Dunkirk, some of which are surprising, but all of which deal with either attacks from German planes or an invisible enemy or vessels sinking. It gets boring after a while because of its monotony. The horrors of war in Dunkirk weren’t enough to hold my attention with characters who were just trying to survive. Give them a purpose, like Blake and Schofield were given in 1917, and you can see where the story can go. It’s not that I’m uncomfortable with being entirely unmoored from a plot. It’s that I was bored by it. I hope that explains a key difference between 1917 and Dunkirk.
All of this is just my opinion. One of the great things about works of art is that they can elicit a wide range of responses from people. We all have different expectations and assumptions when it comes to storytelling, and this greatly affects our experience with stories. Some people prefer Nolan’s exploration of tension over characterization in Dunkirk. I did not. I preferred 1917’s simple plot over a complex narrative. They’re very different films when it comes to storytelling, and I hope I shattered the idea that if you like one film you’ll probably like the other. One I found to be emotionally gripping, the other I found to be emotionally hollow. There are people who genuinely did not find 1917 emotionally moving and people who found Dunkirk to be very suspenseful. They aren’t being dishonest about their emotions. There’s a reason why they felt sad or tense, and the number of different responses people have to the same film is something I find fascinating since it tells us something about what we value in storytelling and what we expect in a story.
