9. Dunkirk (2017)

When the enemy is unseen, you can be certain they’re always closing in. Nolan’s 2017 war drama Dunkirk takes after Operation Dynamo where over 330,000 Allied soldiers escaped the beaches of Dunkirk, France – fated to suffer full Nazi occupation – between May and June 1940. Through Nolan’s eyes, however, absent are the sepia-hued heroisms and noble sacrifices of standard-issue World War II dramas. Instead there’s selfish desperation, the brutality of survival, the urgency of a ticking clock (quite literally underscored by Hans Zimmer), and the ever-dwindling light of hope. All the more interesting that not once are the words “Nazi” or “Nazi Germans” said aloud, an intentional choice.

Opening with a soldier whose name we barely know (played by Fionn Whitehead), Dunkirk takes a disorienting view through several perspectives to bear witness to a wartime miracle. Light on dialogue and character and very heavy on suspense, Dunkirk is a sobering portrait of a war rendered too familiar by countless stories and retrospective fetishizing. It’s only really questionable that Nolan’s continued love affair for the spectacle-oriented IMAX format is deployed in a movie that’s not one for spectacle at all.