Excitement is building for Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk,” with the WWII movie sizing up to be an unlikely summer blockbuster hit. The director, as always, was meticulous with every aspect of the production, right down to the kernel of inspiration for Hans Zimmer’s score. But nothing gets made without getting the studio on board first, and Nolan certainly made a helluva sale.
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The director has penned an essay about the making of the movie for The Telegraph, and he shares what he told Warner Bros. to get them on board for “Dunkirk.”
My pitch to Warner Bros was: we’re going to put the audience into the cockpit of a Spitfire and have them dogfight the Messerschmitts. We’re going to put them on the beach, feeling the sand getting everywhere, confronting the waves. We’re going to put them on small civilian boats bouncing around on the waves on this huge journey heading into a terrifying war zone. It’s virtual reality without the headset.
We were very, very clear that rather than using CG recreations, we were going to try to find real ships and planes that matched those from the time as closely as possible. We would find the actual planes, and fly them in dogfights against each other, and get the camera and the actor up in the plane. We were going to do this for real to the extent that we could.
Certainly, Nolan kept it as real as possible, and enhanced his visual approach by shooting in IMAX and 70mm. The result is a film that aims to feel as big as the battle itself, but without sparing the intimacy that drives the emotion.
We’ll see how it works out when “Dunkirk” opens on July 21st.