Dunkirk (4/5 Stars)

 “Dunkirk” recreates of an early event in World War II when the German blitzkrieg flanked and encircled the entire British army at the beaches of Dunkirk while the German Luftwaffe bombed them from above and German U-Boats terrorized the British channel.

It is entirely possible that the large majority of the British army, around 400,000 men, may have died on that beach. The British navy was not sending the bulk of their destroyers to evacuate the men because of the superiority of the German air force and submarine fleet. The last and only hope was to draft all the “little ships” of the England, civilian boats, to cross the channel and pick up the boys. As a retreat it was so successful it became the stuff of legend. Only 40,000 men were expected to live. The British with the help of the civilian effort rescued ten times that amount and a good amount of the French army too.

Writer and Director Christopher Nolan treats the subject matter with solemnity and reverence. Individual stories are sacrificed to the events as a whole. (In fact, I can’t remember most of the names of the characters.) There is no back-story and no locations that are not on Dunkirk, therefore no characters that aren’t on-the-ground soldiers. This minimalism suits the sense of isolation and the impending doom felt by the men on the beach.

What is innovative is the structure of the story. Here, again, Director Nolan (Memento, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar) engages his forte. The movie is divided into three parts and seamlessly switches between the three. The first is the Mole (french word for pier thing on the beach) and takes place over a week and covers the entire week that the evacuation took place in. The second is the Sea and takes place over a single day that the little ships were involved in the evacuation. The third is the Air and takes place over a single hour that the British Air Force provided a cover mission for the evacuation. The Air’s hour takes place during the Sea’s day which takes place during the Mole’s week. It is not necessarily intuitive that these stories could seamlessly move back and forth between each other, but Nolan once again proves that he knows how to clearly tell a seemingly convoluted story. I was not particularly confused as to what was happening when.

And it makes sense story-wise. If Nolan had told the story straight chronologically, the second and especially the third story-line would have been sandwiched unfairly near the end, thereby reducing the historical importance of the sea and air efforts. This way, they are all given equal time (even though the their times are unequal) and the movie has this interesting relativistic effect. The faster the characters move, the slower time seems to move for them, and an hour in a British Spitfire roaring across the channel equals the time spent by a man walking on the ground.

Most of the actors, though talented like Tom Hardy (airplane) and Cillian Murphy (ground), could have been replaced because of the deliberate motive of the movie to have the scenario overpower any one individual story. There is one exception and that is the civilian captain of one of the little ships, played by Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies). The nobility of the man shines through and gives incarnate form to the humble and collective spirit of Dunkirk that became the stuff of legend. His interactions with a shell-shocked soldier (Cillian Murphy) provide the heart of the movie. “There’s no turning back from this, son,” he states and there is a power in the understated yet unwavering purpose behind his intonations. Keep Calm and Carry On indeed.

The Little Hours (4/5 Stars)

Ostensibly “The Little Hours” is based on “The Decameron” by Giovanni Boccaccio. This 14^th century work concerned a group of ten women who relocated to the country to wait out the bubonic plague. To entertain themselves, they each tell a story. There is only one rule: don't make it depressing like the plague. This movie is more likely to have been inspired by one of the short stories as opposed to actually adapted from it. I don’t know much about the actual short story except that it involved a convent of horny nuns and their adventures with the new gardener. That more or less happens in “The Little Hours,” but there is plenty here that is most likely anachronistic. Then again, there is also plenty here that isn’t anachronistic. And more than anything, the choices that Writer/Director Jeff Baena makes as to what to stay historically faithful to and what to not care too much about changing are what makes “The Little Hours” a superior movie and yes, very funny.

What stays the same is the general context of 14^th century Italy, specifically the Tuscan countryside where the convent is located. I know something about the context because of recently reading Will Durant’s “The Story of Civilization, Volume 5: The Renaissance”. (I may have been the only one  in the theater keenly aware of the historical context of one character’s paranoid obsession with Guelfs.) The characters, being of 14^th century Italy, and unaware of a brighter future with far more freedom, respond to their situations in historically correct ways. One particular nun, when told by her visiting father that the family’s money is tight and she probably won’t get a promised dowry (and thus dashing her hopes of someday leaving the convent to marry), is disappointed but does not get angry or disobedient. Although such a response would be unheard of today (just like it would be unheard of for any daughter to be forced into a convent for monetary reasons in the first place), it is this type of detail that provides the basis of catharsis later on in the story. This story, after all, is about life finding its way through the strictures of not just physical but psychological repression. That repression, though outdated, must remain heavy and the characters must believe in it for the movie to truly succeed. When successfully providing the basis for the reality of the movie, it provides high stakes for certain reveals that in this day and age nobody would care about. Those high stakes seen through a modern consciousness are quite funny. At the height of one particular comedic moment, I heard a sizable gasp in the audience (and onscreen) when one character accuses another character of being a Jew. (Gasp!)

What is changed is plenty. For one thing, although this is Italy, there are no accents and there is noone speaks like Shakespeare. The script is tailored not to the prose of “The Decameron” but to the comedic attributes of its very good cast of talented comedians. In supporting roles are the men. John C. Reilly plays a good-hearted pastor with a weakness for wine. Fred Armisen plays a traveling bishop who functions like a spiritual auditor (more in an accountant way than an inquisitor way). Nick Offerman plays the previously mentioned monarch obsessed with Guelfs. In the main roles are three of the most talented young female comedians around. First is Alison Brie (“Community”) the aforementioned girl who wants to leave the convent and marry but whose family decides is not worth the dowry. Next is Aubrey Plaza (“Parks and Recreation”) whose dead-pan bluntness and sullen rebelliousness makes her the perfect candidate for witchcraft. Finally is a new-comer (at least to me), one Kate Micucci, who is a comedic revelation. If the convent plays a little like high school with Alison as the rich girl and Aubrey as the goth girl, Kate is the unformed slightly nerdy girl that just wants to fit in with the rest of them. Although the characters are of the 14th century, the movie takes a purely modern and secular view of certain taboos (homosexuality, celibacy, drug-use, etc.). For example, witchcraft is not so much about being evil as it is about dancing naked in the woods on drugs. The witches are not unlike modern hippies.

Surrounded by all these colorful characters is Dave Franco, the humble gardener whose presence in the convent excites all of the repressed nuns. Dave wisely plays the straight man to the craziness abounding around him and never really goes for the laughs himself. That’s fine, because the story is driven by the women in it, and it is their choices as it pertains to the gardener (some of which can be decidedly categorized as sexual harassment) that reveal each of their well-rounded characters.

A movie like “The Little Hours” could not have been made before the digital revolution in movies. It is way too niche and obviously would be very difficult to market in any mass market type of way. If however you stumble upon it, give it a shot. I thought it was hilarious.