美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Dunkirk' Director Christopher Nolan: 'We Really Try To Put You On That Beach'

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

In England, there's something known as the Dunkirk spirit. It's really shorthand for coming together in times of adversity. It refers to the heroic efforts of British sailors, soldiers and the civilians 2 who rescued them in small boats at the beginning of World War II.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DUNKIRK")

CILLIAN MURPHY: (As Shivering Soldier) Where are we going?

MARK RYLANCE: (As Mr. Dawson) Dunkirk.

MURPHY: (As shivering soldier) I'm not going back.

RYLANCE: (As Mr. Dawson) There's no hiding from this, son. We have a job to do.

GREENE: The evacuation of those men from a beach in France as the Nazis 3 were closing in is a story director Christopher Nolan has wanted to tell for many years.

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN: Four hundred thousand men on this beach, the enemy closing in on all sides - and they were faced with, really, the choice between surrender and annihilation. I think it's one of the greatest stories in human history.

GREENE: Now, Christopher Nolan is best known for the visually stunning 4 and special effects heavy "Batman"/"Dark Knight 5" trilogy. This movie, "Dunkirk," is really the first time the director has tackled a true story.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DUNKIRK")

KENNETH BRANAGH: (As Commander Bolton) You can practically see it from here.

JAMES D'ARCY: (As Colonel Winnant) What?

BRANAGH: (As Commander Bolton) Home.

GREENE: Nolan was inspired to tell the story when he himself sailed with a friend across the English Channel to Dunkirk. It was around the same time of year as the evacuation.

NOLAN: And we went into it, I think, in a pretty light fashion. You know, we jumped on the boat, and we thought it would take, you know, eight or nine hours. It took about 19 hours. And the weather was terrible, and the channel can be very, very fierce. And that was without anybody dropping bombs on us.

GREENE: Yeah.

NOLAN: We weren't heading into a war zone the way people were in 1940. And so your admiration 6 and respect for the idea of any civilian 1 willingly and knowingly heading out into those waters - I mean, it's just - it's unthinkably brave.

GREENE: And Christopher Nolan wanted to capture every human emotion in the most real way possible. He had vintage World War II fighter planes buzzing over his actors' heads.

NOLAN: The tone of the film was really about first-person experience. There's very little dialogue in the film. The idea is you jumped right in, and you're almost a participant in what's going on. And so I wanted the clearest, most tactile 7 sensibility for everything in the film, including the visual effects. And so we sourced real planes, real boats. We shot in the real location. There were several days where we found ourselves on the real beach watching the real little ships who'd actually taken part in the evacuation in 1940. They came back to Dunkirk...

GREENE: The same ships...

NOLAN: ...To recreate...

GREENE: Some of the same ships that...

NOLAN: The same ships - we had a group of the same boats. And they came, and they took part in our restaging of the evacuation.

GREENE: You actually spoke 8 with some of the veterans from Dunkirk who lived through it. What were some of the things that they told you that really stuck with you?

NOLAN: We did a series of interviews to gather impressions and material and really look in their eyes and hear what their experiences were. Some of those things very directly made it into the film. I mean, there's a moment in particular where you see our heroes kind of sitting there on the beach, not knowing what to do.

And they watch a soldier just walk into the water and swim away. And this was something that a veteran called Vic Viner, a guy I was privileged to meet - he just told me that he watched people do this. And I asked him. I said, well, did they actually think they could swim the channel? Were they swimming out to the boat? What? And he said he didn't know what they were doing, but he knew that they were going to die.

It was a very sobering thing. And I really wanted to put that experience into the film. And that's just one example of a lot of different things that I was told by these veterans that you could only really get from first-hand accounts.

GREENE: I feel like I often leave movies with a sense of personal connection to some of the characters. You know, I know their entire life story. And in this movie, it's like you had me feeling emotion. You had me feeling tension. But it's like I think about - even the young soldier played by Fionn Whitehead, you know, one of the lead characters, I didn't know where he was from. I didn't know why he was in the military. Was there a risk of all of the action overwhelming any kind of character development?

NOLAN: Well, my gamble with this film was to turn around and say, what if we strip the conventional theatrics away? I wanted to produce a film that was almost entirely 9 based on the language of suspense 10, which I think is the most visual of cinematic languages, which is why I think Hitchcock has always been held up as, you know, possibly the greatest director of all time.

And what Hitchcock understood - and I've tried to emulate 11 and, you know, really learn from - is that the audience can care about a character simply by virtue 12 of what it is they're trying to achieve on screen in a physical sense, a task they're trying to achieve. We very immediately, as audience members, we lean into that. We find ourselves in their shoes very quickly.

And I wanted to make a film that really snuck up on the emotions. The emotion is something that isn't - hopefully, it feels earned by the end of the film. It doesn't feel like something that we've been telling you to feel the whole way through the film.

GREENE: You usually don't deal in reality.

(LAUGHTER)

NOLAN: In general (laughter)?

GREENE: In general - I don't know, in general or in your projects. I mean, this is the first big project you've done, really based on reality. And I wonder, is there a new responsibility that comes with that, especially with defining such an important historical event, in many ways, for people?

NOLAN: There's an enormous responsibility that comes with it. And that sense of responsibility, particularly for a British person working on what's - it's really sacred ground in British culture. When you then come to screen the film, all of that responsibility, all of that pressure comes flooding back.

We had a screening for the veterans that I'd spoken to and their families.

GREENE: Oh, that must have been pressure for you, to have them watching.

NOLAN: Honestly, never felt quite such pressure in a professional setting as standing 13 in front of that audience and about to, you know, show our version of what that actually lived through.

GREENE: Did you, when you left that screening, feel like you got it right?

NOLAN: I did. I came away feeling that we had concentrated on the right things and tried to be authentic 14 in the right ways because the film is expressive 15. You know, the film has a point of view on the events. And it's - I've tried to approach it as a storyteller, and I've tried to be free in that. And I came away from that screening feeling that that had allowed a bigger picture to emerge that they recognized.

GREENE: I want to finish with a couple lighter 16 questions with a little less gravity than moments of (laughter) - moments of war that defined the world. Do you really carry a flask 17 around the set?

NOLAN: (Laughter) If we were doing this interview together, you would be looking at a flask right now.

GREENE: (Laughter) Really? You have it with you?

NOLAN: I do.

GREENE: What does this look like?

NOLAN: I could slurp 18 from it and give you the sound of it.

GREENE: (Laughter) I mean, feel free if you want to.

NOLAN: (Slurping).

GREENE: There we go. OK.

NOLAN: Yeah, I'm a big fan of Earl Grey tea. I like to drink it all the time.

GREENE: And it's tea. Yeah, I know Michael Caine famously said it's how you solve problems. And he asked you once, was there vodka in there? And I guess the answer was no.

NOLAN: (Laughter) Just Earl Grey, I'm afraid.

GREENE: It's been a real pleasure talking to you. Best of luck with "Dunkirk." We appreciate it.

NOLAN: Thank you very much.

(SOUNDBITE OF HANS ZIMMER'S "SUPERMARINE")

GREENE: Christopher Nolan was sipping 19 his tea in our studios in New York City. He's the director of the film "Dunkirk."