Every­thing we know about Christo­pher Nolan’s Dunkirk

Like Steven Spielberg’s Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan and Ter­rence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, Christo­pher Nolan’s lat­est project is shap­ing up to be an epic ensem­ble dra­ma about men attempt­ing to scrape through the over­whelm­ing hard­ships of World War Two. Dunkirk, based on the improb­a­ble oper­a­tion that saw over 300,000 sol­diers evac­u­at­ed from the shores of the epony­mous French town, is set for release in 2017. The sub­ject mat­ter is a per­fect fit for Nolan’s visu­al­ly grandiose style and feel for high-stakes ten­sion, and while the film­ing has only just begun, the details so far are intriguing.

Recre­at­ing the evac­u­a­tion scenes is an immense logis­ti­cal task, but Nolan seems to be stick­ing to his prac­ti­cal-effects guns. Film­ing is under­way part­ly on loca­tion at Dunkirk itself, and the direc­tor, in full on com­man­der-in-chief mode, is even bring­ing a French war­ship out of decom­mis­sion for the production.

Most recent­ly, pho­tos have sur­faced of Nolan’s crew on the windswept town’s beach­es, along with groups of uni­formed extras and sur­pris­ing­ly flim­sy-look­ing card­board trucks and sol­diers. They may be for a screen test but it wouldn’t be the first time Nolan has cre­at­ed con­vinc­ing envi­ron­ments through some back-to-basics opti­cal tricks, as in the Road­run­ner-esque paint­ed tun­nel in The Dark Knight.

Nolan’s goal has always been to cre­ate large-scale envi­ron­ments that feel authen­ti­cal­ly grit­ty, and he’s brought back Interstellar’s cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, Hoyte van Hoytema, to cap­ture the action in immer­sive IMAX using 65mm film. He’s also brought on board Andrew Jack­son, the visu­al effects super­vi­sor who so effec­tive­ly blend­ed CGI with rugged prac­ti­cal effects on Mad Max: Fury Road.

The cast includes Tom Hardy, Ken­neth Branagh and Mark Rylance, whose career has recent­ly reached a new lev­el of buzz with acclaimed appear­ances in Bridge of Spies and The BFG. Cil­lian Mur­phy, who has appeared along­side Hardy in The Dark Knight Ris­es and Incep­tion, joined the cast in April. Nolan is known for using the same actors across his films, but a notable absen­tee this time round is Michael Caine, who it seems won’t be avail­able to dis­pense his usu­al sage observations.

It’s not hard to imag­ine the griz­zled grav­i­tas of Branagh or Hardy in the role of World War Two offi­cers, but the film’s focus will appar­ent­ly be on the younger mem­bers of the cast. Nolan has cho­sen rel­a­tive­ly unknown Fionn White­head, along­side oth­er young British actors Aneurin Barnard and Jack Low­den. Mak­ing his act­ing debut is One Direction’s Har­ry Styles, who is already the focus of much of the #dunkirk activ­i­ty and blur­ry covert set pho­tos on twitter.

Jonathan Nolan and Hans Zim­mer are also back, on screen­play and sound­track duties respec­tive­ly. The cast and crew will be pret­ty famil­iar to Nolan fans, even if the his­tor­i­cal set­ting isn’t, and the film looks to be a con­tin­u­a­tion of a tra­jec­to­ry that has seen the direc­tor go from taut psy­cho­log­i­cal thrillers like Momen­to to ambi­tious, mon­u­men­tal block­busters like Inter­stel­lar.