Tommy flees through the perimeter held by French troops to the beach, where thousands await evacuation, and helps Gibson to bury a body.

Three Royal Air Force Spitfires fly towards Dunkirk, to provide cover for the evacuation, limited to one hour of operation by their fuel supply.

Dawson has the boat evade aerial attack, using a technique taught by his deceased elder son, a pilot lost at the start of the war.

Director Christopher Nolan conceived the film in the mid-1990s,[17] when he and his future wife Emma Thomas sailed across the English Channel, following the path of many small boats in the Dunkirk evacuation.

[21] Nolan said that he approached research as though it were for a documentary,[29] and was attracted to the subject matter because of its inversion of the "Hollywood formula", depicting a military retreat centered on the Franco-British forces in place of the typical heroic narrative of victorious Americans.

[18] Nolan and his production designer Nathan Crowley toured the beach of Dunkirk while location scouting, and decided to film there despite the logistical challenges,[23] discarding Suffolk as an alternative.

Crowley set up a makeshift art department in Nolan's old garage, as is tradition, and colourised black-and-white photographs to better understand the visual representation.

[18] As research, Rylance piloted his character's boat every day,[23] listened to audio recordings at the Imperial War Museum,[59] and read accounts of men like Mr Dawson.

[17] To minimise the need for computer-generated imagery (CGI), cardboard cut-out props of soldiers and military vehicles created the illusion of a large army.

[18] A small 1930s motor yacht called Moonstone served for six weeks of filming; its most demanding scenes, with up to sixty people on a boat designed for fewer than ten, were shot on the Dutch lake IJsselmeer[23][33][72] to avoid the challenge of the Dunkirk tides.

[23][79] The real Spitfires were provided by the Imperial War Museum Duxford,[18] and owner Dan Friedkin piloted the one that was filmed landing on the beach in Dunkirk.

[17] IMAX cameras were attached to the fighter planes using specially made snorkel and periscope lenses—in the back and the front[17][23][33]—and large-scale mockups were submerged with cable rigs for a crash scene.

[17] Hardy and Lowden spent the final stages of the shooting schedule on a cliffside in Palos Verdes, inside purpose-built cockpit gimbals, with limited contact with the rest of the cast and crew.

[91][98] Zimmer also heightens the tension with subtle Risset rhythms throughout the entire movie—seemingly endless increases in tempo[99] (however, these effects were removed for the official soundtrack release).

[100][101] "Nimrod" from Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations is part of the theme,[102][103] which was slowed down to six beats per minute with added bass notes to avoid it sounding sentimental.

[101] Zimmer visited the Dunkirk set for inspiration, taking back a jar of sand,[104] and chose not to view raw footage whilst composing.

[122] The first full-length trailer was released on 14 December 2016,[123] alongside a five-minute[124] cinema-exclusive prologue shown before selected IMAX screenings of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

The website's critical consensus reads "Dunkirk serves up emotionally satisfying spectacle, delivered by a writer-director in full command of his craft and brought to life by a gifted ensemble cast that honors the fact-based story.

[163] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian awarded the film five out of five and called it Nolan's best to date, saying that he "surrounds his audience with chaos and horror from the outset, and amazing images and dazzlingly accomplished set pieces on a huge 70 mm screen, particularly the pontoon crammed with soldiers extending into the churning sea, exposed to enemy aircraft".

[164] Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter also lauded the film, calling it "an impressionist masterpiece" that was "deeply moving" but without "manufactured sentimentality or false heroics".

[165] Peter Debruge of Variety praised the plot (although calling Zimmer's score "bombastic"), writing: "[Nolan has] delivered all the spectacle of a big-screen tentpole, ratcheting up both the tension and heroism through his intricate and occasionally overwhelming sound design".

[1] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times described the film as a "tour de force of cinematic craft and technique" and lauded Nolan's elastic approach to narrative.

[167] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle called it a "triumph" and "masterpiece", commending Nolan's unique approach to directing a war film.

[169] Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four and said it was one of the best war movies of the decade, describing it as "tight, gripping, deeply involving and unforgettable ... triumph in filmmaking".

[170] Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly gave the film an "A", calling it the best of 2017: "By the end of Dunkirk, what stands out the most isn't its inspirational message or everyday heroism.

[176] Kevin Maher in The Times gave it two out of five, saying: "[Dunkirk] is 106 clamorous minutes of big-screen bombast that's so concerned with its own spectacle and scale that it neglects to deliver the most crucial element—drama."

[177] David Cox of The Guardian felt the film had historical inaccuracies, a paucity of female characters, small scale, a thinly characterised cast and lack of suspense.

The PG-13 rating may limit the amount of blood on screen, but Nolan's filmmaking still makes this cinematic representation of an incredible historical event extra harrowing.

Also noted were the accurate depictions of how a small boat evaded aerial attack, and of how soldiers returning to England saw a civilian population largely unaware of or unaffected by the war.

[202][203][204][205] When the beach scenes were shot, the weather was worse than during the real evacuation; Nolan explained that this helped to understand the danger faced by the pleasure boats.