MOVIES
BY RICK LEVIN
HARRY STYLES IN DUNKIRK
WAR IS HELL
Director Christopher Nolan once again achieves greatness
in the beautiful and haunting Dunkirk
A
masterpiece can be a hard thing to overcome, es-
pecially when it occurs early in an artist’s career.
For my money, director Christopher Nolan’s
second film, Memento (2000), is as nearly per-
fect as any movie released over the past, say, 40
years — a stunning existential thriller that begins exactly
where it should end and then runs seamlessly backward
from there, until it reaches, like a tail-eating snake, its own
insidious genesis, in a moment that feels for all the world
like the big bang of original sin itself.
Memento, a parable of memory, guilt and vengeance
written in disappearing ink, did what most movies only
threaten to do, which is make the impossible possible. And
it did so by not only upending genre expectations but in-
verting them in such a way that something truly profound
was revealed about the human condition.
Since Memento, Nolan has tended to go big, both in
terms of narrative stretch (Inception, Interstellar) and
increasingly bloated Hollywood budgets (the Batman re-
boots) that allow him to reach, literally, for the stars. To his
credit, Nolan’s ambition, like that of Terrence Malick, is
cosmic in scope; both filmmakers appear to want nothing
less than to make film the philosophical equal of its visual
splendor, a medium of ontological inquiry.
And yet, nothing Nolan has done has matched the art-
JULY 28-AUGUST 3
EVERGREEN
NUTRITION
THE WOMEN'S BALCONY
(ISMACH HATANI)
FRI-MON 12:15 2:30 4:45 7:00 9:10
TUE
12:15 2:30 4:45
WED
12:15 2:30 4:45 7:00 9:10
THU
12:15 2:30 4:45
THE LITTLE HOURS
12:20 2:40 5:00 7:10 9:15
12:20 2:40 5:00
9:15
FRI-WED
THU
INCLUDING PET CBD
THE HERO
12:25 2:45 5:00 7:10 9:10
12:25 2:45 5:00 7:10
FRI-WED
THU
All mammals have CBD
receptors, not just humans.
DAVE MADE A MAZE
WITH FILMMAKER Q&A
CBD can ease anxiety, phobias,
pain, inflammation, seizures and
can even be used for palliative care.
NO PASSES OR DISCOUNTS
TUE
7:30
AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL:
TRUTH TO POWER
SNEAK PREVIEW – NO PASSES OR DISCOUNTS
THU 8/3 7:25 9:35
• Chemical-free CO2 Extracted
• Non-GMO • Gluten free
1653 Willamette Street
M-F 9-6 • Sat 10-5 • Sun 11-5
FREE OFF-STREET PARKING
541-485-5100
www.evergreennutrition.com
22
July 27, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
PLANK TOWN BREWING CO. PRESENTS
43 W. BROADWAY
(541) 686-2458
REGULAR
ADMISSION
$9 ADULTS
$8 STUDENTS
$6 SENIORS
$6 BEFORE 5 PM
OPEN EVERY DAY
baby&me
MATINEE SHOWS FOR PARENTS WITH INFANTS
A GHOST STORY, THE LITTLE HOURS,
THE HERO OR THE WOMEN'S BALCONY
WED
10:00
BUY TICKETS ONLINE AT
BROADWAYMETRO.COM
excruciatingly suspenseful, vast in scope and yet painfully
intimate — Homer retold by Poe and filmed by Kubrick.
The cast, featuring big names like Tom Hardy, Kenneth
Branagh and Cillian Murphy, is excellent, and yet no per-
formance stands out or draws attention to itself. In a sense,
and in keeping with Nolan’s vision of war, the actors are
placeholders in the grand sweep of violence that subsumes
them, pawns in a divine comedy, at once sacred and profane.
What I found so captivating and ultimately devastating
about Memento was not the story that was told — which,
in the end, proved fairly prosaic — but, rather, the way in
which it was told, and the perspective Nolan brought to
bear on what I thought was familiar, everyday reality.
Similarly, Dunkirk holds no surprises as a war-qua-war
movie; in fact, the individual elements of its various plots are
fairly predictable. What makes the film great is the way No-
lan, a master of controlled disequilibrium, jars us into new
ways of looking at war. As Kubrick did in Full Metal Jacket,
Nolan — who also wrote the screenplay — takes incredible
liberties, twisting the standard stuff of the war film until it
comes almost to resemble a horror film. War, after all, is hell,
and the fact that Nolan reveals the truth of this without indulg-
ing the outright gore we’ve come to expect from such films is
just one more testament to the achievement of his haunting,
beautiful vision. (Cinemark 17, Regal Valley River) ■
TIX $5 SUNDAYS
$7 $3 TUESDAYS
7/28 - 8/3
A GHOST STORY
DAILY 12:40 2:50 5:00 7:15 9:20
15-20% OFF*
CBD OIL
PRODUCTS
*15% OFF CV SCIENCES & 20% OFF MB SCALAR CBD
istry, vision and exquisite technical execution of Memento
— until now. Dunkirk, based on the famous evacuation of
Allied troops during the Second World War, is an epic film
that succeeds utterly on its own terms as a time-bending and
harrowing portrait of wartime that, like Memento, twists and
manipulates genre expectations in such a way that the whole
film becomes a kind of terrible, breathless rhapsody.
I’ve always contended that Saving Private Ryan would
have been a perfect war film if only Spielberg, a rummy
sentimentalist at heart, had hacked off the first and last
fifteen minutes of the movie, thereby doing away with
the patriotic hogwash that cynically bookends the hellish
chaos at the heart of it all. Nolan, in a sense, shows far
more faith than Spielberg: From the opening frame, he
drops us directly into the action and never once lets up the
tension. With almost zero explication — and minimal dia-
logue — Dunkirk threads together three narratives at once
(the action on land, sea and in the air), each one looping
and crossing through time in such a way that past history
becomes fluid and hellishly immediate, contracting to a
momentary cataract of terror and then expanding to reveal,
with a kind of tragic indifference, the swarming flow of
faceless men swamped in global conflict.
The film is visually stunning, immaculately edited and
ominously scored; the overall effect is at once eerie and
492 E. 13th Ave
541-357-0375
STUDENT
& SENIOR
DISCOUNT
ALL AGES
762-1700 | 180 E. 5TH AVE
DAVIDMINORTHEATER.COM
MOVIES
THAT
bijou-cinemas.com
MATTER
Serving the Eugene Community for Over 35 Years!
$3 TUESDAYS
FRI JULY 28TH - THUR AUG 3RD
MAUDIE (PG-13) (FINAL WEEK!)
An arthritic Nova Scotia woman works as a
housekeeper while she hones her skills as an
artist and eventually becomes a beloved figure
in the community.
1:00, 3:30, 6:00, 8:30
MARIE CURIE: THE COURAGE
OF KNOWLEDGE (ONE WEEK ONLY!)
NORMAN
5:05
CAPTAIN
UNDERPANTS
5:20
IT COMES AT
NIGHT
7:00
In French/German/Polish with English Subtitles
Follows the famous physicist and chemist Marie
Curie and her struggle for recognition in the
male-dominated science community in early
20th century France.
1:30, 3:45, 6:15, 8:45
Local beer, wine and cider... & now kombucha on tap!
TICKET PRICES: MATINEE before 5pm $6
ADULT $8 | STUDENT $7 | SENIOR 62+ $6 CHILD age 12 & under $6
ZOOKEEPER’S
ALIEN COVENANT
WIFE
7:10
8:40
GET OUT
9:25