War is hell.

But the new film Dunkirk (an epic war story set for release this week) has been viewed as heavenly by movie critics regarding its acting veterans and young newcomers, storytelling dynamics and daring cinematic achievements involving practical effects in the air, on the land and in the sea.

Famed director and screenwriter Christopher Nolan explained his first ambitious journey into framing and telling a real story from history.

Having followed the inception of this film (I had to) concerning the earliest reports of what Mr. Nolan was up to following his 2014 science-fiction epic Interstellar, the fragmented bits of information that were revealed throughout the past couple years that a war film was the director’s next venture was genuinely thrilling. This news was before any IMAX cameras were reserved by his production team. And as Mr. Nolan says in the video interview above, Dunkirk strives to be an experience wherein the silver screen offers no barrier for the audience from feeling the intense action sequences being projected on said screen.

Dunkirk portrays a hellish ordeal for 400,000 Allied soldiers. For history’s sake, that’s a good thing and precisely what Mr. Nolan was aiming for with his brand new cinematic epic on a massive scale.

War is hell. However, if the events of Dunkirk had turned out differently, then something much larger than a solitary war would’ve become hell.

For that reason alone, people should see Christopher Nolan’s newest film centered on that surreal, and historically consequential, evacuation effort.