Tonight, to cap the festivities around my dad’s birthday on Monday, I asked him to go with me to see the new film “Dunkirk.”

We both enjoy and appreciate World War II films, and when each of us saw the trailer for this film, we both voiced a desire to see it, so it seemed like perfect way to round off his birthday week: it opened three days after he stepped into his next year.

We ended up seeing the IMAX version because I had read this was film suited for it, and the IMAX extras did not disappoint. The movie is a film about expanses- expanses of beach, of sky, of soldiers, of sea- and the big screen enjoyed being used for such scenery.

I had heard that people were really liking this film, and I wasn’t fully sure what to expect. Seeing its first trailer last winter, I remember being less than wowed by it, because the ad was a slow-motion spectacle of silence, gray, and sad staring soldiers. When I saw a newer trailer this spring, my expectations adjusted upwards, and excitement built up. The film looked good.

And it did not disappoint.

Viewing the credits at the film’s end, I was wowed to discover that film’s producer and director, Christopher Nolan, also wrote the thing. And I was wowed at that because the script, at times lean and terse, masterfully develops and sustains tensions and trials without extensive dialogue or background. We see situations develop, understand what is grave within them, and witness them build with a sense of dread over potential outcomes. Several plotlines are given to us initiated at different times, developed in parallel, until at one point near the film’s conclusion, they all intersect and interact with one another like a square of dominoes that fall into one another. And in that moment of plotline intersections, Nolan does his best illusionist act. Each plotline resolves concurrently, like a row of playing card structures knocked over in sequence.

To me, the film is Nolan triumphant. He has carved out a cinematic masterpiece in this remarkable project.

But now I need to watch it again, so I can better see just what he did in the way he constructed the film’s plot and story arc.

When the film was over, my dad and I sat and watched the credits as others got up and left the theater.

It was that amazing.

I wa kinda hoping it would replay again, right there, right then.

We enjoyed that part of my dad’s birthday week quite a bit tonight.