[yasr_overall_rating]
Allied soldiers from Belgium, the British Empire, and France are surrounded by the German army and evacuated during a fierce battle in World War II.
“Dunkirk,” written and directed by Christopher Nolan, is a film based on a historical event from WWII, during which 400,000 Allied soldiers of Belgium, Great Britain, and France are cut off from home and surrounded by the German army. The film is meant to depict the battle that raged on air, land, and sea to evacuate these men and return them to home.
Nolan is highly regarded as a writer and director, and he does do some very interesting things with the storytelling. For example, there is little to no character development. Perhaps you will find yourself most drawn to the Dawson family as they dare to venture forth in their sailboat among the civilian rescuers, but even the details about Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) and his two sons are very sparse. Other than that, if you don’t recognize the actors from some other movie, you will likely find it difficult to keep track of names without the usual emotional connection to a backstory and purpose of a certain character. Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) was the only actor I recognized from yet another movie about WWII, Swing Kids (1993). He just has that stern military look, I guess.
Then there are the time loops which are at first confusing until you slowly realize that you are watching the same catastrophe occur from a different perspective. Hence, the air, land, and sea angles for the film’s depiction of the event. This overlap of the storytelling was not only interesting to me, but it also gave me the chance to pick up more information about the story if I had misunderstood what was happening a few scenes before. However, I’m fairly certain that “clarity” isn’t exactly what Nolan had in mind with the time sequences. Still, the repetition did help to cement some of the details in place where the dispassionate use of character development left me a little lost.
Evidently, there was one other aspect of the varied perspectives which time was used to depict. At one point in the film, it was dark at sea, but daylight for the pilot. This can’t really be explained by time change since Dunkirk is only a single place. My best guess comes from a little research where I discovered that the historical experiences of the event were vastly different with regard to time. A pilot only had enough fuel to fly for an hour or so, while some of the men waited over a week on the beach to be rescued. The film is only 100 minutes, but this was another interesting twist of how Nolan used time – or rather, the inaccuracy of time – to show the effort of heroism and survival from many different angles.
Strangely, for a typical war movie, I found the whole “raging” aspect of the battle somewhat curious. I think there were U-boats blowing up the occasional Allies’ ship, but why didn’t they completely devastate everything?? There was nothing that I noticed to contend with the presence of U-boats. And there was only ever 1 or 2 enemy planes at most, buzzing around, waiting for the British Spitfires to swat them from the sky. Meanwhile, on land, supposedly the German troops are lying in wait just over the rise…and yet, the film does not show them at all.
All I saw were a couple of massive explosions annihilating a couple of destroyers and then hundreds of men desperately jumping ship to try to swim home, come hell or high water. In the middle of all this, somehow a call had gone out to all civilian boats, fishermen and sailors alike, and those most patriotic went forth into the madness and mayhem to fish their countrymen out of the waters. But, how did so many of these boats make it to the soldiers unscathed? And how did they go home again without being attacked?? The film simply leaves this hanging. Again, relying on research of the historical event, it was noted that 380,000 men made it home. So quite, obviously, the rescue attempt was successful. But, the way Nolan tells it, it comes off a bit unbalanced, if not ludicrous that there were no casualties and all of these beautiful yachts and schooners made it home in one glorious piece.
But more than all of that, I’m tired of war and the not-so-subtle, one-sided propaganda that always goes with it. I’m tired of the assumption that America and her allies are always right and that even when we lose, it’s still a victory to return home and rally the troops once more. Sometimes, I wonder:
- “Why don’t we ever tell the stories of when we conceded and we were better for letting go?”
- “Why are the Germans and the Iraqis always the bad guys?”
- “When will we tell stories of the nobility of surrender for the sake of cooperation?”
- “Is it human nature to always see ourselves as the rightful winner?”
- “Is this why there will never be enough movies about the Civil War and WWII??”
I do admire the hat tip that the film gives to the privilege and struggle of surviving. But in the end, the survival only seems to be “honorable” if you never give up, you never back down, and you come back another day to put those brute Germans in their place. And that makes me feel as exhausted as when I try to settle a fight between my children, both of them insisting on being the last one to poke the other in the eye or get the last word or whatever other senseless behavior they can muster energy for as they fight to continue surviving the war they create.
Thus…..100 minutes later,….. I was mostly relieved that I had survived another war movie.
In theaters Friday, July 21st
