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Dunkirk
I just returned from watching Dunkirk with my eldest. I refrained from reading any reviews of it in advance, just so I could form my own opinion. Spoilers ahead, so be warned.
Actual photo of the beach at Dunkirk
The film is somewhat disorienting to watch. You are following 4 different stories, set at different paces, as they all race towards their intersection. The stories all begin at the start of the film, but one is set over a blurred week of attempted escapes, one picks up in the middle of the first, one a day before, and one begins a mere hour before the climax (the film informs you of this time difference in captions – 1 week, 1 day, 1 hour). The stories all intersect at last in the arrival of the first small craft from the UK at Dunkirk, and mostly run contiguous until the end.
The dialog is spartan. Aside from the few captions at the beginning, there is little in the way of exposition. The first story follows the lone survivor of a British patrol in Dunkirk who, having lost his entire unit (perhaps one of the doomed units who held the perimeter against the German advance), tries to find a way, any way, onto one of the transports. He is not a noble figure, perhaps he is even a coward. His repeated and often dishonest attempts to line-jump and board a transport spell doom at every turn until very near the end – one wonders if Nolan was punishing him from above, serving him up (or perhaps a companion of his) as a Jonah figure to every escape attempt.
The second story follows the admiral (played by Kenneth Branagh) who comes ashore to direct operations, and who stayed with the soldiers until the very end. What little exposition there is comes through his conversations with a BEF colonel.
The third story is of the owner of a small pleasure craft, his son, and friend of his son’s, who answer the call to sail to Dunkirk and assist. The film shows the very real dangers these small craft faced as they neared the war zone. The father, likely a WWI veteran, knows the stakes involved as he faces the dangers ahead.
The final storyline centers on an RAF squadron sent to protect the shipping. The pilots encounter several Luftwaffe patrols and bomber escorts, and the film does quite well in showing the very uncertain and chaotic nature of aerial combat. Theirs is the one story told (with breaks to the other story lines) essentially in real time as we near the climax. The dogfights are a confusion of missed shots, uncertain hits, and battles with their own equipment as they attempt to protect and save the troop laden ships below.
This is an exhausting movie to watch, and while it certainly ends with some of the characters you’ve been following actually making it back, with them rolling into a sunny English train station to cheers and adulation, after nearly 2 hours of hours of tension, explosions, drownings, near drownings, torpedoings, dive bombings, dog fights, betrayals, and cold cold water, the return home is disorienting and jarring. I rather think director Christopher Nolan did this deliberately. Having read accounts by evacuees, including the war memoirs of General Alanbrooke, the British General who led the BEF evacuation, they often describe the sheer mental assault of trying to survive in that doomed collapsing pocket, and the utter disorientation upon their return home. Over there was death closing in on all sides, at home were sunny skies and a land not yet ravaged by bombings and assault. One walks out of the theater in a similar, if of course much smaller daze. The relief at surviving is palpable, bittersweet, and hollow. The film does end with a soldier reading Churchill’s evacuation speech, but the end is not hopeful. You have survived, and that is about all you can say of the matter. This is no victory, there is no triumph, only survival. And not all the survivors were heroic.
Published in General
He loves Fast & furious! He loves Zack Snyder!
The world is full of possibilities.
That being said, the pilot being captured was silly. There is no reason he couldn’t land in the perimeter.
Also the perimeter was being guarded quite well by the French army. Once within stragglers would be hard to happen so the boat scene would not have happened at least as depicted. But it’s a movie so I forgave those things.
Ain’t that the truth. He’s gone beyond mere curmudgeony into artistic pedantry.
There’s no accounting for taste.
Talkin’out both corners of your mouth, Skip!
He’s all-American, he does what every American does, even on Ricochet, it’s just that he does it louder than most of you. No American likes his taste questioned. Nobody can be against popular taste & be safe in America…
Titus Techera
He loves Fast & furious! He loves Zack Snyder!
Liking Snyder would be enough to discount his opinion. But he liked Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, along with Jonah Hex, What Happens in Las Vegas, the remake of Clash of the Titans and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. He didn’t like The Dark Knight or Toy Story III. I trust him for movie picks like I trust the New York Times for casting my ballot.
Truly, what Armond likes or does not has little effect me. Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I do not. It’s the way he writes that at times annoys me, and for that I will gleefully continue to have a bit of fun at his expense, one writer to another. Besides, it’s always funny when when a critic, well known for taking the high road, admits to liking junk food.
It’s the sort of fun you can have when you find out that a restaurant critic, who routinely nitpicks the desert presentation and the wine list to avoid ever rating a steakhouse as a 4-star for the Michelin Guide or Zagats, secretly likes to hit up McDonalds for a happy meal and a shake. We don’t really fault him for doing so, we only fault him for turning out to be human after all.
You need way more out of movie-talk than movie picks. Most of his choices are actually good. Even some of these failed films are much better for America & for conversation than most of the stuff that gets prestige or buzz or whatever.
I disagree with him often enough, but I’ve never found him thoughtless, which most of writing in America absolutely is. Criticism has turned into celebrity worship, franchise worship, & pledging loyalty. It’s sickening. Then there’s the rampant, thoughtless sarcasm of youtube & elsewhere.
Where’s judgment? Armond White has that-