Dunkirk

Dunkirk

Dunkirk is ponderous. It is somber and British. Using Saving Private Ryan as a reference, Dunkirk is the polar opposite. Whereas Saving Private Ryan is dynamic and has forward motion Dunkirk is stagnant and stoic. If Christopher Nolan wanted to convey anxiety and desperation he did so splendidly.

The movie is a series of vignettes. There are the stranded troops on the beach with Kenneth Branagh as Commander Bolton. Then there are the RAF spit fighter pilots engaging Nazi planes. One of the pilots, Tom Hardy, is totally unrecognizable since he wears an aviators hat. The other piece of the movie focuses on the flotilla of small boats sailing to Dunkirk to rescue the solders. One of the best performances of the movie takes place on one of the boats with Mark Rylance and Cillian Murphy. Given the chaos of war this compartmentalization is an effective approach. The vignettes are puzzle pieces of the whole.

The film is epic in scope. The cinematography is sweeping with aerial views of the vast of the beach and the thousands of British troops waiting in neat rows for reuse. The vulnerability of the troops was striking. The coming attractions conveyed images of slaughter on the beach, but the majority of the troops were evacuated. There were attacks by the Luftwaffe on the troops but only with one or two planes.

There are moments of bravo when RAF spitfire downs a Germain plane or when the little boats arrive. It makes does little hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

Some historical facts:

• ·         Of the 338,226 soldiers, the majority were rescued by the Royal Navy. The small boats ferried soldiers from the beach to waiting vessels. Some sailed back to Dover.
• ·         Why weren’t the troops slaughtered on the beach? Hitler gave his infamous Halt order stopping Panzer tanks from continuing the assault. A major blunder.
• ·         Nolan’s film is getting tagged with #ohsowhite.  There were troops of color at Dunkirk. There was the Royal Indian Army Service Corps and other soldiers from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. In the film, there is one shot of a French solider of color.

This is an important movie. Reviews are positive and the box office is healthy. As with all historical films their veracity is debated. This is a war movie of elegance.