I agree. It was a beautifully photographed bad movie with bad writing and a bad story that was left lacking at the end.
It should have had a triumphant feeling at the end and instead it was somber and defeatist...just like the liberal historical revisionists who created it.
Wow.
I felt exactly the opposite after watching it.
Dunkirk was a low point for the British army. They were defeated, and were on the verge of being wiped out. But, normal everyday citizens came to their rescue, and evacuated them from the beaches. It was a somber event, and helped galvanize the British, along with Churchill’s speeches, in stopping Hitler.
The part of the pilot landing on the beach was stupid, however.
Many people call that reality; please count me among them. The triumphant feeling occurred later on V-E Day.
There was no triumph at that point. The British army had gotten their asses well kicked and now they knew this was going to be a tough war. Sure it was a great display of civilian participation, but that only had to happened because of how badly the war was going.
“Crappy movie...” [TomServo, post 3]
“...bad writing...bad story that was left lacking...should have had a triumphant feeling...instead it was somber and defeatist...” [MeganC, post 4]
“... Hitler also demonstrated his incompetence by not pressing the air war and eliminating the British on the beach...he thankfully paid the ultimate price... [Dave Wright, post 10]
We must decide if we prefer reality to a comforting story.
Stories are for three-year-olds.
Military endeavors work better if grounded in reality. Study of actual history can lead to more complete understanding if the latter path is taken.
The reality of combat is fear, pain, death, conflicting information, confusion, and a dozen similar terms. Nothing makes sense, leaders lose their heads, no one knows what’s going on. Every move can look pointless, especially to the individual private soldier caught in the middle of a fight. Decisions are guesswork.
Christopher Nolan’s _Dunkirk_ deliberately took the point of view of a few individuals, all at relatively low levels of their hierarchy, who in May/June 1940 were fleeing the German onslaught, or trying to help those who were.
The only references to commands from on high were a hurried conversation between middle-level officers on Dunkerque’s Long Mole, a few stray remarks in the denouement, and the young soldier’s reading aloud of PM Churchill’s speech from the newspaper, aboard the passenger train car at the very end. Irony: he looks more like the oil-smeared, salt-encrusted, exhausted, dispirited evacuee than any cream of British manhood.
The film is not a defeatist fantasy crafted by grumpy revisionists; doesn’t need to be. The Western Allies’ real situation was about as far from “triumphal” as one could get yet live through it.
Hitler and Stalin were still in cahoots.
Contrary to all hopes and predictions, France was collapsing: all Europe was lost.
Americans, mulishly preoccupied with navel-gazing, were congratulating themselves on their moral superiority in staying above it all.
It would be no exaggeration to say the fate of Western Civ stood on a razor’s edge.
In his speech in the House of Commons, Winston S Churchill (who had been Prime Minister of the UK less than a month) termed it a “colossal military disaster.”
With deference to Dave Wright’s conclusions, historians still disagree over the German failure to capture or annihilate the remnants of the British Expeditionary Forces.
The Wehrmacht’s armored columns had advanced so far with such speed that they had become perilously overextended; they’d outrun their supply train and vehicles were severely in need of maintenance. Adolf Hitler wanted the Panzers to press on, but his general officers convinced him to call a halt - the risk of an Allied counterattack was deemed too great.
The film got the weather conditions all wrong. The Luftwaffe was not called off; a low-altitude cloud layer prevailed for much of the evacuation, rendering dive-bomb attacks by Ju-87s, strafing by Me-109s and 110s, and other ground-attack machines ineffective. Thus the Little Ships and Royal Navy warships avoided major losses to hostile air action.
Just what the point was, of Tom Hardy dead-sticking his Spitfire onto the beach near the end, is unclear to me too. A reference to the RAF’s refusal to send Spitfires (newer, fewer) to the battle on the Continent? The willingness of RAF pilots to press the fight in defense of the then-powerless BEF ground troops, even when it meant sacrifice and certain loss? Acknowledgement of the notoriously short legs of fighters of the day?