“As with Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, one’s admiration for the film is tempered by a terrible profound sadness - for a people who “won the war, and lost their country anyway”: the “long island story” is ending, and without anyone feeling the need to lie choking on the ground over it. To anyone old enough to remember an England where one could “walk into any pub in the country and ask with perfect confidence if the major had been in”, that sense of loss can bring tears to the eye. Unlike Iron-Man 5 and Spider-Man 12 and Cardboard-Man 19 and Franchise-Man 37, this is the film of an actual, real-life superhero: You leave the theater with the cheers of the House ringing in your ears ...and return to a world where quoting Churchill in his own land can get you arrested.”
Mark is such a wonderful read.
I just read the companion book that the author of the screen play put out and it has some original scholarship from original sources on the tiny points of the history of this short period.
First, it shows pretty clearly that contrary to almost every other account, there was a day when Churchill was ready to accept a peace negotiation along the lines put forward by Halifax. Using various notes and minutes of all parties at the time, it seems that Churchill was not the single steel spine of the British Government as is often portrayed.
I have read about three or four thousand pages of Churchillian history and I have to say the writer does a very good job of centering on the distinction that while providing the verbal inspiration in his speeches for the iron willed British, he came to that over a three day period as events unfolded.
Likewise, the author, again with original sources show the inspiration and specific plan for the flotilla rescue at Dunkirk was principally Churchill’s — something he is rarely given enough credit for by those that are his detractors.