Christopher Nolan's.... DUNKIRK? (2017)

I loved the movie. But I do agree with this part. It is definitely what I was looking for in a summer movie. I wasn’t looking to be damaged when I walked out. It’s definitely a movie that looks at the hopeful and the bright, not the tragic parts.

Liked it, though it wouldn’t make my own little pantheon of either Nolan movies or war movies. But it surely was refreshing to see a summer movie that wasn’t about people in spandex or animated critters for a change, even more so one that messes around with nonlinear story telling…

As a pedant and a history nerd I am compelled to point out the movie gives a false impression about two things. First, the time frame. In the movie, once the small craft show up it all seems to be over quickly - in fact the whole evacuation took a week, and many of the small craft made multiple trips (the record was something like seven.) Second, the weather, which was bad for flying most of the time. Given the Germans had air superiority, this was a big advantage for the British. But overcast weather makes for bad movie shots, so instead we got nice scenic skies and everything being due to British pluck; the fact that a large portion of the evacuation’s success was due to good fortune gets downplayed.

This movie could have also used an explainer (a fake newsreel?) at the start for American audiences, who basically learn nothing about the war before Pearl Harbor in school or from popular culture. The “facts” the guy next to me was telling his wife about the war were pretty entertaining.

This is true. What I heard most of the time in the U.S. about the war before the U.S. joined is that Germany marched on Paris, and the French surrendered. That’s pretty much it. You never hear about the French losing so many at Dunkirk. Sadly, this movie doesn’t change that either.

I had to explain the event to the couple I went with. It is a little known “battle” to the average American for sure. As I get older I notice all the battles and history of that war are getting less known. Nice to see a fairly well done movie on the issue. Certainly well acted. And the sound sweet Moses that soundtrack and the sound in general was amazing.

That was some of the loudest, deepest bass I’ve ever heard in a movie theater. It was amazing during the dogfights but overwhelming in other parts. The bass drowned out the soundtrack for much of the film. I wonder if this is what Nolan intended or is even aware it’s happening with the IMAX 70mm showings.

Thought this was an interesting take.

Any idea why the Germans weren’t mentioned even once? The opening text that sets the “history” just refers to “the enemy.” The enemy aircraft are referred to by their makes (Messerschmitt, Heinkel) rather than nationality. They went to the trouble of showing a Messerschmitt with yellow nose paint, which is historically accurate, but surely were meticulous about not showing any Maltakreuz or swastika. It was like the British were being attacked by low-tech aliens.

Saw this yesterday. Various opinions, thoughts and questions to follow. Hopefully no need for spoiler tags at this point:

  1. Opinion - less positive than I expected/hoped. A large part of this was because of the theater viewing experience (see below). And I had pretty high expectations. But contrary to the overwhelming praise, I would give the movie (or at least my experience of it) a modest thumbs down. That said, I might be inclined to rewatch it at some point in the future, on TV, in a more suitable viewing environment

  2. Viewing Environment (BIG THUMBS DOWN). So, I watched it at the St. Louis Science Center, Omnimax theater. I think this is a full on Imax screen (I understand there are different levels). It’s a “theater in the round”, with the seats fairly close to the screen, and the screen big and curved. This is the first time, I think, that I’ve seen a theatrical movie there - I’ve seen one or more documentaries there in the past - those seemed OK, to my recollection.

Problems?

A) Viewing experience. Started with seats in the 6th row (of perhaps 18-20). One row down, I think from the spot carved out for the projector, slightly to the right. It had seemed, when we entered the theater, to be a fairly central location, maybe a touch forward, but behind the projector area seemed a little dubious to me (could be distracting?)

Anyways, it was just REALLY hard to watch the movie from here. It stretched far beyond normal viewing range in all directions. Was really hard to keep my eyes focused. In the opening scene of the soldiers in the town, had to kind of look from side to side to follow what happened on the left and on the right. Just weird, unnatural, distracting, and somewhat nauseating. The nauseating (or maybe dizzy?) feeling was enhanced by the shaky-cam photography.

and…

B) Sound Volume: Just crazy loud, for far too long, in my opinion. Some jarring peaks would be one thing, but to have a bass rumble so loud that if feels like your insides are vibrating, for perhaps 1/3 of the film or more (even when there’s not shooting or explosions going on) was just far too much.

Anyways, about 10 minutes in, we moved to about the 3rd row from the back, and the viewing experience got better. Visually - it worked reasonably well, though the sound was still really loud.

Since this is long, I’ll push plot questions/opinions into my next post…

OK, on to the movie content itself:

[Spoiler alert]

  1. Minor point - at the beginning, with the flyers dropping, the fact that the flyer was in color (red ink) jumped out at me at the time as a little wrong. All you young whippersnappers may think printing in 4 colors, let alone 2, is trivial stuff but it was a fairly big deal even in the 1980s and 1990s, much less 1940. In fact, a Slate article on the movie showed a flyer that the movie flyer was apparently based on, and in fact, it was black and white. Minor stuff, but still…

  2. It seemed to me that the distance from the French sandbag barricade to the main debarkation beach was trivial - perhaps 100 yards. And yet on that narrative thread, it’s still early days of the evacuation. I would suspect that the main defensive perimeters around the evacuation area were, early on, miles from the debarkation beaches, not ~100-200 yards…

Yes, it’s not clear the Germans were brushing right up against the sandbag barricade, but the movie implies they were pretty close.

  1. The number of soldiers lined up on the beaches to leave seemed to fluctuate a lot during the movie. An enormous line when the soldier from the first narrative thread first reaches the beach, but then a lot less, periodically, in subsequent scenes. Yes, some of this could have been camera angles and such, but it seemed a little weird.

  2. Question: In the yacht thread, there are 2 people aboard, and then one more kind of hops aboard just before it leaves the dock. Was that last person the kid who dies or blond guy who lives? (Not saying this was unclear in the movie, but I forgot, by the time things got hairy on the boat). The kid who dies - what was his relationship to the other two?

  3. It was a little hard to see/follow the action that led to the kid’s death. The shell-shocked soldier is in the cabin, arguing with the old man, the kid tries to intervene (I think), then what? He’s struck/pushed, and bangs his head so bad he dies (after a while)? It just didn’t quite seem, at the time, like a fatal (with delay) struggle.

  4. The whole story of the soldiers hiding in the beached boat, which eventually floats, didn’t make a lot of sense to me. First, they’re walking down an apparently empty, large stretch of beach towards the boat (where did the rest of the beach-waiters go? see point 3 above). Then they’re in the boat and someone is shooting holes in it. Who? I think someone mentions something about it being target practice, but it seems odd. Then the boat is leaking, more and more, and still getting shot. I thought they were still on the beach, but it’s revealed they’re deep at sea. Someone is shooting at them deep in the sea? Or did all/most of the bullet holes theoretically come when the boat was beached and/or just after it floated but was still near the beach? Who’s steering the boat? How does this boat with ~3 feet of water in the hull (maybe less, early on), get afloat? How do they stop up the bullet holes? Seems they were trying to use fingers and hands, but that seemed not likely to be very effective.

  5. Towards the end of the movie, a Spitfire that’s out of fuel is cruising along the beach. It appears to overfly a heavy concentration of British, then land 1-2 miles up the beach in an apparently empty area. But there are quickly Germans on the scene. If the Germans are only 1-2 miles up an open beach from massed, unprotected British, I dunno, it just doesn’t seem logical. Couldn’t they set up machine guns and/or use their rifles to strafe the British at that distance (or close just a little and do it)? Yes, shooting a man with accuracy from a mile or two would have been very hard in 1940, but shooting into a mass of men at that distance wouldn’t be so difficult.

He gets elbowed in the head by the shell-shocked soldier. My take was that he got a big epidural hemorrhage (seemed like correct location - temporal), initially unconscious, becomes briefly conscious, and dies. Actually pretty medically accurate. But I agree that unless you’re watching carefully it’s hard to see the contact.

I wonder how many pilots landed safely in the water only to be unable to get out of the cockpit. That was a little stomach churning for me.

I did really like the movie though. Kind of ashamed I didn’t recognize Tom Hardy until the end.

According to Stephen Bungay, even if you did get out safely, your survival chances were poor.

Near where he falls there’s some kind of pump or other hard metal machinery. I assumed he fell below and hit his head on that.

Well, they explicitly say that the narrative on the beach covers a week, the boat journey covers a day and the air fight covers an hour. The movie does make it seem like it’s mostly sunny and the beach is quickly evacuated once the small boat fleet arrives, but it’s a consequence of the timing of the different threads. They did show some bad weather on the beach. I think Nolan is allowed some artistic license in terms what he emphasizes in order to bring about a satisfying climax.

Having the sandbags right near the beach felt off to me as well. I guess he compressed the physical scale because he wanted to bring home the desperation of the situation, but yeah it bugs me.

It’s said several times its Germans shooting. The boat is out of the perimeter (which is small at that time, since the guy at the pier can see the boat with his lenses). That also explains (and is referred to in the movie) why there are no more british soldiers around. It’s a dangerous place to be and you can find Germans.

That also explains your next question on why there where Germans where the pilot landed. The perimeter is indeed explained to be small at that time and the Germans aren’t attacking to preserve manpower (which is also talked about in the movie). How closely that parallels the historical reality I have no idea, but I’m guessing it’s probably researched.

BTW, the movie is full of ellipsis and plays loose with time. It’s an impressionistic portrayal and some stuff (the boat floating to open sea) is not really explained temporarily.

It is actually historically inaccurate, as the yellow nose paint didn’t occur chronologically until after Dunkirk. Nolan acknowledged that, but felt it was helpful to distinguish planes and so kept it in.

Yeah, I thought he hit the back of his head against that when he fell.

Nah, yellow nose paint was present during the invasion of Poland.

Maybe not of the ones that were used in France? Here’s what Nolan stated:

“If someone was looking with a strict historical eye, there are certain choices we made that we had to stand behind,” says Nolan of Dunkirk.

For example, there are Messerschmitt Bf 109 planes featured in dogfights with British Spitfire planes. In the film, the German planes have yellow noses, the better for telling which are German and which are British during the fast-paced aerial scenes.

“In reality, the planes were not painted yellow until about a month after Dunkirk,” says Nolan. "But it’s a very useful color scheme for trying to distinguish two planes in the air.

“We need to tell the story in a clear way,” he adds. “And there are going to be things that we have done that are inaccurate, but they are done with eyes open and with respect for the real history.”

The reason the noses were painted yellow in the Polish campaign is the same reason that Nolan cites: IFF recognition. I don’t know where Nolan is getting his info, but I’m not prepared to take Christopher Nolan’s word on anything historical, since I doubt he did any primary research himself. That’s not a knock against him - he’s an accomplished film director - I’m just saying that I don’t accept his word as a source for historical info. He may very well have been told that by somebody. I have seen photos of Me-109s with yellow noses which were labeled 1939, and seen museum descriptions (in Poland) where these paint schemes were discussed. Maybe the photos I have seen were not actually from 1939, and were mislabeled. If I were at home I’d dig through some old Luftwaffe books.

In the end, it’s a minor point, because it has no effect on the film. What has a HUGE effect on the film is the omission of any reference to the Germans.