Dunkirk (2017)
Dec. 30th, 2020 10:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloWe never see the face of the enemy- except at the very end where in a blur of grey overcoats and poking rifles they close in on one of the principal characters and make him their prisoner. Otherwise we see the enemy's flying machines bearing down on us and experience his presence as gunfire coming from locations we can't exactly pin down.
Almost the first thing Tommy does (he's the boy soldier we'll be following in his desperate and sometimes not strictly ethical attempts to get off the beach) is panic under fire and lose his rifle.
The beach is vast, the sea is vast, the sky is vast.
All these arenas of conflict are very lonely places to be.
Alliances are formed, briefly, seemingly at random. Expediency rules. Under the circumstances it's hard to blame anyone for behaving badly- as they do. But they behave admirably too. Some of them.
Arriving home, the soldiers expect to be spat at on the streets. Instead they find that politicians and the media have spun their abject defeat into a kind of victory. Which it is... of a sort...in a manner of speaking. "Well done" says the man on the dock who is handing out tea and jam butties. "What for?" says the squaddie. "All we did was survive." "That's good enough" says the man on the dock.
And the weekend sailor who has brought home a bunch of men in his pleasure cruiser, had a teenage member of his crew killed, and seen men fry in burning oil, puts his civilian hat back on and slopes off into the crowd...
Almost the first thing Tommy does (he's the boy soldier we'll be following in his desperate and sometimes not strictly ethical attempts to get off the beach) is panic under fire and lose his rifle.
The beach is vast, the sea is vast, the sky is vast.
All these arenas of conflict are very lonely places to be.
Alliances are formed, briefly, seemingly at random. Expediency rules. Under the circumstances it's hard to blame anyone for behaving badly- as they do. But they behave admirably too. Some of them.
Arriving home, the soldiers expect to be spat at on the streets. Instead they find that politicians and the media have spun their abject defeat into a kind of victory. Which it is... of a sort...in a manner of speaking. "Well done" says the man on the dock who is handing out tea and jam butties. "What for?" says the squaddie. "All we did was survive." "That's good enough" says the man on the dock.
And the weekend sailor who has brought home a bunch of men in his pleasure cruiser, had a teenage member of his crew killed, and seen men fry in burning oil, puts his civilian hat back on and slopes off into the crowd...
no subject
Date: 2020-12-30 11:37 am (UTC)Scots complain bitterly how Churchill turned the Jocks who got off from there round and sent them back into the bag.
And how no one remembers St Valéry.........
no subject
Date: 2020-12-30 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-30 08:42 pm (UTC)I liked this film very much when I saw it in 2017 and still when I thought about it earlier this year. I still think about how it called emotion out of time. The Prestige was the first of Nolan's films I'd loved rather than admired (or been left cold by), but I think Dunkirk may edge it out, except for David Bowie's Tesla.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-31 12:33 pm (UTC)I enjoyed The Prestige, but thought the pay-off was a bit silly. No such complaints with Dunkirk.