Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Some hype is irrespective of a films quality, which I am banking on in this case, as I'll see it at the theater. In other words, my decision to see it was pre-hype.
.
Good for you! You're special to have noted the quality of this before knowing hardly anything at all about it...just based on the subject matter!
Mark Rylance is such a fine actor. A very good film. I really felt rather terrified at some points and never got that feeling of revisionist or ham fisted patriotism or cornyness. I like it a lot.
Anything Kenneth Branagh is in, or connected with is usually pretty good. I can't wait to see it. I haven't been in a movie theater since "Master, and Commander" with Russell Crow was released.
The TV ads for this film have a number of technical and historic errors.
The evacuation at Dunkirk took place during the last week of May and the first week of June, 1940. Yet the film shows the British soldiers wearing winter overcoats. May and June are hardly winter time.
The sequence where a RAF fighter pilot is trapped in his cockpit after ditching in the water.........a standard operating procedure was that pilots operating at low altitude and over water... would roll back and lock in place , their cockpit canopies to prevent this from happening. And flying a low level protective sortie over the beach would not require wearing a oxygen mask, as was portrayed in the film.
Helmets. The film shows thousands of British soldiers wearing their "tin hats " while wading out to be picked up by the small craft. The reality is that no sensible man would do that. Keep your rifle, for sure. But the helmets were replaceable. Photos taken at the time, show large piles of helmets on the beach .
None of the thousands of trucks, tanks and artillery guns that had to be abandoned, were to be seen.
Where were the French military ? The historic record shows that over 110,000 French soldiers were evacuated . The combined total was over 245,000 men.
Computer generated images of troops on the beaches were obviously just that....
I will be interested to hear the impressions of those that go to see this film.
Jim B.
Ah, well, few films about true events are entirely accurate; your notations seem rather mild for a dramatic film; to me this literary/cinematic license doesn't seem to heavy handed. By the way, here is a picture of prisoners of war at Dunkirk, early June at the time.
The movie actually was pretty accurate overall, with some cinematic liberties of course for the sake of the story. I wouldn't say it's a great classic, but well done for what it was.
You have to cheer a World War 2 movie where the heroes and saviors are not always American.
Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk is likely to be the most widely seen or read depiction of history released in 2017. So how does a British historian who teaches and writes about World War II rate it as history?
In terms of accuracy, it rates pretty highly. There are no big, glaring historical whoppers. The characters whom Nolan invents to serve his narrative purposes are realistic, and his scenes depict genuine events or hew close to firsthand accounts. And why not, since fiction could hardly outdo the drama and emotion of the reality? Nolan made clear that he intended the film to be a kind of history of an experience, and he succeeds about as well as any filmmaker could in conveying what it might have felt like to be on that beach.
And one thing that was mentioned previously and is correct, is that this movie doesn't really go into the 'divine' aspect of things (understandably since this wasn't that kind of movie; this movie was more lean and focused on what happened on the ground). But still, for the complete story, this is must reading:
It wasn't divine intervention... it was luck and a country coming together. And of course Hitler's known interference when he should yield to his field commanders.
I liked the movie. Didn't like the directing by Nolan. It was too all over the place. He could have blended the stories together a little more methodically, instead he tossed it in a blender.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.