Dunkirk Movie

[Wolfshanze]

While the trailers for this movie look really good, I just read a story that people are already complaining about the movie… not because it’s not historically accurate… in fact, they’re mostly complaining that the movie about a bunch of white guys doesn’t have enough minorities in the movie… ya… too many white guys in the WWII movie about the British Army. They think the British Army at Dunkirk really needed more Blacks, Asians and Hispanics.

The things people will complain about…
https://heatst.com/culture-wars/dunkirk-so-white-new-christopher-nolan-wwii-blockbuster-falls-foul-of-social-media-diversity-police/

[General 6 Stars]

Not about historic no more. Crap

Then they should come out with another Wild West movie.

[General Veers]

Meh, don’t read too much into that stuff, we live in a HOT TAKE society now. Everyone has to write in hyperbole and whip up controversy to get attention.

I remember the sentiment that Nolan’s last film -Interstellar- was an unabashed rah-rah “America saves the day” movie. It’s one of my favorite films of the decade.

[CWO Marc]

The Hearst article is basically a short item which reports that the movie has attracted a few idiotic comments – it quotes five – on social media.  Given that any subject at all is bound to attract at least a few idiotic comments on social media, I don’t think one should read too much into this with regard to the film.

[taamvan]

In 1984, its the ministry of Truth that is retroactively editing the past, directed by a monolithic totalitarian state.  In 2017, there is much proof that Orwell was totally wrong and that no single malevolent government is necessary for this;  it is the popular, majority, mainstream view that the most popular conspiracy theories are correct, and regular people are happily willing to revise, reinterpret or misrepresent everything that has ever occurred, even events that without exaggeration, occurred yesterday.

[CWO Marc]

@taamvan:

it is the popular, majority, mainstream view that the most popular conspiracy theories are correct

Conspiracy theories have majority mainstream acceptance?

[Wolfshanze]

@CWO:

The Hearst article is basically a short item which reports that the movie has attracted a few idiotic comments – it quotes five – on social media.  Given that any subject at all is bound to attract at least a few idiotic comments on social media, I don’t think one should read too much into this with regard to the film.

Yes, but a few people complaining can cause problems for the many… here in my hometown of Pensacola, we’ve had a huge Christian Cross in a public park for over 70 years… 4 people… yes 4 people complained that they were “offended” by the Cross in a public park… they went and complained to a judge and now because of 4 people being offended, a huge cross and symbol in Pensacola that has stood for 70 years has been ordered to be taken down.

4 people complaining can cause trouble for many… it’s not the first, and it certainly won’t be the last.

[hkytown1]

I’m more worried about packs of giddy girls sitting behind me and squeeling every time they see Harry.

[gbjeff]

Saw it and loved it.  Excellent.  I think it channels more “A Bridge Too Far” than anything.

[Wolfshanze]

@retrohobbyist:

Saw it and loved it.  Excellent.  I think it channels more “A Bridge Too Far” than anything.

Oh, so Sean Connery was in Dunkirk?

[General Veers]

No Sean Connery but I’m glad Christopher Nolan found a role for usual contributor Michael Caine, even if it wasn’t on-screen.

[Ichabod]

The Royal Airforce was credited with around 320+ air kills during Dunkirk and over the channel. Yet the movie does not have many planes at all in it. More planes would have increased the action and better displayed the sense of urgency of getting the Royal Army back to England.

The Battle of Britain movie from 1969, great film, had tons of planes in it (of course a movie about an air war requires lots of planes). But, Dunkirk was a battle with lots of planes in it. My biggest complaint was not enough air action in Dunkirk with swarms of Stukas coming in and Hurricanes diving on them for the rescue.

The drama music/noise was annoying at times, but still, it was a great movie all around.

I saw an article posted to Drudge saying that the French were upset about not getting enough credit for defending the beachhead. Well, it’s implied and defensive position manned by French Soldiers is represented in the movie.

[Zooey72]

@CWO:

@taamvan:

it is the popular, majority, mainstream view that the most popular conspiracy theories are correct

Conspiracy theories have majority mainstream acceptance?

“Hands up, don’t shoot”.

Not bringing up politics, but this was proven to be completely false but people believe it anyway.

The movie was ok, but it was no “Saving Private Ryan”.

As far as historical stuff goes I thought it was excellent.  I think they threw out too many German bombers and dive bombers escort w/o escort, but other than that it was great.  I exceptionally liked the scream of the Stukas.  That had to scare the hell out of people.  Made me wonder, how did the dive bombers who were right on top of these things not go deaf?  There are 2 things I would have added to the movie that  they left out though.  1.  They should have shown all the discarded equipment on the roads, and made a bigger point of how when they got back to England all their weapons had been left behind.  2.  Stopping the French from getting on the boats.  While it was mentioned they didn’t get into the hostility that took place between England and France over the policy, and why they changed it.  I would also have liked to have heard somewhere from some French guy the saying at the time “England is willing to fight to the last Frenchmen”.

My biggest problem with the movie is that the characters were too one dimensional.  You lost track of who was who, and didn’t really care when someone died because they all came across as “soldier X”.  (other than that kid on the boat who was killed by the guy with shell shock, that sucked).

[CWO Marc]

@Zooey72:

2.  Stopping the French from getting on the boats.  While it was mentioned they didn’t get into the hostility that took place between England and France over the policy, and why they changed it.  I would also have liked to have heard somewhere from some French guy the saying at the time “England is willing to fight to the last Frenchmen”.

Ironically, it might not have made much difference in the end because most of the French soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk – over 100,000, which is not a trivial figure and which represents about one-third of the total numbers evacuated – were shipped back to France to re-join the fight against the German forces advancing into France…with the result that they very soon ended up in German hands as POWs when France fell.  On a similar note, I think that during the Battle of France Churchill had been urging the French government to allow Britian to take charge of the German POWs that France was holding and ship them off to Canada, where they’d remain in Allied custody even if France fell.  The French government refused (perhaps because this would have meant conceding that France might fall, which in fairness would have been a distasteful prospect to admit), and these German POWs ended up being liberated by their comrades-in-arms when France did indeed fall.

That line about England fighting to the last drop of French blood, incidentally, can be heard in Frank Capra’s “The Battle of France” chapter of the “Why We Fight” series, as a German loudspeaker broadcast to the French across the Maginot Line during the Phony War.  It’s also used in the WWII-era Bogart movie “Passage to Marseilles”, where English actor Claude Rains (playing a Frenchman once again, as he did in Casablanca) dryly speculates that the line was “invented in the office of Doctor Goebbels.”

[Flashman]

In 50 years we will have no history. Everything that isn’t PC will be expunged from the record, street names and statues will be erased and replaced, perhaps even the remains of the dead will be exhumed and incinerated if they don’t pass the test. The future is inverted fascism, just as Orwell predicted.

[General 6 Stars]

I just saw the movie and it was ok for me. I agree with most in above posts. I needed to see more planes and some German pilot talk and some German generals giving some kind of tactical orders and maybe a Hitler scene with some generals.
I did love the planes when they flew by or over.

[CWO Marc]

One our our local newspapers had an article about the Dunkirk movie this weekend, and I cringed when I read the header paragraph which said that Nolan’s film looks back at “this forgotten event.”  Groan.  And to make matters worse, there’s a paragraph near the end of the article which says that the Dunkirk evacuation “is celebrated in Britain,” which would be nonsensical if the evacuation really was a forgotten event.  An earlier paragraph similarly fails to sell convincingly the case for amnesia when it says that the event is “barely mentioned in French history textbooks,”  which isn’t quite the same as saying that nobody remembers it at all.  I couldn’t help wondering if the “forgotten event” characterization was really a case of the author of the article indirectly admitting that he’d never heard of Dunkirk.

[Imperious Leader]

Just think. Goering told Hitler " my Luftwaffe will destroy them on the beaches"

what did we get … well like 2 He-111 and 5 Me-109, and 3 JU-87

some Luftwaffe… freaking cheepos…it was like one plane every 15 minutes, should have been a sky full of planes

[aequitas-et-veritas]

A good comparison would be “enemy at the gates”. A few Ju87’s here and then attacking the crossing TT’s in the Volga.
Looks like according to the situation in late 42.

In Dunkirk there should be more. Rolling waves over waves plaster the beachhead with bombs and MG-fire.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but listening to you guys makes me wonder.

[Gargantua]

If it’s realism you were looking for - I wouldn’t be a big fan of the “fighter scenes”

Shooting down 5 planes made you an ACE fighter pilot; and whilst it wasn’t unheard of to become an ACE in a day, it certainly wasn’t common.

Further… Tom Hardy’s spitfire never seems to run out of ammunition, when in fact, spitfires only had a matter of seconds of ammuntion (40 to 60 seconds continuous fire?  I am sure someone here can confirm?).

THAT SAID.

Don’t look at Dunkirk as a War Movie.  It’s a much better HORROR Film.  You basically never see the Germans,  the tension is extremely thick, and you truly get the sense of fear of desperation the allied soldiers felt; and the doom and gloom of waiting on a ship that will likely sink.

Where I became convinced it was a horror film, was with the soldiers who hid on the boat that was beached.  and when the bullets start flying, they start turning on each other.  No one knows who the other can trust!

It reminded me alot of Das Boot…