brian brian
Posts: 3191
Joined: 11/16/2005 Status: offline
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Yeah, I know he wanted to tell the story of Dunkirk specifically. He may have started out on that path, but I don't think he stayed on it, and then achieved something far greater than the story of this battle. He wrote the script, by himself - and that script leads you to thinking about much more. His technique of anonymous characters (one never learns the names of many major characters) put me towards thinking that the specifics of the battle don't matter. The motivations of every character's actions and the costs and implications of their decisions are the thinking matter here, and much of that easily uncouples from the specifics of the battle. With no over-view, scenes from Home, politics, or generals, the movie is much more an exploration of the individual experience of war. He could have set in Korea, Afghanistan, anywhere. The grand scheme of the battle is barely mentioned until the very end, and you almost forget all about it, just as the participants do, as they deal with events as they un-fold in front of them, not meta-narratives about this country or that country or the given battle at hand. For critics to miss that just points out how this is a departure from traditional war movies quite a fair bit. So as for the French, their portion of the story is handled clearly, in my opinion, though at a bare minimum. They hold the perimeter, they explicitly (on-camera) get refused first call on the ships, and then eventually the Royal Navy continues the operation to evacuate them later, as a second priority. It shows the cold calculation of the British decision and in no way glosses over it. If anything, a major French character quite highlights the terrible reality of it all - and the movie is about stark reality in every way. To get into the French aspect of the battle would require a different movie altogether, with scenes back at HQ with a big map and those little pins with flags stuck all over it and staff officers wringing their hands over the bad news, and a news bulletin on the radio heard by civilians, etc., that we have seen in all the other "The Story of ....." war movies ever made. The only German characters in the movie are an He-111 and a few Me-109s. Just a few seconds of screen time for a couple actual soldiers. I think there may have been an interesting cameo from Michael Caine, in one of the RAF portions of the film.
< Message edited by brian brian -- 7/22/2017 8:44:12 PM >
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