In Spring, a young man's fancy turns to not getting shot, not getting blown up, not drowning and just possibly, making it home alive. Late Spring, anyway. May of 1940. The coast of France. The beaches of Dunkirk.
Director Christopher Nolan is described by IMDB as "Best known for his cerebral, often nonlinear storytelling". The movie Dunkirk is told from three points of view, and nonlinear is a good term for it. One point of view is from soldiers on the beach, another, that of a Spitfire pilot and the last, the civilian captain of one of the boats in the rescue flotilla.
The nonlinear aspect is off putting to some. In one scene you see from the cockpit of a Spitfire, pursuit of a German Messerschmidt about to attack some ships. Later in the film, from the point of view from the ship, you see a Messerschmidt about to attack, pursued by a Spitfire. Each layer adds to a fuller understanding of what is taking place, though it may not be obvious at first.
I'd known the story of Dunkirk since I was a lad, but I'd never realized its scope: four hundred thousand men, surrounded, with their backs against the sea, sitting ducks for the Luftwaffe. In a case of what may have been dueling bureaucracies, the Germans would not commit their tanks to finishing off the British army, along with their French and Belgian allies, and the British will not commit a sufficient number of Spitfires to fly cover, or destroyers to relocate the army, lest they be needed to protect the homefront.
Speaking of scope, the cinematography is tremendous and sweeping. The aerial dogfights are spectacular. The attention to historical accuracy was very good. For example the depiction of the Spitfire pilot hand pumping his landing gear was not uncommon, even in some American fighters of that era.
There have been several complaints about the movie, one from an Internet twit, who shall remain nameless, who said the movie "feels like an excuse for men to celebrate maleness". There is very little resembling machismo in this film. Just the historical account of 400,000 men trying to stay alive. Perhaps 50,000 to 70,000 of them didn't. They were bombed, strafed, torpedoed, many drowned. Those who survived, some were wounded, most watched their friends and complete strangers dying around them, wondering if any minute that fate might be theirs. Yet some extremely shallow
Still, this may not be the most stupid complaint.
