Dunkirk

Quality film by Nolan (one of many). I do hope this country stops with the WW2 obsession though.
 
Nero said:
Quality film by Nolan (one of many). I do hope this country stops with the WW2 obsession though.
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I agree with Mutley that we could learn more from the world wars and become more accepting of other nationalities. Maybe that way the biggest disaster this country's ever inflicted on itself, Brexit, would never have happened.

You might be surprised though by the way the French celebrate key moments from both world wars that we don't in this country. I was staying in Picardi and couldn't believe the amount of preparation that went into celebrating the Battle of Britain. Travel along the Normandy coast and many towns and villages have reminders of the D-Day landings or key battles.

It is funny how in this country if you show patriotism it is seen as an aggressive action, yet abroad they are called festivals. It is not wrong to be proud of where you come from, it is wrong to inflict your beliefs on others.

Edit: How did we get to that from watching two films. :ROFLMAO:
 
Osboro said:
a spitfire with far more range than in reality
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How far away do you think Dunkirk is? Canterbury to Dunkirk as the crow flies is less than 70 miles. Spitfires could cruise for 2 hours at something like 150mph so Dunkirk is well within range of Spitfires based in the SE.

Spitfires did engage the Luftwaffe over Dunkirk (the first time I believe, as Dowding refused to deploy them to France) one was shot down and recovered some 50 years later and is now back in flying condition.

IWM - Spitfire N3200 lost for 50 years

Osboro said:
constant views of heavy lift bulk cranes in the back ground
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I can't say that I noticed them but I'd rather that than the use of CGI like the dreadful stuff used in Midway (the recent version not the John Ford one)
 
Muttley said:
How far away do you think Dunkirk is? Canterbury to Dunkirk as the crow flies is less than 70 miles. Spitfires could cruise for 2 hours at something like 150mph so Dunkirk is well within range of Spitfires based in the SE.

Spitfires did engage the Luftwaffe over Dunkirk (the first time I believe, as Dowding refused to deploy them to France) one was shot down and recovered some 50 years later and is now back in flying condition.

IWM - Spitfire N3200 lost for 50 years


I can't say that I noticed them but I'd rather that than the use of CGI like the dreadful stuff used in Midway (the recent version not the John Ford one)
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I rather suspect he's referring to the sequence where it was shot to bits, no engine left and yet miraculously continued cruising without power for about 20 minutes. Utter rot.
 
Perhaps. I think sometimes you just have to accept that the way in which a film is made will deviate from "reality" for dramatic effect. There were loads of historical anomalies if you want to play spot the anomaly or you can just allow the story telling to flow over you. Like sitting listening to an old warrior tell stories of "daring do" that have little basis in fact. That is really something for the individual viewer, I found the way in which Nolan interwove the stories from Land, Sea and Air to be very well done and the building sense of threat and desperation to be immersive. He could have simply tried to tell the story of Dunkirk like in the John Mills one but what is the point of that? Watch the John Mills film. Not everyone's cup of tea granted but for me a very decent film.
 
As somebody who loves war films eagerly anticipated this but came away from the cinema feeling somewhat underwhelmed.

The massive scale of the operation just wasn't conveyed in the film. The thin crowd of soldiers on the beach the sparseness of the flotilla just didn't look spectacular at all. The John Mills film was much better
 
Good film. It conveyed the bleakness and desperation of the British soldiers well, plus it did give credit to the French who put up incredible brave resistance to allow the BEF to escape.

The one area Nolan should have used CGI was to accurately portray the numbers of soldiers that were on the beaches, as these were absolutely packed., but look sparse in the film. Full points for the focus on the mole as the main point of evacuation rather than the small boats.

The RAF fought like hell during the evacuation, suffering and inflicting huge losses both. The combat was mostly not over the beaches, since the point was to intercept the enemy before they got there, hence the soldiers mistakenly criticising them for not turning up. Additional numbers of fighters via CGI might have been more accurate, but I agree, they can look crap on CGI.
 
I'm often bemused by filmakers desire to improve on reality for dramatic effect -especially when reality is often the more the dramatic - guess they like to "fix" things to suit the story they want to tell.

I exclude from this opinion the films around the time - which were more propagandary and uplifting for obvious reasons in retrospect.
 
Cardiffdaffs said:
As somebody who loves war films eagerly anticipated this but came away from the cinema feeling somewhat underwhelmed.

The massive scale of the operation just wasn't conveyed in the film. The thin crowd of soldiers on the beach the sparseness of the flotilla just didn't look spectacular at all. The John Mills film was much better
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Agree. Thought the film was ok but not the epic it could have been and put it down to disappointing cinematography.

Three hundred thousand men were rescued but all we see is about a hundred. Nolan’s refusal to use CGI meant he lost that ability. We see a few boats not the thousands that crossed the channel to rescue the trapped armies of soldiers. We see just a handful of aircraft not the many planes that took part.

What this movie needed was something along the line of the railroad hospital scene in “Gone With The Wind” where the camera slowly pans out to reveal the mass of humanity, the smoke, the filth, the crowds, the desperation, the abandoned equipment - the pathos of war. I didn’t get that with Nolan’s film.
 
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