MSHDigit 7 points8 points 9 months ago

It's too bad they made Dunkirk beach look as empty as a public beach during the government shutdown though.

Seriously, there was no scale at all during the entire movie. It made it look like an evacuation of like only 1000 people and an air battle of 3 planes

willmaster123 11 points12 points 9 months ago

Most of the beach looked like this. Pretty much exactly like the movie.

Its not like 400,000 people crowded into one small strand of beach. The beach stretched for 12-13 miles.

MSHDigit 0 points1 point 9 months ago

But that itself far more people than I remember seeing in the movie. Of course even hundreds of thousands of people can pack in relatively small areas without looking overly crowded, but the movie made it look SPAAARCE.

I could be wrong though, because I haven't seen the movie in a while. The only time, though, I remember seeing many people was on the bridge they loaded onto to get on the boats

willmaster123 5 points6 points 9 months ago

Well you gotta remember it was 400,000 people spread over 12 miles of beach, the area we saw was like 1/4th of a mile at best.

SuddenXxdeathxx 1 point2 points 9 months ago

I think the beaches were sparse because it was supposed to be near the end of the evacuation, but that doesn't explain where the other 100,000 - 200,000 troops that were left went.

The best sense of scale had to have been near the end when Tom Hardy's plane was gliding over the beach, and you could see the smaller boats running troops from the beach out to the larger ones that weren't on screen, and like ten thousand men queued up on the beach. Only two planes were in that scene, and absolutely zero sounds of combat coming from the city literally within 100 metres of the camera shots from the ground.

I just reminded myself of my least favourite part of the movie, that being them completely glossing over the fact that the remnants of the French First Army fought until they ran out of ammo to buy them time. You already mentioned how lacklustre the depiction of the air forces was.

Uh okay I think I'm done now.

MSHDigit 1 point2 points 9 months ago

Yeah, absolutely. Don't even remind me of that scene haha.

Others pointed out the real-life sparceness, but I think they're overstating it a little, or as much as I overstated the inaccuracy of the movie.

When Hardy's plane lands, we see zero troops anywhere in site. When they find the beached boat and hide in it, they're is nobody for miles. This seems really odd. Even if it's 12 miles, my memory of the film is of a beach far sparcer than any picture I've seen of the actual evacuation.

But again, I haven't seen the movie in a while. It could have been broadly accurate, actually, especially since it takes place near the end of the invasion.

If memory serves me still, I think it also made it appear that just about all of the evacuees were rescued by civilian skippers rather than military ships. I don't think this is true, is it? It made for a cheesy "heartstrings" moment, when the fleet of civilian ships bursts into view to rescue them in a dire moment, but someone illuminate me here on the accuracy.

SuddenXxdeathxx 1 point2 points 9 months ago

The civilian flotilla was assisting for most of the evacuation last I checked, mostly as ferries between the beach and the larger military ships that couldn't get close enough. They all arrived around the same day too because of the request made by the royal navy. So it kinda happened, but the movie made it seem like they only showed up at the end.

Nya7 -1 points0 points 9 months ago

Yes! Also the timeline was a mess

MSHDigit 1 point2 points 9 months ago

If you haven't seen Atonement, it's a decent movie with an astonishingly beautiful 5-minute long take shot of the protagonist's arrival at Dunkirk. (History Buffs, anyone?)

I thought the opening segment of Nolan's Dunkirk was shot really well and with great sound mixing. It was ominous and disorienting, aside from the unforgivable flaw of emptiness of the beach, of course.

The rest of the movie was boring Noaln-esque grandiose cheese. He spent so much time making things "authentic" that he watered down the movie into a bunch of Hollywood clichés but with an air of pretension hanging over every scene.

willmaster123 7 points8 points 9 months ago

Atonement was before the actual evacuation truly began, it was basically when the troops were 'setting up camp' so to speak. Dunkirk the movie takes place while they are trying to get the soldiers in line to evacuate.

This is what the beaches at dunkirk looked like, pretty much very similar to the Nolan movie.

Nolan had a ton of people who were there to make sure it was accurate as possible, and also soldiers who served afterwards who said it was incredibly accurate to the situation.