Introduction While it may have foregone many tropes common in other major Hollywood films, Dunkirk (2017) remains one of the most captivating works of film of our time through its brutal realism and historical accuracy. A slow burn to be sure, this film captures the experiences of those involved in Dunkirk on three fronts; on the beaches, in the air, and in the sea. In order to gain a well-rounded perspective on the historical accuracy of this film, I have analyzed and researched it in accordance with the three angles the film focuses on. Regarding those on the beaches, the main focus will be placed on the experience of over 400,000 soldiers awaiting deliverance on the beaches, their experience once their rescue was complete, and those unfortunate souls who were not so lucky as to be delivered home safely. For those in the air, emphasis will be placed on analyzing just how large of an impact they had on the successful evacuation of the men waiting at Dunkirk, in contrast to the way they were perceived by the men …show more content…
Though the myth surrounding Dunkirk led many to believe there was a large civilian component to the operation, in reality very few ships were manned by their civilian owners, with most being operated by Royal Navy crews who simply needed a vessel to borrow. (cite) Nevertheless, small vessels, civilian owned or otherwise, accounted for approximately 100,000 (cite) of the 338,000 (cite) soldiers brought home from France during the evacuation. In the film we see the most extreme example of the participation of civilians in Operation Dynamo, with the pleasure yacht piloted by Mr. Dawson eventually returning a large group of stranded men back home from all the way across the English
“The war correspondent is responsible for most of the ideas of battle which the public possesses … I can’t write that it occurred if I know that it did not, even if by painting it that way I can rouse the blood and make the pulse beat faster – and undoubtedly these men here deserve that people’s pulses shall beat for them. But War Correspondents have so habitually exaggerated the heroism of battles that people don’t realise that real actions are heroic.”
were poor and men loathed them. The soldiers slept on a bed of mud and
When people see “Old Glory” flying, the experience should take their breath away. From the Omaha beaches in Normandy, where over three million soldiers stormed the German Nazis, to Iwo Jima, where the exhausted marines raised the proud flag, to the h...
"Feature Articles - Life in the Trenches." Firstworldwar.com. First World War, n.d. Web. 05 Apr.
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The film I have chosen to review is the Patriot starring Mel Gibson, Heath Ledger, and Jason Isaacs. The director of the Patriot is Roland Emmerich and was produced by Dean Devlin, Mark Gordon, and Gary Levinsohn ("Is 'The Patriot' Patriotic?." )The first time I watched the Patriot was on DVD at home with a bag of popcorn and a bottled coke. The Patriot is broadly based on the Revolutionary War and Americas fight for independence.
When a friend "returns" from the war, the boys at Devon got a real sense of what the war was like.
Even though half of a century separates us from the unforgettable event, it left horrible memories especially in those who saw, felt and experienced World War II which was waged on land, on sea, and in the air all over the earth for approximately six years. Whether it’s a battle, hospital, or holocaust, there are so many stories from the survivors, who can teach us not only about the profession of arms, but also about military preparations, global strategies and combined operations in the coalition war against fascism.
...though people believe that, those on the home front have it just as a bad as the soldiers, because they have to deal with the responsibilities of their husbands, there is nothing that can compare to what these men have gone through. The war itself consumed them of their ideology of a happy life, and while some might have entered the war with the hope that they would soon return home, most men came to grips with the fact that they might never make it out alive. The biggest tragedy that follows the war is not the number of deaths and the damages done, it is the broken mindset derives from being at war. These men are all prime examples of the hardships of being out at war and the consequences, ideologies, and lifestyles that develop from it.
Evaluating the Success of Dunkirk There are many opinions on how successful Dunkirk was; one point of
Each soldiers experience in the war was devastating in its own way. The men would go home carrying the pictures and memories of their dead companions, as well as the enemy soldiers they killed. “They all carried emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing- these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.” These were the things that weighed the most, the burdens that the men wanted to put down the most, but were the things that they would forever carry, they would never find relief from the emotional baggage no matter where they went.
In Paul Fussell’s book, The Great War and Modern Memory, he discusses some of the ways in which World War I affected the men who fought in it, specifically those in the trenches. One of Fussell’s main points in his book as he tries to characterize World War I was the widespread irony that spread in its wake. Even though the focus of his book is based upon the British perspective of World War I, Fussell also briefly mentions the effects of the war upon other countries involved in the war.
Since the very first actualities from the Lumière brothers and the fantastical shorts of Maries Georges Jean Méliès, cinema has continually fulfilled its fundamental purpose of artistic reflection on societal contexts throughout the evolution of film. Two French cinematic movements, Poetic Realism (1934-1940) and French New Wave (1950-1970), serve as historical bookends to World War II, one of the most traumatic events in world history. The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939) is a classic example of French Poetic realism that depicts the disillusionment in society and government politics by a generation already traumatized by the monumental loss of human life during the First World War. Breathless (Jean Luc Godard, 1960), one of Jean Luc Godard’s most iconic films, portrays the next generation’s consequential feelings of loss and struggle. Both Rules of the Game and Breathless embody the spirit of their respective movements while exploring realism and redefining the purpose of cinema. However, while Rules of the Game contrasts the formative and realistic traditions through long takes and deep focus, Breathless breaks cinematic conventions through distanciation techniques and disjunctive editing to convey disillusionment and cinematic realism. Though these techniques and definitions of realism are seemingly oppositional, Godard and Renoir both hold to the same cinematic purpose of communicating their feelings of disillusionment towards society with the audience.
well as to a few of the horrors of the war. The men are leaving the
Historian Robert Paxton’s "Vichy France and the Jews," co-authored with Michael Marrus, provides a detailed account of how Vichy's antisemitic laws assisted the Nazi's Final Solution, an aspect conspicuously absent in the film's narrative. This representation of Nazi Vichy relations contributes to a misleading understanding of the political dynamics in Casablanca and, by extension, the complexities of French collaboration during WWII4. The discrepancies between Casablanca's depiction and the historical complexities of resistance activities and Vichy Nazi collaboration highlight a broader tendency in wartime cinema to distill intricate political and social realities into more palatable narratives. While such simplifications serve the storytelling dynamics of cinema, they inadvertently contribute to a