Ishaan Tharoor
Dthe taut blockbuster by British-born filmmaker Christopher Nolan, is one of the runaway successes of the year, grossing more than $300million (nearly R4 billion) worldwide since its July 21 release.
It depicts the harrowing May 1940 evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force, which had been trapped by the Nazi military at the French port of Dunkerque.
In their hour of desperate need, more than 300 000 British soldiers were rescued with the aid of a motley civilian flotilla of fishing trawlers, yachts, barges, tugboats and merchant vessels.
Had they not escaped, the saga of World War II may have had a far more abrupt ending.
For obvious reasons, the drama and heroism of the evacuation lives long in the British imagination. The rescue was followed by a stirring oration from Winston Churchill, just days into his term as prime minister, in which he declared his nation would “go on to the end” and fight the enemy “on the beaches”, “in the fields and the streets”.
Nolan himself has stressed that he didn’t want to get “bogged down in the politics of the situation”, instead creating a tense, enthralling film that plunges viewers into the terror and alienation of war. But that has not stopped commentators and critics from drawing all sorts of broader political meaning from it.
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen lamented the conspicuous absence of Germans from a story that’s about running away from them – as well as any hint of the wider monstrosity of the Nazi regime.
British journalist Jenni Russell feared the story’s “narrative of heroic retreat”, anchored in a seemingly bottomless reservoir of British national pride, was not the message needed at a time when British politicians are marching toward a potentially catastrophic rupture with Europe.
“Nothing could be less helpful to our collective psyche as the country blunders toward Brexit,” she wrote.
Perhaps the most fervent backlash against Dunkirk has come from Indian media, where critics justifiably complain about Hollywood’s “whitewashing” of World War II.