History vs Hollywood
Did Batman Begins director Christopher Nolan compromise historical fact to make his World War II blockbuster?
How accurate was Christopher Nolan’s epic Dunkirk?
Director: Christopher Nolan Starring: Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard, James D’arcy, Barry Keoghan, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy Country: United Kingdom Released: 2017 01 At the beginning of he film, the Luftwaffe drop thousands of propaganda pamphlets onto Dunkirk’s beaches, urging the Allied troops surrender. While this did actually happen in real life, the design of the pamphlets used in the movie is inaccurate. 02 The film’s characters are fictional but some of their stories are rooted in fact. Commander Bolton is a composite character with some of his actions based on the real-life story of piermaster James Campbell Clouston. He died during the evacuation. 03 While its hard to imagine civilian boats being used in a rescue mission of this scale, around 700 ‘Little Ships of Dunkirk’ did sail to save soldiers, alongside 43 Allied destroyers. These were either British or Canadian ships, but the one used in the movie is French. 04 Just like in the film, there really were dogfights between the British Spitfires and the German Messerschmitt Bf 109s. However, the German planes are depicted with yellow noses when in reality they were not painted that colour until a month after Dunkirk. 05 The troops at Dunkirk truly believed the RAF had abandoned them because they could not see the Allied aircraft — in the film, a desperate soldier demands to know where they are. Of course, the RAF was actually fighting the Germans across the Channel.