The last war on which we all agree
Why 'Dunkirk' is a hit in today's world
SINCE its release last Friday, Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” has defied expectations and broken records worldwide.
“Dunkirk” was the top-grossing film at the US box office last weekend, pulling in $50.5 million — unusual in a season typically dominated by comic-book franchises and sci-fi and animated movies. Overseas, “Dunkirk” grossed $56 million in its first three days, debuting strongly not just in the UK and France, but in South Korea, India and Russia.
The reviews have been near-uniformly gushing. “Dunkirk” has a 93 pecent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. “The First Slam-Dunk Oscar Contender of 2017,” said Variety.
Why has a drama about one of World War II’s lesser-known battles resonated so deeply?
The popular theories are industry-specific: Nolan, who also directed “Interstellar” and the Dark Knight trilogy, has a devoted global fan base. Warner Bros., the studio behind “Dunkirk,” engaged in the classic counterprogramming that worked so effectively for Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” released 19 years ago this July.
“Dunkirk” has almost no dialogue, making it perfect for overseas markets. It comes in under two hours, a rarity among today’s bloated run times. The pop star Harry Styles was cannily cast to draw a younger demographic. It’s a serious war film that plays like a first-person shooter.
All of these things are true. But what’s missing from the theories is the gravitational pull World War II still exerts nearly all over the world. It remains the most clearcut, agreed-upon battle of good versus evil, a war that had to be waged, one with countless untold stories that, no matter what, have a larger happy ending.
For the United States, World War II’s long tail gave us the Greatest Generation, decades of unprecedented economic growth and seemingly endless global supremacy.
Never before and never since have we experienced such a juxtaposition of morality and bloodshed: In parts of the United States, the Civil War is, incredibly, still litigated. World War I lacked American support and has languished in the shadow of World War II. Vietnam was catastrophic, and although American leaders swore we’d learned our lessons, our soldiers today remain mired in Afghanistan, Iraq and, though few will acknowledge it, Syria. Since the dawn of the millennium, we’ve been at war against an idea rather than a state, faceless jihadis rather than known armies. There is no end in sight. As for that unprecedented economic boom and our standing as the world’s lone superpower — those days, too, are perilously, permanently in doubt.
Is it any wonder we feel strange nostalgia for such a cataclysmic war, the first and only to end with the use of nuclear weapons? We never, ever tire of this narrative.
There’s “The Crown” and “Five Came Back” on Netflix. In theaters last year, we had “Allied,” “The Zookeeper’s Wife” and “Hacksaw Ridge.”
More World War II films to come include “The Darkest Hour,” starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, and “The Man with the Iron Heart,” about the planned assassination of Third Reich official Reinhard Heydrich. Ridley Scott has a film about the Battle of Britain in development at Fox.
“Dunkirk,” though, has a unique pull, one that explains why so many critics are calling it among the best war movies ever made. Here is the true story of 400,000 Allied soldiers stranded on a beach, strafed from the air by German fighter pilots, rescue warships torpedoed or bombed. It was a battle the Allies were set to lose, and one that many historians believe would have led to a wholesale Allied defeat.
Rescue, at the film’s end, comes not from warships but a motley armada of British civilians, powering their small boats through bombs and bullets, determined to do what the military can’t or won’t.
After nearly two hours of epic battle scenes, Nolan closes on a poignant note: These soldiers may have been abandoned by the governments that sent them to war, but never by their fellow men. And in these deeply polarized times, that’s perhaps the greatest wish fulfillment of all.