96 DUNKIRK
Reception
After its London premiere on 13 July 2017, with director, actors, Prince Harry, and
Dunkirk veterans in attendance, Dunkirk was screened at the Galway Film Fleadh
[Festival] on 16 July. It was then released in most of Eu rope on 19 July and in the
United States and many other countries worldwide on 21 July. Bud geted at $100
million, Dunkirk was an expensive film to make, but the filmmakers’ summer block-
buster release strategy— unusual for what was considered a niche market film—
paid off handsomely; Dunkirk (widest release: 4,014 theaters) recouped all of its
production costs in its first weekend in theaters and ultimately earned $525
million by its closing date (23 Nov. 2017). Most reviews were overwhelmingly
positive. As was typical of many film critics, Philip Kemp praised the film’s
straightforward narrative style: “With Dunkirk, [Christopher Nolan’s] first film deal-
ing with a real- life event, the director has shifted out of ce re bral overdrive and
rediscovered a welcome directness and simplicity. A lot of the time, in fact, it’s what
he doesn’t do that makes the film so power ful. The payoff, in terms of sheer emo-
tional and visceral impact, is im mense” (Kemp, 2017). Manhola Dargis called
Dunkirk “a movie that is insistently humanizing despite its monumentality, a bal-
ance that is as much a po liti cal choice as an aesthetic one” (Dargis, 2017).Reel History Versus Real History
As the film correctly shows, most aerial combat occurred away from the beaches,
giving stranded BEF soldiers the false impression that the RAF was sitting out the
fight— though it is true that Britain conserved planes and ships to oppose an antic-
ipated Nazi invasion. Yet insofar as Christopher Nolan concentrates on re- creating
the subjective experience of the evacuation through a few fictional characters
(mostly British), the movie eschews any systematic pre sen ta tion of the larger
military/po liti cal context. Made by an Anglo- American director and financed
with American money, Dunkirk largely omits the French. Viewers will get the false
impression that only the BEF was evacuated but 120,000 French soldiers and
20,000 Polish and Belgian soldiers were also rescued. Even more galling to the
French was the movie’s failure to depict France’s role in making the evacuation
pos si ble by holding off the Germans. In a blistering critique of the Anglo- Saxon
bias of Dunkirk, French film critic Jacques Mandelbaum posed a series of rhetori-
cal questions: “Where are the other 40,000 [French troops] who sacrificed them-
selves to defend the city against a superior enemy in arms and in numbers? Where
are the members of the First Army, who, abandoned by their allies... neverthe-
less prevent[ed] several divisions of the Wehrmacht from [marching into] Dunkirk?
Where is Dunkerque, half destroyed by the bombardments, but rendered here
invisible?” (Mandelbaum, 2017). Where indeed? Dunkirk also elides the colonial
soldiers from Britain’s empire in South Asia (mostly Indian and Pakistani troops)
who fought at Dunkirk. As Yasmin Khan notes, “The myth of Dunkirk reinforces
the idea that Britain stood alone. It is a po liti cal tool in the hands of those who
would separate British history from Eu ro pean history and who want to reinforce
the myths that underpin Brexit” (Khan, 2017). With elisions come distortions. The
film’s focus on the intrepid Mr. Dawson gives viewers the erroneous notion that