Excellent but flawed

Rating: 9/10 (1 October 2017)

In capturing the despair of Dunkirk this film does a good job. That it showed the vulnerability of the ships to attack, it was excellent, and the horrifying scenes inside sinking ships was outstanding. The sense of hope when the small boats arrived was deeply moving, especial to the strains of Elgar's Enigma variation, Nimrod.
This representation is, though, flawed. The beaches were littered with destroyed vehicles and guns; the tidy holiday beach in the film did not exist. The causalities on the beach were few because the sand reduced the impact of the bombs. The real disasters took place on the boats.
But I had a patient who was captured at Dunkirk. His story of survival was documented in a diary, although it was mostly concerned with a forced march back from the POW camp in Poland where he spent five years down a coal mine, completely in breach of the Geneva convention. On every day, if there was nothing else entered, he entered "Three cigarettes" or whatever. Did you see a single cigarette in the film? I know political correctness reigns, but almost every single soldier would had had a half smoked fag in his mouth. The streets of Dunkirk in the opening scene were far too tidy, and there is no allusion to the breakdown in discipline with soldiers looting. This depended on the battalion, some maintaining strict discipline but over all it came close to anarchy.
But my main concern is that there is no humour in the film. If anything is true of the British soldier, it is poking fun at a situation, however desperate. The jokes got blacker and blacker the worse the situation, but jokes there were.
My patient died from his terrible lung condition resulting from his capture and enforced labour down the coal mine, but at a good age. He was one of the most positive men I met.