So - Where's Dunkirk?

Rating: 2/10 (9 August 2017)

For grey-haired Brexiteers like me, weaned upon a diet of 1950's British stiff-upper-lipped-ness (BSULN), a modern movie re-kindling that - now long lost - spirit was surely a must-see. I hadn't been to the cinema in donkeys' years; put off not so much by modern movies (which are bad enough) but by audiences of ignorant huge-headed bag-crackling crisp-crunching gas-bags who came to ruin the whole experience. And with a comfy chair, big HD telly and unlimited Stella, it would take something special to prise me off the cushions and fork out over £13(!).
Well, if any word might do it; "Dunkirk" might. If ever a word conjures up notions of legendary BSULN - Dunkirk is that conjurer's word.
I have a DVD of the much cherished 1950's version featuring those grandees of wartime spunk, John Mills and Dickie Attenborough, not to mention a reassuring dollop of Bernard Lee. It's an excellent work from start to finish. Every aspect of the great debacle and culminating "miracle" is included and carefully edited into a coherent story, from home-grown civilian cynicism about the "phoney" war, the collapsing French defence, discussions at High-Command, desperate British regrouping, French refugees, mountains of abandoned logistics, slaughter on the beaches and final deliverance. It ain't no masterpiece, but it's a very coherent, sterling work of typically understated performances, representing people with sufficient depth that you can care about them and their fate; all re-created by character actors who actually experienced both the war and the times.
Cut to yesterday. This modern take on the great event is shallow in the extreme. Oh-sure; the combat scenes are visceral enough with sound levels fit to cause tinnitus, but coherent story telling? believable characters? An overview of the great historical event? Forget it! Considering the makers of this movie had almost unlimited funds and CGI, this should've resembled a Cecil B Demille epic. There were supposed to be over 350,000 allied soldiers trapped in Dunkirk! I swear I've seen more people in Tesco's at Christmas than are depicted here. The beaches seem practically empty. And those people to whom we are introduced appear two-dimensional, like cardboard cut-outs.
The "collapse" is depicted by about half a dozen British Tommies walking negligently through suburbs, evidently unaware of the war, only to be mown down. One survives and encounters the French rear-guard. That's it. Time for a crap on the dunes. They're deserted, so what the hell? After that, there's a series of small set-piece conflicts drawn progressively together by the choppiest editing I've ever witnessed. All the characters are two-dimensional and unexplained. There's no back-fill story at all. A quite disproportionate amount of time is spent aloft with the RAF. Three whole Spitfires are presented almost reverentially, as if they alone turned the military tide. They skirmish with bombers and fighters, shooting down all they encounter with one quick burst of gunfire. The last one, running out of fuel, gracefully lands on the beaches of Dunkirk, in mellow westering sunlight, as the strains of Nimrod from Elgar's Enigma Variations grind away at half speed. It's frankly mythologising of the most juvenile kind. I almost laughed. (And incidentally; that Spitfire was travelling northeast along the Belgian coast, so the sun would have to be setting in the opposite direction!)
If you're a millennial - the sort who wanders vacantly about the streets gaping into the screen of a mobile phone; someone with no more depth of character than those depicted here; raised upon revisionary history and brain-washed into being a bien pensant of the glorious European Union, this movie will seem as authentic as your friends on Facebook. But if you're of an earlier generation; you might want to watch the 1950's version at home, on the big telly, with the unlimited Stella. It's better in every way.