Dunkirk: History is racist!

[Scot Dutchy]

Not interested.

[Rum]

Well thanks for letting everybody know.

[Animavore]

Movie's about to start.

[NineBerry]

After recently seeing the wonderful movie Atonement, I've since heard a few voices raised about the historical credibilty of the black British soldier character in the Dunkirk scenes of the movie. Is there any solid evidence of black British soldiers at Dunkirk?

Rich Lewis, Cardiff, Wales

I don't know. But I have seen photographs of Allied prisoners taken at Dieppe, and these included black soldiers

Peter Brooke, By Kinmuck Scotland

I believe that a brother of Oscar Peterson, the great Canadian Jazz pianist and composer, landed with Canadian forces at Juno Beach on D-Day. Also, the late Norman DePoe, a distinguished Canadian Journalist and my fellow Canadian Broadcasting Corporation colleague who had been a signals officer and who landed at Dunkirk, told me he had had a black soldier in his squad. The significant participation of British Caribbean and African soldiers in World War I and World War II has been almost totally ignored.

C. Alexander Brown, Rockcliffe Park, Canada

I don't know about black soldiers in the British Army at Dunkirk. It does seem unlikely. But if one considers Arabs and Berbers as "black" there were "black" French soldiers at Dunkirk. The French force at the Dunkirk defense were primarily those of the French First Army, which included a North African and a Moroccan divisions. The North African divisions were mixed European settlers and indigenous soldiers while the Moroccan division was indigenous. There were Senegalese regiments in the French Second Army, which covered the center of the line of defenses, around Seden. Some Senegalese may have retreated to Dunkirk.

David Null, Emeritus Professor, California State Polytechnic University, USA

https://www.theguardian.com/notesandque ... 56,00.html

[pErvinalia]

The out of sync timeline is an indication in my view that Nolan realises that audiences are not as dumb as Hollywood assumes. I thought it worked well even if it was unusual. The film, which I saw last Friday was terrific. Superb even.

I haven't seen the movie, so I'm not certain exactly what out of sync timelines means, but I've been watching Westworld and it's timelines are definitely out of sync. And it annoys the shit out of me. Is 'out of sync' timelines now a thing? I hate when alternative techniques become a fad.

Jonathan Nolan, writer of Westworld, and Christopher Nolan, writer and director of Dunkirk, are brothers.

Wankers.

[pErvinalia]

Not interested.

Well there's a shock..

[Rum]

Not interested.

Well there's a shock..

Dunkirk is located in a very flat area. You'd think that might tickle his interest a bit..

[Scot Dutchy]

Not interested.

Well there's a shock..

Dunkirk is located in a very flat area. You'd think that might tickle his interest a bit..

Been there. It was in Belgium at one time. Dunkirk was nothing to be proud of and why make a film about it. I bet it does mention the mess that happened before the retreat. The British Army really fucked things up. It should never had happened.

[pErvinalia]

That's right, we should erase all history that we aren't proud of.

[Scot Dutchy]

That's right, we should erase all history that we aren't proud of.

People are proud of Dunkirk that is whole point. It is misguided. The whole exercise was badly planned and full of arrogance. They completely underestimated the German troops. It was an act of pure foolishness and now it is glorified in a film.

[pErvinalia]

Who says it's glorified? Have you seen it?

[Scot Dutchy]

I have read the critics.

[Animavore]

There was one black guy in it. About five women. And a Dutchman.

[Scot Dutchy]

There is always a Dutchman.

[Animavore]

Anyway, brilliant movie. It's a ticking time bomb scenario, inside a ticking time bomb scenario, inside a ticking time bomb scenario, in a movie which is, itself, a ticking time bomb.

I need to address some of the idiotic criticisms I've heard off a few people. One main one is that it "has no heart". Right, that's actually bollox, it definitely does. What these people really mean is it has no rousing speeches and teary-eyed, schmaltzy, patriotic moments. I'm glad it didn't. Those moments always make me gag.

I guess, though, the main reason some people had a disconnect is because not one person had a name in it. I didn't mind this. None of us know the names of the vast majority of the soldiers who fought in these battles, except we might have a grandfather or other relative who fought. The fact that they had no names means you can imagine any of the characters to be anyone. Your grandfather. His grandfather. The collective grandfather...etc.

The last thing to address is the people who couldn't get their head around and got confused by the timeline. The timeline is done in a perfectly logical, and rational way.

Imagine three cogwheels, all stacked on each other and sharing the same pivotal point, and it takes the cogs the length of the movie to complete one rotation. Now imagine the cogs are differing sizes, with the bottom the largest and the top one the smallest. Now imagine each of these cogs also has a zoetrope resting on it. The top one, being smaller, will have less frames and cover a smaller time frame. The middle will cover a larger time frame (let's say the circumference of the middle cog is 24 times larger, as it covers one day compared to one hour). Lastly the largest cog covers the greater span. Now obviously the movie doesn't play three concurrent movies, each running faster than the other, but rather selected scenes are taken out of zoetrope which should be occurring at roughly the same time along the axis which represents the current time as the cogs rotate by. Now if they all start together at arbitrary time zero, scenes are going to happen at different times for most of the movie, except at the point the scenes converge. Now if we imagine the convergence point happens at 11, or 330 degrees, with the cogs still running on 'til 12/360, then what will happen is the smallest cog only runs on a little bit forward in time compared to, and relative to, the other cogs.

Simple! Anyone who understands the concept of synchronising clocks which run at different speeds, like the rate of radioactive decay in elements used for radiometric dating, should have no troubles with this.