Christopher Nolan’s war film depicts Operation Dynamo, inspired by the real Battle of Dunkirk during World War II. But are the facts described faithful to historical reality?
After going into space with Interstellarhaving renewed the heist film with Inception, Christopher Nolan also tackled war films with Dunkirk. In this feature film, the filmmaker plunges spectators into the heart of the Battle of Dunkirk, which took place in 1940. Hailed by critics, this production nevertheless received a mixed reception from historians during its release in 2017. Several media reported criticism, deploring the forgetting of important historical elements, such as the sacrifice of French soldiers.
In line with Christopher Nolan’s films, Dunkirk maintains the filmmaker’s obsession with temporal themes. He describes theOperation Dynamoalso called the Battle of Dunkirk, as a race against time. From May 20 to June 4, 1940, the British army set up this operation to evacuate its soldiers present in Dunkirk, while Germany was approaching and surrounding the French city. During these few days in 1940, the battle raged between the ships sent by the United Kingdom to recover their soldiers, and the German army which bombed the beaches of Dunkirk and the open sea.
As in Christopher Nolan’s feature film, British civilians mobilized to bring their soldiers home: around 370 “Little Ships” set off towards Dunkirk in the hope of helping the soldiers. In total, at the end of this Dynamo operation, 338,226 soldiers, including approximately 123,095 French, will be saved in this operation.
However, the film received criticism over the way French soldiers were shown in Dunkirk. The latter are almost absent from the film, or sometimes shown as cowards. Several historians interviewed by French media noted that during the Battle of Dunkirk, between 35,000 and 40,000 French soldiers blocked the beaches and played a crucial role in the operation. They would have thus protected the evacuation and were not able to embark themselves. They will be taken prisoner by the German army on June 4, 1940. A sacrifice which is completely omitted in Christopher Nolan’s production.
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Synopsis -Dunkirk takes place in the north of France, in May and June 1940, during the Second World War. This historical feature film focuses particularly on the Battle of Dunkirk, codenamed “Operation Dynamo”. This operation consisted of evacuating English, Belgian and French soldiers threatened by the German army to the United Kingdom.