People like “Dunkirk.”
Christopher Nolan’s latest is sitting pretty at a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of this writing (here’s our own decidedly positive review). And while it’s received close to no negative criticism on a cinematic or storytelling level, it has — as is inevitable for any “based on a true story” film — been criticized on the basis of historical accuracy. In this particular case, the aggrieved party is the country of France.
“Dunkirk,” which in my humble opinion is not as good as everyone’s making it out to be, is based on the true story of the evacuation of thousands of British and Allied troops, who are surrounded by enemy forces on a northern French beach during World War II. The British soldiers were cornered, and the situation seemed pretty dire, but the work of British armed forces by land, sea, and air got those who were trapped out of harm’s way and back home to England. At least that’s the story Christopher Nolan tells in his film.
However, France is unhappy with this depiction of the events at Dunkirk. “Anglo-Saxons have an unpleasant tendency to put forward the feats of the British army and pass over those of the French army,” writes HuffPost France. Some in the French media are just plain insulted that Nolan’s “Dunkirk” effectively ignores the role of the French military in the titular evacuation.
English-language French publication The Local quotes French historian Dominique Lormier, who has apparently not yet seen “Dunkirk:” “I hope that this film will highlight the sacrifice of the 30,000 Frenchmen who prevented the surrender of the British troops who would have been unable to defend the territory… By its heroic sacrifice, the French army did indeed save Great Britain from defeat. It was a tactical and strategic defeat for Hitler who could not then force Britain to negotiate a separate peace.”
The film did not satisfy French critics in this regard, as you can clearly see from this scathing review in Le Monde, if you can read French. For the benefit of those of us who are not linguistically inclined to understand the piece, The Local translates some key excerpts:
[Le Monde] accuses the British director of being “witheringly impolite” and “indifferent” towards France by disregarding the role it played in “miracle of Dunkirk” in May 1940.
Reviewer Jacques Mandelbaum writes that one of many reservations he has with the film is that the plot is “purely British”.
He notes there are “a dozen seconds devoted to a group of French soldiers defending the city who were not very friendly and a few more to a French soldier disguised as British in order to try to flee the massacre.”
Mandelbaum negates his own argument to some extent with the following line:
“No one can deny a director’s right to focus his point of view on what he sees fit, as long as it does not deny the reality of which it claims to represent.”
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Having seen “Dunkirk,” I don’t think Nolan is denying any reality relating to the French’s part in the Dunkirk evacuation. Rather, as a Brit, he’s focusing his point of view solely on the British soldiers — which, as Mandelbaum notes, he has every right to do.
Regardless as to where you fall on this debate about the historical accuracy of Christopher Nolan’s new movie “Dunkirk,” at the very least it’s the spectacle of the summer. The film opens on Friday.