Dunkirk / YMMV - TV Tropes

Alternative Character Interpretation: The reveal that Gibson is a French soldier who took a uniform and dog tags from a dead British soldier to make his escape paints his introduction (where Tommy helps him bury a British soldier, heavily implied to be the one he took the equipment from) in a different light. Was he simply trying to cover-up? After all, a naked dead British soldier would raise suspicion. Or was it atonement for robbing the dead man of his possessions and identity? Or both?
Americans Hate Tingle: The film has caused controversy in France regarding the considerably downplayed role of the French army and the heavy focus on the British Expeditionary Force, the RAF and and the Little Ships flotilla. Historically, the French defense of the city was crucial to slow down the Germans' advance, gaining time and allowing for a greater number of soldiers to be successfully evacuated (it wasn't all due to the "miracle" order of Adolf Hitler to halt the German offensive around the city, since that offensive resumed). In the end, although the French soldiers don't have much screentime (their most prominent presence is a soldier who takes the identity of a dead British soldier so he can get on one of the boats, though he's still portrayed reasonably sympathetically), and the fact that Winston Churchill unofficially ordered to prioritize British soldiers over them to "bring the army back home" is brought up, they are paid some due respect by Commander Bolton, who stays behind to wait for them as they evacuate, and the fact that they are holding ground against the Germans is also mentioned, but it still felt like lip service, especially when French extras and historians from Dunkirk noted how Christopher Nolan praised the heroism of the city's defenders on set. The film has been largely praised in France for its technical brilliance and drama and did good business there, but there is still a feeling that a great occasion to brilliantly subvert the Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys trope has been missed.
Angst? What Angst?:
- This film does not shy away from the trauma the individual soldiers are going through, but Tommy recovers from his entire squad getting wasted in the span of about fifteen seconds pretty quickly and doesn't dwell on it or mention them ever again. In all fairness, he's probably a little preoccupied with surviving his multiple brushes with death throughout the movie to really sit down and let what's happened sink in.
- Peter is visibly angry when he tells the Shivering Soldier that George is not okay, and demands that the soldiers be careful of his body when he learns that George has died, then he gets back to helping the soldiers like normal. He doesn't comment on the fact again until he arranges for George to be lauded a hero in the newspaper after he got home.
- The examples can be read as Heroic Safe Mode, as all characters need to throw themselves into practical action to survive and/or save others (and perhaps find escape from the horror and sadness of events overwhelming them in doing so).
Award Snub: Though a lot of people feel Roger Deakins deserved his Best Cinematography win at the Academy Awards, a lot are not happy about the fact that a movie that features lots of green screen and CG snubbed a movie with in-camera shots from spitfires. The same reason is why many are angered by Christopher Nolan losing Best Director to Guillermo del Toro.
Awesome Music: Hans Zimmer delivers once again.
- "Supermarine" (named after the Supermarine Spitfire fighter plane) is appropriately tense in regards to both the intensity of the dogfights over the English Channel and the Race Against the Clock the gigantic evacuation is.
- In addition, "Home" has some of the bleakest moments in the score, suddenly cut off (when the boats arrive) by a ridiculously swelled and slowed "Nimrod" from Elgar's Enigma Variations (slowed to 6 beats per minute!), one of the most quintessentially British pieces of music in the common repertoire. Home came indeed.
- "The Oil" is an absolute slow-burn that escalates the longer it drones on. With it starting off bleak and pretty anxiety-inducing, the music gets louder and more volatile. It’s a good way to get your heart rate up as the intensity just builds and builds into a massive crescendo of panic and chaotic stress. Like Oil spilling slowly before suddenly set ablaze.
Better on DVD: For some, watching on DVD helps make sense of the Anachronic Order. Watching alone in an intimate living room also allows you to absorb the events a lot more.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Surprising pretty much nobody, Farrier has emerged as the clear favorite character among many fans of the movie despite never interacting physically with a single other actor, due to being played by Tom Hardy and his feats of supreme Ace Pilot badassery like shooting down a German bomber after his plane has already run out of fuel.
- Bolton due to being played by Kenneth Branagh, Laurence Olivier's successor as the greatest actor in the English-speaking world himself.
- George as well. The film contributed to the already growing buzz for Barry Keoghan along with The Killing of a Sacred Deer.
Fan Nickname: The Shivering Soldier is often simply called "Cillian Murphy", as he's not given an actual name in the movie proper.
He Really Can Act: Harry Styles - best known at the time for his role in boy band One Direction, and having just launched his solo career two months prior to Dunkirk's release - was given some praise for his first acting role here.
Just Here for Godzilla: Teenage girls and other fans of One Direction who would otherwise be disinterested in a war drama went to see Dunkirk just to see Harry Styles act.
Moral Event Horizon: Among the ships that the Stuka dive bombers attack at the mole, one is clearly marked as a hospital ship in white with large red crosses. Then, as now, this was unambiguously recognised as a war crime.
Narm:
- Some criticism was directed at one of the extras in the trailer, who can be seen with a (very) slight smile, which some feel goes against the somber mood.
- As pointed out by History Buffs Christopher Nolan's refusal to use CGI and decision to film at present-day Dunkirk make the evacuation look like a few hundred soldiers hanging out in a mostly-intact town waiting to be picked up, instead of hundreds of thousands of men scrambling to escape through apocalyptic war-town ruins, selling short the desperation of the real event. Using some CGI to fill out the ranks of the extras and building sets to depict how Dunkirk actually looked during the war might have been a compromise with considering.
- One critic reported that Alex's line "He's got an accent thicker than sauerkraut sauce" took them out of the film somewhat.
- In contrast to his good takes on the general American and Birmingham dialects, Cillian Murphy's attempt at an RP accent is a bit too over-the-top to be believable^note. It's even more glaring next to fellow Irishman Barry Keoghan's flawless accent.
Narm Charm: Some found the end narration, read from a newspaper, came off as corny to some, but was generally found to give the film a bittersweet, but hopeful, underscoring.
Periphery Demographic: A large number of teenage girls and young women, not considered a typical audience for a dark World War II film, flocked to the movie thanks to the casting of Harry Styles.
Questionable Casting: Quite a few people objected to Harry Styles being cast as a main character in Dunkirk, given that, at the time of casting, Styles was still a member of One Direction, and that Dunkirk was supposed to be a serious war movie. Christopher Nolan insisted he had no idea about Styles' music career before casting him and did so solely on the strength of his audition (as well as his "old fashioned face"). This initial objection disappeared after the movie came out.
Retroactive Recognition: Tom Glynn-Carney as the son of the Little Boat owner who rescues the soldier played by Cillian Murphy, five years before he was Aegon II Targaryen in House of the Dragon.
Special Effect Failure: Farrier's burning Spitfire on the beach is rather obviously an empty shell with a huge void where the engine should be, with the propellor hanging comically from a pole in the center.
Visual Effects of Awesome: Thoroughly defied by achieving almost everything in live-action. Those ships and planes? All real, barring a few exquisite replicas.
What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
- A number of people have suggested that the movie's depiction of the British army's heroic escape from a German-dominated Europe is meant to symbolize Britain's departure from the European Union. Given that Christopher Nolan got the idea for the film in the mid-nineties and the film went into pre-production before the EU referendum was held in the UK, this seems unlikely to have been the intention.
- Further shooting down this interpretation is an interview Nolan gave recently, where he describes the film's themes as more along the lines of "the power of community" and expresses several views antithetical to those held by Brexit supporters.
Win Back the Crowd: After The Dark Knight Rises and especially Interstellar received more divided (but still overall positive) responses, Dunkirk seems to have won back those who thought Nolan may have lost his touch, with several critics praising this film as his best one yet.
The Woobie: Almost everyone really. War Is Hell is in full view here.

YMMV / Dunkirk

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