Nolan, Dunkirk and the Madness of Diversity

For religious reasons, I couldn’t get to see “Dunkirk” on its debut week. In the interim, I tantalized myself reading every review of the blessed film. Soon, I noticed an ongoing trend. Reviews did not dwell on historical accuracy or cinematic merits, they were all about Christopher Nolan’s omissions regarding multiculturality. It has been said that the film is “too white” and that it fails to comprehend all the nationalities present on that beach. Apparently, Chris Baby, you did manage to wake the dragon. Bad Boy! But would  “Dunkirk” have been historically correct if the director-producer-scriptwriter had played the diversity card? Did Nolan have the time and space to tackle every minority’s experience on that chaotic but amazing evacuation?

I am not a Nolan fan. His films meet with my utmost indifference, but I am a Second World War buff and I feel the Battle of Dunkirk (and the evacuation scheme known as “Operation Dynamo”) has got  little coverage in historical fiction.  The arrival of this mega films to local theaters had me enthused and grateful for a chance to see my favorite baby boar, Tom Hardy, in a Spitfire cockpit.

I first heard about the Battle of Dunkirk, there on that South American outpost known as Chile, when I was eight years old. My dad, a bigger WWII buff than me, subscribed to a history of the war published, in installments, by Espasa-Calpe. I still recall the cover of that thin pamphlet called El Milagro de Dunquerque (The Miracle of Dunkirk) and the very sad picture of those flat helmets worn by the British army, strewn on the abandoned beach. It was so touching to see that last glimpse of the helmets in Nolan’s film.

(Daily Mail) 

And so, in second grade I knew all about the British Expeditionary Force, besieged by Nazi Germany’s army, and wondrously hauled home by a last-minute mass departure that got over 300.000 men out of that beach. Although valuable equipment had to be left behind, the rescued troops saved the Allied cause. Otherwise, there would have been no soldiers to defend Britain or to continue the war on other shores. In its day,  Dunkirk was hailed both as a success and a miracle, but nowadays most average millennials know nothing about such a pivotal historical event.

The truth is that Dunkirk, as momentous as it was, is not properly covered in history texts. Historians have not yet come to terms as to whether to consider it a terrible defeat (it was) or a triumph of the spirit (in propaganda terms, it was an absolute victory).  And when it comes to films, so few have been done.

Two years after the mega evacuation, Walter Pidgeon, playing the husband of that heroic “Mrs. Miniver,” took his sloop to sea to rescue Allied soldiers. Thus, Hollywood incorporated Dunkirk to its repertoire. Alas! It was a one-night show, because Tinseltown has never again touched the subject.

Oddly enough, neither were the British very much into commemorating Dynamo on film. After 1945, the English film industry would annually bring out a batch of war flicks, but  it took eighteen years for it to develop something about Dunkirk. Properly called “Dunkirk,” it covered Operation Dynamo through the eyes of a journalist (Bernard Lee), a profiteer turned heroic rescuer (Lord Richard Attenborough), and Sir John Mills playing the quintessential Tommy. Even though “Dunkirk” was a total hit, it would take almost sixty years, before anybody, in the English-speaking world, dared to film the epic retreat again.

In 1964, The French tried their hand in the Battle of Dunkirk.  Professor Robert Merle had won the 1949 Goncourt Prix with Weekend a Zuydcoote, a novel based on his own experiences on that fateful beach. He was one of those soldiers who didn’t make it to England and ended up in a German Stalag. He writes then not about Operation Dynamo, but about doomed men stranded in a town that is slowly being destroyed. Henri Verneuil adapted the book in 1964 with Jean Paul Belmondo (the hottest actor in France then) playing the lead, Sergeant Julien.

It was common for Dunkirk to resurface on film adaptation of novels, but as a passing event in the lives of the protagonists. One example is Paul Gallico’s tear-jerker The Snow Goose which is subtitled A Story of Dunkirk. In 1971, Jenny Agutter (decades before becoming sweet Mother Julienne in “Call the Midwife”) won a BAFTA, playing Fritha,  an Essex country girl. Thanks to the title goose, she befriends Philip (Sir Richard “Dumbledore” Harris), a reclusive hunchbacked artist. When war breaks, Philip is rejected by the army. He proves his valor precisely by taking his boat to Dunkirk and rescuing several hundred men before getting killed.

Thanks to Ian McEwan, Millennials got to hear about Dunkirk when the most famous soldier to trample its beaches, Robbie Turner, took them there in Atonement. James McEvoy played Robbie in the film adaptation.  There are two things I liked about the film, Keira’s green dress and the inclusion of the Battle of Dunkirk.

When criticizing Nolan’s merits, one should bear in mind then that there is almost no precedent for his film. In “Dunkirk, ” he strives to cram as much as he can for the viewer to leave the theater with at least an idea of what happened on those Northern France’s beaches. Nolan divides his film in three settings (the Army on the beach, the Navy and the Little Ships on the sea, and the RAF on the air) each within its own timeframe.  That is a lot to cover in an hour and forty-seven minutes. Nolan himself has said that this is neither a documentary not your conventional war movie. He describes “Dunkirk” as a work about “the mechanics of survival.”

As I said, before seeing the movie, I tried to get an idea of what I would encounter. More than reviews, I found disparagement. Few technical reproaches, plenty on content. On The Vulture, where the film was ripped apart, one of their complaints was about Nolan’s glorification of the Little Ships (and the Little People too). “Little Ships” refers to an armada of over 800 vessels (some of them private and manned by civilian crews) that took part in Operation Dynamo.

It is true, we can’t say their contribution saved the day. Obviously, the bulk of the evacuation rested on larger ships, but people such as the character played by Sir Mark Rylance  on “Dunkirk” or like Gallico’s hunchback,  inspired the nation with their courage (they did risk their lives), their patriotism and their altruism. Moreover, and due to shallow tides, large craft were unable to reach the beaches.  By getting close to land and ferrying soldiers to the bigger vessels, the Little Ships were instrumental in hastening, easing and upgrading the rescue process.

But the main condemnation that has fallen on Nolan’s work isabout  his lack of cultural diversity. It started with a standard (in our era of Political Correctness) warning made by Brian Truitt  in his USA Today review: “the fact that there are only a couple of women and no lead actors of color may rub some the wrong way.” Of course, the conservative press, on both sides of the Atlantic, had a field day laughing at what they deemed liberal crap, or the inability to understand that the clashing armies of Dunkirk were monochromatic.  That incorrigible James Delingbone had me on stitches.

Also, it would have added a new dimension had James Earl Jones been cast as the salty old Royal Naval officer called out of retirement for one last trip across the English Channel, or if Ice T and Snoop Dogg had been given the role of two aging rappers who parachute from a Dakota to administer weed to the desperate troops, or if Oprah appeared in a cameo as Queen Mary welcoming the returning troops after their desperate voyage.

But it wouldn’t have been historically authentic.

Delingbone is better at sarcasm than Lyanna Mormont, but he is missing a point.  The British Army was not entirely white. In 1939, four Royal Indian Army companies arrived in France. Known as K6, they were mostly Muslim Punjabis and Pathans from what is now Pakistan.  They were present in Dunkirk, Indian officers were decorated, mules had to be left behind, three Indian contingents were evacuated, one fell into German hands.

Two Indian soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk (Getty Images)

The Times of India was the first medium to blow the whistle in Nolan’s oversight. Others followed suit. I do mind the omission, but I can understand the film’s limitations. However, Indian soldiers have appeared in British war films since the Rank’s gong days. I remember as a pre-adolescent (in my “drooling over Dirk Bogarde” stage) watching Indian soldiers fight the Japanese in “The Wind Cannot Read.” And the Indian military effort has been celebrated on screen from “The Jewel in the Crown” to “The English Patient”.

Naveen Andrews as sapper Kip Singh in "The English Patient"

Now, Nolan can’t be blamed for this specific lapse since he has overlooked so many other nationalities. This was a world war, and although no British colonial forces were present at Dunkirk, we do get to glimpse a black man in a French uniform on the film. The French colonial army was anything but white and their contribution was enormous.

Contingents of Moroccan troops were among those forces that held the Germans at bay, propitiating the retreat.  But the French are not complaining about the race issue, they find the film offensive because their contribution and their presence are so minimized. I find this nitpicking exhausting. Imagine if other “white” nationalities would echo this bickering?

Soldiers from the Colonial French Army on their way to Dunkirk

Although, at some point Harry Styles and his Merry Men do bump into a Dutch soldier, “Dunkirk” does not talk about the Dutch and Belgian evacuees (ships from the Low Countries also joined the trop ferrying effort). There were Free Poles on that beach, and thanks to “Home Fires,” I learned there were also Free Czechs.  None of them are mentioned in the film.  Master Nolan, you are slipping, Sir!

Czech Captain Novotny came from Dunkirk to bring joy to poor,  plain and abused Pat.

Truth be told, most Eastern European troops were evacuated in a joint effort known as Operation Ariel that went on a couple of weeks after the Dunkirk exodus was over. It continued throughout June from the main French ports on the Atlantic, and rescued French, British, Polish, and Czech soldiers as well as British nurses and some equipment.

Nolan’s film has made France unhappy. Her media complains about  French troops being ignored in the storyline. Surprising, since the film is brutally honest about the British attitude towards their allies.  The success of Dynamo was possible thanks to 30, 000 French soldiers that remained behind fighting off the Germans (The Indian contingent fought along them). As the film shows us, British Navy personnel felt their priority should be their Tommies, so the French were put on hold. It was only Churchill’s demands that made it possible to evacuate almost 100, 000 French troops. But they were the last to leave, as exemplified in the film by Commander Bolton’s final remark:” I’m staying for the French.”

At Le Monde, Jacques Mandelbaum calls Nolan’s omission impolite. He describes the film as “une histoire purement anglaise.” He says the film only gives a dozen of minutes to his countrymen. Geoffroy Caillet writing for Le Figaro is much more offensive. He claims that Operation Dynamo was a betrayal of the French since it ruined Le Plan Weygand and helped pave France’s debacle. WTF? You idiotic Frog (and I can use the word. My paternal grandmother hailed from La Gascogne just like D’Artagnan).  That is pure Vichy propaganda! Sorry, Mes petits, I will mourn for the slighted, forgotten French in Dunkirk, but raise my middle finger to those who use such false arguments.

When I was young, we had a neighbor, Monsieur Daniel G, he was a Communist and a former resistant. He also claimed to have fled Dunkirk. He said that on noticing that the French soldiers were lagging, he went, found himself a boat,  and rowed towards one of the British destroyers. They couldn’t turn him away and so he got to England.  I never knew if the story was apocryphal or not. But it could have happened.

French soldiers are hauled from water after their ship has been bombed off Dunkirk shore (BBC)

In Mandelbaum’s critic, he also mentions that we never get to see the Dunkirk civilians, and they had a tough time too. Well, this is an odd film, since the idea is to show civilians (ergo British) coming to rescue the soldiers, but it is true we don’t get to see the town or its inhabitants. In fact, Dunkirk was far from deserted. Its population expanded thanks to a constant reflux of Belgian refugees, most of them Jewish.

And hey! Now that every minority is demanding a pound of Nolan’s flesh, it’s time for me to join in. How come nobody mentions Jews in this film?  There were Jewish refugees on Dunkirk, and Jewish crews manning both the British vessels and the Little Ships. There were Jews in the British and French armies. Historian Marc Bloch, then a captain in the French Army, was evacuated in the Daffodil. There is no mention of the Jewish army doctors that were taken away by the SS and were never heard again. Only one of them reappeared, Isadore Scherer,  a South African medical officer, who ended up in Colditz Castle.

Some have complained that Nolan does not show the fate of those who fell in German hands. In fact, at the end of the film, when Farrier (Tom Hardy) hands himself over to the Germans, we just shrug. Tom Hardy managed to escape from “Colditz” in 2005, he can do it again. The truth is that a prisoner’s lot was not a  good one. Officers got to go to Stalags, other ranks became forced laborers. Those were the lucky ones .

Tom Hardy after escaping from "Colditz"

Several hundred of British soldiers of all ranks were massacred by the SS at Le Paradis. Dunkirk survivors don’t have a happier story to tell, deprived of food, water and medical aid, they were also beaten and mocked by the Germans. In a way, I’m glad that Nolan forgot to include their plight.  The movie is harrowing enough as it is.

In my next blog, I’ll go on detail about Nolan’s last faux-pas and how it has enraged the denizens of faux-feminism. Poor man, he just can’t seem to do right by minorities!

Poor Nolan! Now he is a Zionist agent