ElBoxyBrown
Banned
It's an interesting topic so yes.
As someone that knows very little about Dunkirk I'm finding this thread very useful.
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Dunkirk and its whitewashing of history...
- Thread starter Miles Quaritch
- Start date
As someone that knows very little about Dunkirk I'm finding this thread very useful.
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
1,800 according to an article linked in the Guardian's article. So yeah, nothing compared to the 400k french and british men on the beach. They didnt do much either. only one soldier was awarded a medal for bravery. Looks like they all made it out alive.
Probably could've been used as extras, but there were no animals, transport vehicles and supplies on the beach in Nolan's movie. Attonement's Dunkirk sequence showed a packed beach with horses, vehicles and supplies. In terms of scale, Dunkirk felt like it could've used some CGi.
cromofo
Member
That remains to be concluded.
PdotMichael
Banned
The article links to another article which mentions that they were 4 companies so barely a few hundres among hundreds of thousands.
The bigger and more important aspect would be how the movie kind of ignores the non-British forces. The French (with the North African soldiers) and Belgian troops didn't get really the screentime they deserved.
It's obvious that the movie was shoot with a glorified British view on the things.
I didn't know much about Dunkirk, so it was interesting to know the Royal Indian Army and others were involved.
Does it really annoy you that much? Are people really gonna post the same reply you did for every single thread about whitewashing?
I didn't know anything about Dunkirk other than what was in the film but this certainly is interesting hearing this after hearing some brief pre-release controversy over a lack of women (and non-whites) in the film and seeing people dismiss it as that not being "historically accurate". In the context of this article and after seeing how the movie presented things, I could totally see how it could be whitewashing.
There are very few WW2 movies that don't seem to go out of their way to remove people of color. To Hollywood WW2 was not only the last great war, it was the last great white war. It's a peculiar thing. Somehow it seems the whiteness of the war preserves the greatness of it in fake history.
Always-honest
Banned
Silly they would leave that out. And good someone points it out. I would never have known.
I can't judge the claim of active whitewashing but it's dumb not to include the people involved in the correct way. That goes for any historical movie. Either they didn't think about it (and didn't dive into the actual matter and info) or they decided actively to leave them out. Both terrible
I can't judge the claim of active whitewashing but it's dumb not to include the people involved in the correct way. That goes for any historical movie. Either they didn't think about it (and didn't dive into the actual matter and info) or they decided actively to leave them out. Both terrible
Dunkirk isn't whitewashing anything.
Psychoward
Banned
It really doesn't. Whether or not it bothered you (and seemingly many others in the thread) is irrelevant, the movie whitewashed Dunkirk.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/07/20/what_s_fact_and_what_s_fiction_in_dunkirk.html
I won't quote it because it includes relevant links in the text, it's the second to last question.
Psychoward
Banned
Yes, excluding even briefly showing the hundreds of Indians, Tunisians, Algerians and Moroccans that were crucial to the success of the evacuation isn't whitewashing at all because a NeoGAF poster said so.
It's like you can't tell the story you want to tell anymore. Dunkirk focuses on a few individuals and how their individual stories intertwined over the course of a couple of days. It doesn't aim to tell the entire story of World War II or the entire evacuation at Dunkirk. It shows a few very small slices of a very big story. To start to throw in references to other happenings would totally dilute the film.
The run time on this is short. It's a peek at things. A 3 1/2 hour epic could have included more stories, but that wasn't the goal of this film.
People need to stop getting up in arms and making accusations of whitewashing or sexism unless the scope of the film SHOULD have included those things.
The crying out of "X, Y, and Z were missing!" is getting tiresome. They were never intended to be part of the narrative anyway.
The run time on this is short. It's a peek at things. A 3 1/2 hour epic could have included more stories, but that wasn't the goal of this film.
People need to stop getting up in arms and making accusations of whitewashing or sexism unless the scope of the film SHOULD have included those things.
The crying out of "X, Y, and Z were missing!" is getting tiresome. They were never intended to be part of the narrative anyway.
lol yeah except for the part where it doesn't include any person of color with a significant role in the movie.
Marmaladefire
Member
Yes. Stop being complicit in the white washing of history.
Also, Christopher Nolan just doesn't seem to like putting non-white people in his films in general, so, it's not very surprising.
Did you read the article? Did you see the film?
Psychoward
Banned
Nothing would be lost by including some PoC in the group shots on the beach which was part of the movie but ya know.
Lionel Richie
Member
He kind of made it a central point to his article though.
jakonovski
Member
It's more about the story you don't want to tell. If the historical story you want to tell has a blank spot the exact shape of a brown person who took part in the events, it is quite telling.
MrPink93485
Member
There are a couple PoC's speaking in French trying to get in line for evacuation early in the movie.
There seem to be multiple problems here. First, the Brexit comparison; I think it's dumb and hokey, a bad attempt to try and make the film criticism "relevant", but that's another argument I don't really think is worth having.
Second, there's the question of what it means to be historically accurate. Especially with a film like Nolan's, it's telling history from limited perspectives, and it's hard to argue what "accurate" means beyond stuff like "General X never said this, Y happened before Z," etc. You can argue that Saving Private Ryan is not "historically accurate" because it only shows the storming of Normandy's beaches by Americans, when Canadians, Australians, and British were storming other beaches at the same time (and their numbers contained members of the British colonies.) So does omission make something ahistorical? The film doesn't really spend time on the German perspective—does that make it inaccurate the same way not presenting the experiences of nonwhite soldiers and sailors does?
The op-ed raises some interesting points but doesn't actually delve into them.
Given that Wonder Woman takes place during World War I, I'm going to hazard a guess and say it actually doesn't.
Netherscourge
Banned
Every movie that ignores non-white people in relation to its original source or historical accuracy?
Yes, absolutely.
Psychoward
Banned
Oh yeah I was blaming it on the writer, not the posters who took issue with it. It is silly.
fucking battlefield 1 has a better representation of soldiers in world war one
yup
gutter_trash
Banned
a French co-worker saw the movie and confirms that it didn't cover accurately the French reality in lol France during the evacuation.
the crying of people crying is getting tiresome too. maybe you should start by not crying about people crying for accurate portrayals.
Oh no, there isn't enough all white men movies anymore ;_;
Yeah, I had a problem with this movie, fantasy WW2 movie. I should have waited for more reviews to be honest.
cromofo
Member
WW1
Jason's Ultimatum
Member
Enter The 36 Chambers
Member
I read this article at work today. Seen the film at the weekend and didn't feel any kind of way about this.
Pretty sure I remember a "get your own damn boat" line in the movie. I didn't think Nolan really painted the Brits as class acts in Dunkirk.
Psychoward
Banned
He didn't, then there was also the stuff with Harry Styles' character. Still though, the race complaints are definitely valid.
Especially since in that same exact scene race is never mentioned as a factor for the line, just if you were part of the British or French forces.
Wonder Woman takes place during WWI, not WWII.
Turin Turambar
Member
Damn, they seem important omissions to me. They aren't just typical complaints of 'too many white people in this movie!", things like this:
Sounds like it should have been an important plot point in the film, given the film is specifically about the evacuation!
Sounds like it should have been an important plot point in the film, given the film is specifically about the evacuation!
Nolan's films are filled with reams of exposition as well. Its actually why I enjoyed Dunkirk a lot more than his other films where people are spelling shit out for you constantly.
jakonovski
Member
But it's a story about white people only, it's the story he wanted to tell!
Zvonimir Boban
Banned
This defence is used for every film or tv show and the end result is an entire industry and culture built around whitewashing history.
the-pi-guy
Member
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-pa...-Army-completely-ignored-in-the-movie-Dunkirk
I thought this was a well reasoned response.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
Wonder Woman only had two poc characters in England. It's not any better. Also it was WWI.
Gnome Scat
Member
It's a movie, not a documentary. I don't think the diversity of the British Army is essential to telling the story of Dunkirk that Nolan wanted to tell. I mean it's not like what Exodus: Gods and Kings did by any degree. Could they have been referenced a little more? Sure, wouldn't hurt the film to have them in the background. But I feel like this person is just looking for things to get angry about, especially since it's a very popular movie and creating controversy will draw attention.
Yes, and yes. Just because the film was centered around British people does not mean it's whitewashing history. It was telling a story about 2 groups of people and 2 pilots during the Dunkirk evacuation. At no point did it ever claim to be documenting the entire breadth of the evacuation.
Psychoward
Banned
" Christopher Nolans Dunkirk is not an attempt at a comprehensive record of the battle. That isn't the kind of story Christopher Nolan is interested in telling, and no fan of his work would have expected him to make that kind of film. Nolan was interested in telling a story of survival and was interested in examining the experience of the event. He did that. To expect him to have gone through his script and made sure it represented every group that was on the beach or in the town, during those ten days is ridiculous. He was creating art, not documenting history. There were a hell of a lot of Scot and Irish soldiers on that beach, too, and I didn't see a single ginger."
bahaha
bahaha
The original plan was for a 288,000,000 hour film that captured the 10 day experience of each of the 1.2 million soldiers involved in the incident so as to accurately portray the event to audiences.
The studio felt that a film that lasts 32,876.71 years would be expensive and that most of the audience would expire before the credits rolled.
So they compromised on a 106 minute runtime that focused almost exclusively on the British perspective whose goal was to provide the experience of the incident rather than simply tell the story of what happened.
The studio felt that a film that lasts 32,876.71 years would be expensive and that most of the audience would expire before the credits rolled.
So they compromised on a 106 minute runtime that focused almost exclusively on the British perspective whose goal was to provide the experience of the incident rather than simply tell the story of what happened.
Relentless 757
Member
1800 is less than .5% of 400k people. At most, and this is being generous, there was probably up to 5000 men shown. And, that was on only one part of the beaches of Dunkirk.
Well, there being a humongous majority of white people there is historically accurate, going by the numbers.
Lol, yep that it is
Edit: because bad math
go home you're drunk
Psychoward
Banned
here's a thought, if you don't wanna be criticized for not being historically accurate, maybe don't make a period piece
It's closer to half a percent.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
Your first sentence makes it sound like Dunkirk was a work of fiction. It's a movie based on actual events.
Inferno313
Banned
It's a narrative film about historical events. It's historical fiction.