Psychoward
Banned
Yes and the historical background surrounding the fictionalized events aren't accurate.
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Dunkirk and its whitewashing of history...
- Thread starter Miles Quaritch
- Start date
Yes and the historical background surrounding the fictionalized events aren't accurate.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
Exaggerated historical non-fiction?
It's an action movie, just as Nolan described it.
While I didn't love the movie like many critics, I disagree with the whole "the film is Brexit" notion.
It just really doesn't come off that way.
Having said that, I was disappointed we didn't see more French minority soldiers or more of the Battle of Dunkirk itself, not just the evacuation.
And I actually didn't know there were Indian soldiers until a few days ago when this controversy started, and they numbered in the hundreds, compared to the thousands of white-Britons on those shores, but it would've been nice to see them still.
From the headlines about these accusations of whitewashing, one would believe almost half the British soldiers on those beaches where POC, when in reality, there numbered in the hundreds or less, so I think Nolan wouldn't had placed many of them on screen anyway. But not 0, that's for sure.
It just really doesn't come off that way.
Having said that, I was disappointed we didn't see more French minority soldiers or more of the Battle of Dunkirk itself, not just the evacuation.
And I actually didn't know there were Indian soldiers until a few days ago when this controversy started, and they numbered in the hundreds, compared to the thousands of white-Britons on those shores, but it would've been nice to see them still.
From the headlines about these accusations of whitewashing, one would believe almost half the British soldiers on those beaches where POC, when in reality, there numbered in the hundreds or less, so I think Nolan wouldn't had placed many of them on screen anyway. But not 0, that's for sure.
jakonovski
Member
Being an action movie doesn't correlate with absence of people of colour. They're in fact entirely separate things.
Not when you look at the actual structure of Dunkirk though. It's literally slices of time out of a large event. Even the timeline antics reinforce that it's meant to be short snapshots at very specific events.
Whitewashing is a very big problem, and it doesn't seem to be going away any time soon. I just don't think this is the place to have the fight when there are reasonable explanations for how it turned out.
hamauzu kaito
Member
I guess minorities should remember this the next time they engage in the theater of war? This opinion is laughable. Showing the truth of the matter wouldn't have cost him anything. We are literally asking for a more diverse stand-in crowd and a couple of lines. If you can't do that with over $100 million dollars then.....
He showed the truth of the story he was telling. Your point only holds water if this were a documentary, which it isn't.
Relentless 757
Member
Now I wouldn't disagree with this: certainly there exists a plethora of stories involving minorities in WW2, including Dunkirk, that should rightfully be told. Unfortunately, it seems no one wants to tell them. Nolan I'm sure would make an excellent film with those stories. Instead, he chose Dunkirk.
As to who will tell those tales, I don't know.
If the film someone in the film said "There are exclusively white people in this war, and on this beach", I'd agree. But no one does.
As to who will tell those tales, I don't know.
If the film someone in the film said "There are exclusively white people in this war, and on this beach", I'd agree. But no one does.
Most of the time there is "reasonable explanation" for white washing, aside from the most egregious examples. For example, the recent Ghost in a Shell live action adaptation actually has an in-universe explanation for the white washing of the main character. I think this article (and other people's) complaints about the white washing in Dunkirk are just as reasonable as the potential explanations.
Considering Hollywood's tendency towards whitewashing, and how tons of people aren't familiar with the specifics of Dunkirk, noting that there are tons of PoC who were outright ignored in this film is important.
People aren't annoyed that it's a story about Britain, they're annoyed that the film never even acknowledges anyone else was there (aside the French).
Sure. He chose the narrative he wanted to tell. That narrative he chose to tell did not include minorities. People are pointing that out.
until shit changes. Yes. just seemingly because diversity and having a diverse story fiction or non fiction makes you uncomfortable. Doesnt mean anyone is going to stop calling this bullshit out.
the world isnt just a white space in nearly every aspect.
MrPink93485
Member
My feeling is to take more issue with Nolan's general history of casting rather than the specifics here. The vast majority of at least the British in Dunkirk, were white. It's entirely possible an individual soldier would never see an Indian soldier at any point during the evacuation. The French should have been better represented and that includes more PoC, but even if they did include some additional people in the background, why aren't more people asking say why couldn't Inception feature a black cast member or what not (I'm Asian, so Ken represented Asians, but still) where you have all the creative freedom to do whatever you want in that scenario rather than bound by any historical authenticity or source material at all? Having some people in the background is nice I guess, but seems hollow compared to an actual meaningful role.
I don't necessarily agree with the 'brexiteer fantasy' stuff but it is disappointing that colonial troops were largely omitted. They were super important in bot world wars and not enough people know about them.
Edit: That being said I thought the film was fucking fantastic and absolutely worth seeing.
Edit: That being said I thought the film was fucking fantastic and absolutely worth seeing.
well , said historical events have been dubbed as " The Miracle of Dunkirk " for a reason
a point in time where one single event changed the course of History.
Psychoward
Banned
You know that's even more damning for him then right? If he's not bound at all by the history of the war like you say, then the fact that he didn't choose to show more than like 2 poc for a single snapshot is really sad. Usually "it's not meant to be historically accurate" is a defense to include MORE poc in events, not as an excuse to exclude them.
jakonovski
Member
My perspective is this: you make a movie of a famous battle, you respect the order of battle. You morally owe it to the people who suffered there.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
Yeah, I know.
GermanZepp
Member
It's a movie not a documentary.
Psychoward
Banned
So they took events that were real
and in the process of fictionalizing them
whitewashed them?
Maklershed
Member
article said:
The movie didn't show any transportation of supplies nor did it show the interior of any merchant vessels and their sailors that I recall. So not sure how the people in question were to be represented?
How many times is this weak-ass deflection going to pop up in this thread?
Psychoward
Banned
Shit all this time I had no idea.
At least ones that pretend for "historical accuracy".
kruis
Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
I'm Dutch. Did you know that thirty-nine Dutch coasters that had escaped the German invasion of the Netherlands helped out in the Dunkirk evacuation? The Dutch marine rescued 22,698 men in total.
Those Dutch heroes were also outright ignored. So what? That's not the story Christopher Nolan wanted to tell.
Psychoward
Banned
Indians were part of the British forces..
Inferno313
Banned
Wasn't intending to disagree with anything aside from the notion that the film is non-fiction.
The fact that the movie really only shows like 10 people consistently in total even though this was supposed to be 400,000 trapped men was a flaw I had. Naturally there's no diversity because you don't really even see what looks like more than 400 people in total on the beach at any one time, and like 15 boats for the big rescue.
They didn't show the French and other forces as the focus was on retreat and rescue. I can get that but it was an artistic choice that I personally disliked.
It's a bad look, but calling it pro-Brexit is pretty disingenuous.
They didn't show the French and other forces as the focus was on retreat and rescue. I can get that but it was an artistic choice that I personally disliked.
It's a bad look, but calling it pro-Brexit is pretty disingenuous.
Charles Brandon
Member
If you read the article is says that 1,800 Indian soldiers joined the BEF in the campaign, not that 1,800 were at the beach. Only three of the four Indian companies made it to the beach and it is unlikely that they made it there intact, so whilst 1,800 is less than one per cent the actual number of Indians can be guesstimated at something between 1,000 to 1,350, producing a figure of somewhere between 0.4 and 0,3% of all the men at the beach. That's not a number that demands visibility purely on the basis of the film being a fair representation.
However, it is slightly disrespectful to their efforts not to make a point of including those people, given their sacrifice in the name of foreign war. My guess is that Nolan probably didn't realise they were there. I certainly didn't and I'm grateful for the knowledge. Whitewashing is too strong though.
However, it is slightly disrespectful to their efforts not to make a point of including those people, given their sacrifice in the name of foreign war. My guess is that Nolan probably didn't realise they were there. I certainly didn't and I'm grateful for the knowledge. Whitewashing is too strong though.
a Master Ninja
Member
This reminds me of Spike Lee chastising Clint Eastwood for not featuring any of the roughly 800 black soldiers in non-combat roles that were at Iwo Jima during the events depicted during "Flags of our Fathers". They were in segregated divisions and their perspective could have been shown, but Eastwood made a film that centered on the men that raised the flag.
"I don't care" doesn't really shut down the arguments from people that do.
Wonder Woman was nationalistic as fuck and delusionally militant in its portrayal of war. It was really gross to sit through in how it handled its topic, especially with making Germans into evil baby-eating Nazis and celebrating the British and American forces for the millionth time.
They should have shown more of the French. The article does go a bit far when it says that there weren't enough non-white shown in the French army. We saw like 5 French soldiers, lol. Le Monde's reviewer was a bit pissed about the lack of images of the French line of defence though. According to him, It was one of the most heroic fights the French army put on during WW2 and therefore a wasted opportunity to show the French as something else than the surrender monkeys they always have been portrayed as in english speaking media.
It's also a mistake when Kenneth Branagh says 300 000 soldiers made it back to England and that he would wait for the French. The number of 300 000 is including the 120 000 French soldiers.
haha, that's exactly what I was thinking. People going in defence mode about Nolan's vision and what kind of movie he was making. Not that hard to put some non-whites as extras for historic accuracy, it doesn't cost him anything.
EDIT: I guess some of the argument the article is making is that the French army was pretty diverse and that by showing them more you'd also get more non-whites on screen. It's not only about the Indians in the english troops.
It's also a mistake when Kenneth Branagh says 300 000 soldiers made it back to England and that he would wait for the French. The number of 300 000 is including the 120 000 French soldiers.
haha, that's exactly what I was thinking. People going in defence mode about Nolan's vision and what kind of movie he was making. Not that hard to put some non-whites as extras for historic accuracy, it doesn't cost him anything.
EDIT: I guess some of the argument the article is making is that the French army was pretty diverse and that by showing them more you'd also get more non-whites on screen. It's not only about the Indians in the english troops.
jakonovski
Member
Doing a google search it in fact does seem that the meme of Dunkirk as allegory for Brexit is gaining some kind of foothold. Farage sure is trying.
kruis
Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
At Dunkirk those four Indian mule companies were a tiny, tiny part of a huge army. 300,000 British troops and eiter 500 or 1800 Indians depending on your source.
The Citizen Kane of Games
Member
It's because after WW2 videocameras got used more and more. Vietnam being seen as the first war that the people back home could follow very closely, without layers and layers of propaganda. Hence why there were so many protests.
Let's give the film some credit. It's completely pointless and has no ideas, so I doubt Nolan was being particularly deliberate with any of his decisions.
Disagree. It caricatured, then rejected, that overly simplistic, jingoistic worldview.
Of course, the film has a horrific trainwreck of a third act but up until that point, it's pretty clear in its intentions.
Disagree. It caricatured, then rejected, that overly simplistic, jingoistic worldview.
Of course, the film has a horrific trainwreck of a third act but up until that point, it's pretty clear in its intentions.
Gnome Scat
Member
It uses a historical period of time as a backdrop for a story that Nolan wants to tell. While his vision was inspired by actual events that occurred, it doesn't delve heavily into the specifics of how that part of the war transpired. The characters were fictitious and only based on groups of people present at the beach: soldiers, pilots, and civilians. To my knowledge, none of the characters were based on any specific individuals. It's dramatized, romanticized even to some degree.
Nolan's focus was to craft a tense story and experience based in desperation and survival, where soldiers backs were basically pushed up against a wall, praying for a miracle to save them. You can even see it in the movie quite clearly, too.
There's a scene where a soldier just jumps into the water to try to swim the channel in sheer desperation
Did the movie graze over and ignore the diversity present at the evacuation? Clearly, the history presented in this article and in the thread shows that. Save a black soldier here and there, a nurse, and some women on the evacuation ships, it was mostly young, white, male British soldiers. But the point I'm trying to make is that diversity is not the focus of this movie and neither is telling a 100% accurate account of what happened at the beach. That's why I said it's a movie, not a documentary. Schindler's List, for example, inserted fictional characters and dramatized the life of Oscar Schindler to deliver a powerful movie experience; it's focus was not on the history of the holocaust, but more so the emotional significance of it and what it meant to us as a society and as humanity. Dunkirk does the same here, but with the desperation and fear present at those beaches.
Like I said in my original post, it wouldn't have hurt to have more diversity in the background of the movie and would have been a nice nod to all of the others who were there and who helped. But showing that is not essential to the movie Nolan wanted to make, and maybe they were either forgotten or omitted because their participation wasn't a part of the story he wanted to tell. All I'm trying to say is the movie isn't ruined because it isn't a entirely accurate reflection of history, and movies shouldn't be held to that standard unless it is directly relevant to the story it's trying to tell. Dunkirk focuses on the British troops and the British civilians who helped them, so that's why they were the bulk of the film. Like I mentioned earlier, it's not a case of Exodus: Gods and Kings where Egyptians were played by popular white actors, undermining the racial and cultural significance of those characters and historical figures that were present in the movie. That's wrong and that's gross. But Dunkirk omits parts of history not to champion white people and put down non-white people, but because the movie was focused on the British. And by British I mean those of British nationality, not the British Army as a whole. This was done to make it more meaningful when your people - civilians at that - risks their lives to save you. I guess the film could be a bit nationalistic in that sense, but it was focus on the British soldiers and the British people.
This Guardian piece published 2 days ago: Dunkirk offers a lesson – but it isn't what Nigel Farage thinks it is serves as a minor corrective to the portrayal of Nolan's film as a Brexiteer wank-fantasy.
That said, the exclusion of non-white faces from the film is deeply upsetting and has not gone unnoticed by British Indians whose forebears stood on that beach.
That said, the exclusion of non-white faces from the film is deeply upsetting and has not gone unnoticed by British Indians whose forebears stood on that beach.
Zvonimir Boban
Banned
Well that's the problem isn't it? Look at every period TV show and movie that's ever been made and you can make that exact defence for each of the individually. Add them all together and you have a huge, deliberate whitewashing of historical events.
This is what enables thundercunts like Farage to proselytise about the glorious spirit of Britain during World War II, as shorthand for an exclusively white, Anglo-Saxon Britain.
Yeah and it's OK to point when Nolan's, and Hollywood's, limits are brown people.
We live in a time when every major Hollywood production is under the magnifying lens when it comes to diversity so whenever a movie comes out like this, you know they've made a deliberate choice to exclude minorities.
jakonovski
Member
Also at its root Batman is a billionaire torturing poors in the night.
Exactly. It was specifically about Britain coming together in a time of crisis and British people in desperate situations, even lashing out at a Frenchman in a moment of panic and xenophobia.
It was the movie it wanted to be, but just because it wasn't what others wanted that doesn't mean it was actively trying to rewrite history or some shit. The malicious intent some people are trying to ascribe Nolan is insane.
Do you actually think before you post stuff like this, or does it just pour out of your hands?
400,000. The 300,000 were the survivors