Dunkirk!

[DesertAlbin736]

We went to see the new film "Dunkirk" last night in a local IMAX theater, since it was mostly filmed in IMAX format and being shown in both conventional theaters and IMAX. Naturally it's about the WWII evacuation of the 338,000 troops of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and some French troops during the German Blitzkrieg invasion of France in 1940 wherein large numbers of British civilian motor yachts and fishing boats were collected from English channel ports, pretty much everything that floated and was seaworthy enough to make the Channel crossing was commandeered by the Royal Navy, many crewed by their owners. This film is being hyped as supposedly being the best war film ever made. Well, maybe not so much. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 92% rating from media reviewers and 86% from audience reviews, a few of which pan the movie.

One of the reviewers that tells it like it is, in my opinion is this one:

http://screen-space.squarespace.com/rev ... nkirk.html

The pluses for this movie (and how it relates to boating) were some of the cool antique wooden motor yachts, some of which may have participated in the actual evacuation, the scenes of crossing the English Channel filmed in giant screen IMAX format, which is as rough as we saw crossing the Strait of Georgia in Canada, and that the beach scenes were filmed on location at the real Dunkirk beach.

The minuses: Little if any CGI effects were used, but while that's good, it also meant the film did not really convey the full scale of the numbers of troops, ships, and aircraft that were involved very well. Sound track that was so loud (common in theaters these days) that one almost needed ear plugs, the sparse dialog that was mostly unintelligible over the sound track. We weren't the only ones who could only understand about half of the actors' lines, that was a common complaint in reviews. Choppy, jarring editing with abrupt switches from the small boats to Spitfires dogfighting with Messerschmidt fighters and Heinkel bombers to men on the beaches to destroyers getting bombed, torpedoed and sunk, with little character development. This style is apparently a trademark of the director Christopher Nolan's other works. Unless one is a WWII history buff and familiar ahead of time with the back story of how the Brits came to be surrounded at Dunkirk in the first place, you wouldn't learn it from this movie. "Saving Private Ryan" it's not.

Bottom line: Don't waste your money seeing it at a theater. At best wait until it comes out on pay per view on cable or satellite TV or rent the DVD from Redbox. Or just skip it altogether.

[kerrye]

The burning Spitfire at the end also showed a prop attached to a driveshaft which the Spitfire did not have.

[DesertAlbin736]

The burning Spitfire at the end also showed a prop attached to a driveshaft which the Spitfire did not have.

Yeah, you noticed that too!? What, where was the engine? Obviously a stage prop mockup, but whatever. Or perhaps was that built as a glider replica to do the dead stick landing? Would an all metal plane that was out gas burn like that without pouring additional flammable liquid on it, just from shooting off a flare into the cockpit?

My guess, although nowhere does anyone mention this in the film or elsewhere, is that the the fictional old guy character piloting his yacht "Moonstone" with two young sons along as crew was likely modeled after the real life exploits of Charles Lightoller of Titanic fame who at age 66 took is 58 foot single screw yacht "Sundowner" of 26 gross tons, powered by a 72 HP diesel, with his eldest son & an 18 year old Sea Scout as crew from Ramsgate to Dunkirk and loaded 130 soldiers on his boat, which, pictured below still exists as a museum boat in Ramsgate. At an average of 160 lbs each, that's 10 tons of extra weight!

Imagine that, 130 adults crammed onto this boat, both down below and on deck, dodging German strafing attacks for the 30+ miles across the channel. After Lightoller passed away in 1952, his widow continued to cruise coastal waters with this boat all the way up until 1965.

[Tree]

Lots of it was filmed here where I fish. They had one day of filming the aircraft scenes and a hell of a lot of model aircraft were used. I was sat about a mile away fishing at the time. On the plus side we did also get to see a number of spitfires flying over. There is a fair number of the Dunkirk little ships still in use here today - the MTB that was used in filming is open to the public this weekend.

[DesertAlbin736]

Lots of it was filmed here where I fish. They had one day of filming the aircraft scenes and a hell of a lot of model aircraft were used.

Yes, I read the Heinkel 111 bomber & the Ju87 Stukas seen in the film were large scale RC models, since no flyable examples of the He 111 or the Spanish license built CASA 2.111 version still exist, only a few static displays. Only two intact Ju87 Stukas exist, neither of which are airworthy. The plane used to portray the German Bf109 fighter was actually a Spanish license built version called the HA-1112 Buchon powered by a Rolls Royce Merlin instead of the inverted cylinder German engines used in actual Messerschmitt planes. Nolan eschewed use of CGI, so scenes of pilots in the cockpits were actually filmed in flight with special IMAX cameras mounted on brackets. Unfortunately with the period flying helmets and oxygen masks it was near impossible to hear what the pilots were saying to each other over the radio, being muffled by the oxygen masks and drowned out by the annoyingly blaring sound track music.

I really wish Christopher Nolan had done a better story telling job with Dunkirk. Everyone knows about the D-Day invasion, but more than twice as many troops were evacuated from Dunkirk as landed in the initial assault landings on the Normandy beaches, and the movie does a poor job of conveying that compared to the opening sequence of "Saving Private Ryan". One of my late uncles by marriage (my father's sister's husband) was among the troops that landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day.

[DCatSea]

Empress of India.jpg

NewWindsorCastle1923_300.jpg

Windsor-Belle_060513-003.jpg

When I was at school in Windsor UK, in the 1960s, I had a summer job (3 years) working "tripping boats" for the old Thames boatyard of Arthur Jacobs. Jacobs sent a number of vessels to Dunkirk, including the "Empress of India", "New Windsor Castle", and the "Windsor Belle". (See pictures).
When I was crewing on them, (I worked all three, and ended up skippering another vessel) they all had little brass plaques, stating that they had been part of the evacuation.
The "Belle" is still plying her trade on the upper river, between Windsor and Oxford, but unfortunately the "Empress" is no more; "New Windsor Castle" is in a dilapidated state in need of restoration.
One memorable weekend I remember, was a Friday to Monday event at Cliveden Estate, home of Lord and Lady Astor, when we used the "Windsor Castle" and the "Empress" to ferry guests to and from Maidenhead to the estate for a weekend house party. Guests included then Defense Minister John Profumo, Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davis (two notorious escorts who managed to bring down the government), half of the cabinet, and several participants in the "British Invasion", including Mick Jagger etc.
Good time had by all.