Essay on Dunkirk: 400,000 Soldiers Trapped, Hope Evaporates

Dunkirk movie is a film that symbolized the World War II where the soldiers were to vacate from the British Empire and France but faced a significant challenge from the Germany army that surrounded them. The British and France soldiers, 400000 of them find themselves hopeless after the Germans holed them up at Dunkirk beach. Taking to the note that the Germans were more superior in the air; thus they used to bomb the British soldiers without much hindrance. Viewing this situation, private boats were then sent to the trapped soldiers to aid in the evacuation by Britain. The primary issue with the Dunkirk where these soldiers were trapped is that it had only one dock and thus need to guide it although from this destroyers.

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Farrier in the film realizes his plane is out of fuel, he battles in the air, glinds on the waters and slowly lands his aircraft by the shore, lit it and surrenders to the Germans. From a military point of view, this last scene is not realistic but had to be that way to symbolize the captives in world war II. The fact that the main character gave in signified the critical people who were held captive in the fight for freedom. Putting his plane on blaze symbolized the end of the war how he battled in the plane till the gliding and later landing safely signified how the Allied soldiers were to force themselves free from the military forces and fight for their freedom without giving up.

This scene did not, however, show a heroic character for Farrier since heroes don't give in but struggle till they achieve their aim. In the case of Farrier, he didn't want to risk his life just like an ordinary man would do when faced with difficulties; thus he gave in to the enemy. This film is therefore written to show that the enemy is not that important here, but life is. It is, therefore, a story of how far one will go to save his breath and not a war film.

Three overlapping parts are used in this movie that is the use of land, sea, and air which are generally connected by action but separated by time. Water comes out to be the most compelling character in the movie. The author uses water as a way of showing symbolism or metaphor. In the film, the water seems to dominate and to be at the center of everything; it is the only option soldiers could use for them to escape. The water is given human-like qualities with life in it. It is said to consume ships and all those who walk near it and acts as a tomb for the lost. Like for example as we see in the film, private boats rolled over the waters in an attempt to bring the soldiers home.

Taking a look at the two Royal Air Force Spitfire pilots who were guarding the sea to make sure the soldiers evacuated safely, one of them is hit and ditched in the sea by the Germans. Luckily, he struggled till he was able to land the plane on the surface, but it quickly takes water on. He is unable to get out and thus remains stuck in there. Uses the gun he had to try and flare it in hopes of breaking the canopy in the cockpit and later flee himself but the water was too much for him, and it was nearly the end of him when a hook from a boat suddenly breaks the glass, and he escaped. This whole scene personifies a human trying to evacuate Dunkirk, the pilot symbolizing the soldiers; the military situation is expressed by the plane ant the water in the plane the forces from the military. Water is seen to be something so powerful, and that is hard to stop. The flare gun used is also symbolic in the sense that outside help was required to rescue him.

In the case where Tom and his fellow rescue team battled in the air with rare talking to each other symbolized the heroic character of the air since it is in the air that the rescue team was located. The incident where Dawson's friend dies as they battle and neither he nor his son Peter dared to show any emotions symbolized there was no time for anything else but war.

The warm light of the sun setting in the last scene symbolized that the allied soldiers would at long last find their way back home and be at their warm beds once more. The Dunkirk itself portrayed a broader picture of human effort and how they can join forces to defeat their odds. The lifeboats that the soldiers used in the evacuation process symbolized their hopelessness of that process and how they had lost all their hopes since the moment they tried rescuing using them they would end up sinking and going back to square one.

The author used a cinematic technique in the entire scene. Use of land, sea, and air which are overlapping one after the other with less dialogue from the characters and the creation of suspense using pictures, music, sounds, and costume and camera angles pointed out to this technique. He also used purposeful dialogue where his characters talked when there was a need to thus dedicating all their effort in the goal they hard.

References

Ashplant, T. G., Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper. "Remembered/replayed: the nation and male subjectivity in the Second World War films Ni Liv (Norway) and The Cruel Sea (Britain) PETER SJO LY S T-J AC KSON." The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration. Routledge, 2013. 179-195.

Curley, Stephen. "15 The War and Film in the United States and Britain." World War II in Asia and the Pacific and the War's Aftermath, with General Themes: A Handbook of Literature and Research (1998): 241.

Geraghty, Christine. "Foregrounding the media: Atonement (2007) as an Adaptation." Adaptation 2.2 (2009): 91-109.

Kavgic, Olga Panic, and Aleksandar Kavgic. "CREATIVITY IN FILM TAGLINES: EXTRALINGUISTIC, TEXTUAL, AND LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS." Annual Review of the Faculty of Philosophy/Godisnjak Filozofskog Fakulteta 43.1 (2018).