Dunkirk – The Cost of War.

Credit: Set Photo, Christopher Nolan Movie, Dunkirk

The first and most obvious cost of war is the violent loss of lives and of its aftereffects upon survivors in the form of PTSD.  The other cost, ironically, is to be unprepared for war.

 

Sounds somewhat oxymoronic, does it not? But paying for the cost of preparedness may be the precondition to avoiding or minimizing the former: This concept was demonstrated during the long years of the Cold War between America and Russia.

Dunkirk:  At the onset of World War Two, the stranding of over 300,000 British and French troops who were driven to the edge of the sea on the beaches of Dunkirk, France, by German forces, abundantly underscores the fallacy of appeasement, a disastrous policy adopted by British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain.

If you haven’t seen the movie Dunkirk which describes the horror facing those troops as they desperately wait to be rescued, I highly recommend that you do.

 

It is currently being shown at the AMC Theatres in the Bridgewater Commons Mall and at the Reading Cinemas in Manville.

Caveat:  This film is not a comprehensive historical narration of the events which led to World War Two.  Nor was that the producer’s intention.

Au contraire, Dunkirk is meant to be a very intense depiction of how men react in the torrid heat of war when, for them, the battle is over, and they face impending death or capture by the German Army.

Their defenses have evaporated, and they hang onto the merest gossamer threads of hope as they stare across the English Channel, awaiting rescue by ships which may never arrive.

The motivation of the fighting men queuing up on the docks and strips of beach sand is, as so concisely put in Michael Gerson’s review in The Washington Post, simply “. . . doing everything they can to get off the damn beach and get home.”

Watch for the miracle.

Another review currently appearing in the Opinion section of MyCentralJersey.com offers a different viewpoint; namely, that the film has “no redeeming qualities except in the science and art of photography,” and because of a “lack of information.”

Dunkirk is not about lack of information; nor is it a war games tutorial.  It is about the cost of war.  See it for yourself and decide.