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Christopher Nolan On The Unique Structure Of His Ambitious-Looking WW2 Movie
One of 2017's highly anticipated movies is the World War II movie Dunkirk, the next film from The Dark Knight and Inception director Christopher Nolan. Now, the director has revealed that its story will be told from three different points of view, in an effort to capture how the battle was fought.
"The film is told from three points of view. The air (planes), the land (on the beach), and the sea (the evacuation by the navy)," Nolan told French publication Premiere, as translated by ThePlaylist. "For the soldiers embarked in the conflict, the events took place on different temporalities. On land, some stayed one week stuck on the beach. On the water, the events lasted a maximum day; and if you were flying to Dunkirk, the British spitfires would carry an hour of fuel. To mingle these different versions of history, one had to mix the temporal strata. Hence the complicated structure; even if the story, once again, is very simple."
Based on the first Dunkirk trailer, it looks like One Direction's Harry Styles and actor Fionn Whitehead will be the focus of the beach sequences, with Tom Hardy leading the airplane scenes. Mark Rylance and Cillian Murphy appear to be the main players in the naval sections.
Nolan went on to say that the Battle of Dunkirk was an "essential moment" in World War II. Had the British forces not been able to escape the beach, the Germans might have conquered Europe, he said.
"It is a true point of rupture in war and in history of the world," he explained. "A decisive moment. And the success of the evacuation allowed [British Prime Minister Winston Churchill] to impose the idea of a moral victory, which allowed him to galvanize his troops like civilians and to impose a spirit of resistance while the logic of this sequence should have been that of surrender. Militarily it is a defeat; on the human plane it is a colossal victory."
Dunkirk, which was written and directed by Nolan, opens on July 21, 2017.
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"The film is told from three points of view. The air (planes), the land (on the beach), and the sea (the evacuation by the navy)," Nolan told French publication Premiere, as translated by ThePlaylist. "For the soldiers embarked in the conflict, the events took place on different temporalities. On land, some stayed one week stuck on the beach. On the water, the events lasted a maximum day; and if you were flying to Dunkirk, the British spitfires would carry an hour of fuel. To mingle these different versions of history, one had to mix the temporal strata. Hence the complicated structure; even if the story, once again, is very simple."
Based on the first Dunkirk trailer, it looks like One Direction's Harry Styles and actor Fionn Whitehead will be the focus of the beach sequences, with Tom Hardy leading the airplane scenes. Mark Rylance and Cillian Murphy appear to be the main players in the naval sections.
Nolan went on to say that the Battle of Dunkirk was an "essential moment" in World War II. Had the British forces not been able to escape the beach, the Germans might have conquered Europe, he said.
"It is a true point of rupture in war and in history of the world," he explained. "A decisive moment. And the success of the evacuation allowed [British Prime Minister Winston Churchill] to impose the idea of a moral victory, which allowed him to galvanize his troops like civilians and to impose a spirit of resistance while the logic of this sequence should have been that of surrender. Militarily it is a defeat; on the human plane it is a colossal victory."
Dunkirk, which was written and directed by Nolan, opens on July 21, 2017.
More...