There’s a scene in the first 15 minutes of Dunkirk where a large gathering of British soldiers, awaiting their return journey home from the shore of Dunkirk, hear the sounds of German bomber airplanes and hurriedly cower on the shoreline, covering their heads under their arms. Bombs begin raining down from the sky and as they explode one after another, we see sand and arms and legs and heads getting scattered.
For a moment, I imagined myself lying on the shoreline, amidst the bombings.
For a moment, I imagined myself lying on the shoreline, amidst the bombings.
Would I have been patriotic then? Would I have still stuck to my atheistic opinions? Would I have agonized over my life possibly ending because of the fight between egotistical men in power? Would I have wished that my end happened in a flash? Would I have died of the sheer anticipation of a bomb that would blow my body to pieces?
The chaos continued on screen as a different chaos erupted in my head.
I asked myself if I would enlist to serve the army, if a war broke out. The response was a feeble ‘No’.
The chaos continued on screen as a different chaos erupted in my head.
I asked myself if I would enlist to serve the army, if a war broke out. The response was a feeble ‘No’.
Am I a coward for wanting to be by the side of my loved ones as the end approached, instead of being on a foreign battlefield? Am I a coward for wanting to be beside groups of children, wanting to stop the theft of their childhood by war, instead of being beside men who are forced to let go of the humanity in them? Am I a coward for wanting to record the horrendous happenings common people are subjected to, thanks to them being born within this border or that, and wanting to let the records out for the future generations to learn the extent of man’s insanity? Am I a coward for wanting to live?
There is a scene in Dunkirk where the characters of Tommy and Gibson use a wounded soldier to their benefit, trying to gain access to a ship by pretending to be medical men. Though their actions put a weak smile on my face, deep down I realized the cost of survival.
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Victor Frankl writes in his severely haunting Man’s Search for Meaning,
“It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future – subspecie aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.”
In Dunkirk, more than once, it is referred that the British soldiers could practically see their home from the shoreline. I wonder if the soldiers would have gotten the will to survive the deadly onslaughts one after the other, if they had not had their home within their sight. I wonder if an alternate outcome would have resulted had this happened in a shore thousands of miles from the British mainland.
Neitzsche also comes to mind – “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
A happier home. A lasting love. A pleasurable pursuit of a passion.
Thinking about a man’s why shows man’s fondness for fiction. What is a man’s future if not fiction?
As Yuval Noah Harari points out in his TED talk, man would have been unable to rule planet Earth if not for his belief in fiction.
The fiction of religions. The fiction of nations. The fiction of wars. The fiction of money. The fiction of time.
Is there another filmmaker today who is as obsessed with the concept of time as Christopher Nolan is?
Memento dealt with a man’s quest for revenge, revolving around his time-bound memory disorder. The Prestige dealt with the rivalry between two magicians, but deceived the audience by crisscrossing timelines. Inception had its final act structured around a multi-layered dream sequence, heightened in its intensity by the time differences across each layer. Interstellar had a father-daughter relationship being shaken at its roots by the time differences owing to space travel. And in Dunkirk, we literally feel the dread of every passing second, thanks to its background score and crisscrossed timelines.
What does Nolan find fascinating about the concept of time?
There is a scene in Dunkirk where the characters of Tommy and Gibson use a wounded soldier to their benefit, trying to gain access to a ship by pretending to be medical men. Though their actions put a weak smile on my face, deep down I realized the cost of survival.
****
Victor Frankl writes in his severely haunting Man’s Search for Meaning,
“It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future – subspecie aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.”
In Dunkirk, more than once, it is referred that the British soldiers could practically see their home from the shoreline. I wonder if the soldiers would have gotten the will to survive the deadly onslaughts one after the other, if they had not had their home within their sight. I wonder if an alternate outcome would have resulted had this happened in a shore thousands of miles from the British mainland.
Neitzsche also comes to mind – “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
A happier home. A lasting love. A pleasurable pursuit of a passion.
Thinking about a man’s why shows man’s fondness for fiction. What is a man’s future if not fiction?
As Yuval Noah Harari points out in his TED talk, man would have been unable to rule planet Earth if not for his belief in fiction.
The fiction of religions. The fiction of nations. The fiction of wars. The fiction of money. The fiction of time.
Is there another filmmaker today who is as obsessed with the concept of time as Christopher Nolan is?
Memento dealt with a man’s quest for revenge, revolving around his time-bound memory disorder. The Prestige dealt with the rivalry between two magicians, but deceived the audience by crisscrossing timelines. Inception had its final act structured around a multi-layered dream sequence, heightened in its intensity by the time differences across each layer. Interstellar had a father-daughter relationship being shaken at its roots by the time differences owing to space travel. And in Dunkirk, we literally feel the dread of every passing second, thanks to its background score and crisscrossed timelines.
What does Nolan find fascinating about the concept of time?
Our never-ending fight against it? The varying storylines that pop out of alternated timelines? The changing cycles of cause and effect?
Whatever Nolan’s reason(s) might be, when one begins to consider the cause and effect of war, one cannot help but feel sorry for mankind.
Whatever Nolan’s reason(s) might be, when one begins to consider the cause and effect of war, one cannot help but feel sorry for mankind.
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