Post a Comment. Thursday, August 10, Dunkirk We start by following a small patrol of British troops walking down a Dunkirk street in the rain. A rain of leaflets. Dropped by German Messerschmitt's strafing the area, they are propaganda fliers telling the Brit's to give up because their position is untenable.
They are surrounded. There's just enough time to take in this message when truth is given to the threatβbullets start flying sporadically and the patrol changes their pace from a casual march to a disorganized run. We will never see the advancing Nazi army throughout the movieβtheir presence will only be noted by bullets, bullet-holes and the presence of Messerschmitt's in the air. The time on the Dunkirk beach is taken up with two activitiesβwaiting for the ships to dock by the mole the long pier that juts out into the channel at high tide and trying to survive, as the area is strafed by German planes that make periodic runs trying to inflict as much damage on the soldiers on the mole and the beach, with an arsenal much more damaging than leaflets.
For the soldiers, the time is spent just trying to survive until rescue arrives. But time and tide wait for no man and one has to work to increase one's chances, given the opportunity. On the beach, Tommy connects with another soldier who he encounters burying one of the soldiers on the beach. Gibson Aneurin Barnard , is one of the thousands waiting for the transports that seem to take forever to cross the Channel.
Together, they conspire about how to get on the next ship at the earliest possible opportunity. It doesn't take long for them to see that the wounded, for whom time is the shortest, are given priority on the mole.
They "volunteer" themselves and one of the many wounded left unattended to "cut the lines" and get on the next ship. They are dismayed to find that even though the wounded are given priority, their attendants are not.
