Cancer 69

It is 4am. Like most nights, I have been up for hours. Usually I just sit and read. I sometimes write, but it is often too much effort. Tonight I decided to watch a film. I watched Dunkirk, the 2017 version rather than the John Mills version from the 1960s. I have watched it once before. I thought it was dire then, I now think it is one of the worst war films I have ever seen.

For some reason Dunkirk gets good reviews. Some see it as one of the best war films ever. I really do not understand why. Fromm the very start it is apalling. There is enemy gunfire so a group of soldiers run up the middle of the road, throwing their rifles away. I know some soldiers threw their rifles away, but professional soldiers running up the midde of the road with no cover?

From there it just gets worse. None of it makes any sense. The limited dialogue is cliched. The mole is either empty or full of soldiers depending on whether Kenneth Brannagh is on it. A spitfire pilot carries on fighting and runs out of fuel rather than returns home. A small boat just sets off on its own rather than waiting for RN crew. The same boat returns to Dorset with a load of soldiers. Dorset? Is that across from Dunkirk? It didn’t happen, it wouldn’t happen. Apparently hundreds of other soldiers were also brought back to the same place, then entrained to Woking where Churchill has somehow already made his ‘beaches’ speech and it is printed in the newspaper. OK, that one might be possibl as it was made on 4th June, but we then hear Kenneth Brnnagh is staying behind to help the French, so the timing doesn’t work.

How does a fishing boat suddenly fill up with water from a few bullet holes? And why don’t the soldiers aboard, instead of panicking, just climb up the bleedingly obvious ladder and escape? Why are the beaches virtually empty of troops? Where is all the abandoned equipment? Why are the lights on in Dunkirk (no they are not all fires)? Why do the planes never get to Dunkirk? Why are the seas empty of ships? Why is one ship anchored seemingly miles out to sea? How can a Spitfire that is out of fuel glide apparently overnight, never leaving the beaches, and apparenty shooting down an enemy plane? There is a lot of disjointedness regarding time. It is daylight in France, night in the UK, etc. Also, token woman nurse in destroyer. Really?

I could go on but my point is made. Yes, there is artistic licence, but how can one writer/director, who should have continued with his silly Batman films, get so much so wrong and yet have audiences who somehow think it is acceptable to produce such utter nonsense?

I have read about Dunkirk, I have met and interviewed Dunkirk veterans. I wasn’t there. None of us know what it was really like, but we can be fairly sure that this awful film does not represent anything of the reality.

As for my cancer, I am four rounds in, still eating too much, having a couple of days in Shrewsbury (nice town), and still getting very tired.