Two Cinematic Visions of War: Dunkirk / Wonder Woman

British soldiers at Dunkirk - Hoping for the best, expecting the worst.

Wonder Woman and her band of brothers 

I recently saw the new movie Dunkirk, and earlier in the summer I caught Wonder Woman. Both movies got me thinking about war movies in general, and couple in particular from twenty years ago. 

Two war movies released in 1998 forever changed the genre in their depictions of the violence, chaos and moral ambiguities of combat. Both set during World War II, Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and, to a lesser extent, Terrence Malick's Thin Red Line offered sober meditations on the impact of battle on the minds, souls and bodies of the men who were sent to fight. Private Ryan is graphic in its depiction of severed limbs and disemboweled soldiers (I heard stories at the time of D-Day veterans walking out of the theater during the first 20 minutes because the depiction of the Omaha Beach landings hit too close to home), while Thin Red Line focused on the spiritual cost of war, and the corroding loss of both personal and cosmic innocence it brings. Much like Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ permanently effected how we judge filmed lives of Jesus, these two movies are the contemporary gold standard of war films. 

Both films pull off a difficult trick: they honor the men who fought, while showing war as an ugly, senseless experience, stripping battle of the glorious romance with which Hollywood often can't help but paint combat. Thin Red Line, based on a James Jones novel, is more openly contemptuous of military leaders and shows how war turns otherwise average, decent men into amoral killers capable of pulling the gold fillings out of an injured belligerent's mouth while he's still alive. Private Ryan only hints at these things, choosing to use the impact of bullets and shells on flesh and bone to drive home war's dehumanizing effect. 

At this point you may be asking, "What does all this have to do with Dunkirk and, especially, Wonder Woman?" 

Even without taking into account the cultural impact of the earlier film, It was hard for me to watch Dunkirk and not make comparison's to Private Ryan: both films deal with soldiers trapped on a beach during World War II (though Spielberg's film does eventually break free of the coastline). Both stories are told mainly from the stand point of the "grunt" soldiers who actually shed blood. Both filter historical events through the eyes of fictional characters meant to represent the experiences of the millions who served. Both were filmed in muted, under-saturated color tones which adds to the bleakness of their respective situations - and in Private Ryan's case blunts the excessive gore a bit. 

But while Dunkirk easily lends itself to surface comparisons with Private Ryan, a closer look also reveals similarities to Thin Red Line. Though Dunkirk runs at a compact 106 minutes compared to Malick's film that sprawls itself over more than 2 and a half hours, it's sparse dialogue and extended silences, much like the earlier movie, lends itself to a more meditative viewing. We see heroism, for sure, but we also see men under pressure, turning on each other as well as their allies. We see desperate men willing to pull any trick they can to get on a boat home. Though the futility of war and the incompetence of the men who run the high command isn't on full display as it is in Thin Red Line, there is frustration felt because of the catch-22 the leaders are trapped in. They don't commit the full force of the navy or air force to the evacuation because they need to prepare for the defense of the home island, yet no significant defense can be mounted without the 400,000 soldiers trapped on the beaches of northers France. 

Director Christopher Nolan cuts a thin line of his own in how he tells his story. While his film lacks the ultra violence of Spielberg's, it is presented in a realistic style, unlike Malick who used extended static shots to capture the natural beauty of his South Pacific setting, creating an allegory of the Western war machine despoiling the original innocence of the native peoples. That being said, Nolan does use cinematic tricks like playing with the timeline, following three different sets of characters, one group over the course of a week, the other covering a day, and lastly over an hour. We cut back and forth, and events over lap and finally converge, and what could have been confusing in the hands of a lesser film maker is executed perfectly by Nolan. He also utilizes sound quite effectively, differentiating between the noises made by British and "enemy" aircraft to communicate both reassurance or dread as is needed. He also mixes mechanical sounds with music to heighten the sense of menace. He's not presenting an allegory, nor does the film deal in symbols, but Nolan's sparse script makes him utilize other methods of communicating the desperation and horror of the situation the British soldiers find themselves in. 

I've always been fairly critical of Christopher Nolan's work because I think his ideas aren't nearly as profound as his supporters would have us believe. That the man knows what he's doing with a camera and in the editing room is unquestioned. That he is a master of special effects is also true. I just don't think that films like Inception or Interstellar are as deep as some claim, even if they are undeniably well made, and at times truly thrilling. As for a message, I'm not sure exactly what Nolan is saying here (more on that in due time). All I can say right now is that he made an historical drama, set very much in the real world, when he works mainly in science fiction and super hero fantasy, and pulls it off convincingly. Dunkirk clearly shows the depth of his talent. 

I will admit that I wasn't thinking of the two 1998 films detailed above while watching Wonder Woman, but after seeing and reflecting on Dunkirk, my mind began thinking of this other film as well, and comparisons to both Private Ryan and Thin Red Line came to me. 

Wonder Woman is correctly categorized as a comic book movie, but beneath that beats heart a war drama. The film makers transplant the story from the World War II of it's comic book origins to the First World War, for reasons that are not completely clear. It could be that the Second World War has the stench of genocide hanging over it. No matter how hard revisionists try to indite the allied nations of war crimes for the fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo, not to mention the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan were the clear aggressors in a war of empire building. The Nazi's guilty of horrors beyond imagining. The plot of Wonder Woman depends of the idea that there really aren't "good guys" or "bad guys," just fallen humanity trapped in a cycle of violence that needs to be broken. It's possible to make this argument with World War I, a conflict whose causes are as mysterious as the origin of Melchizedek of old. We think of the Germans as the enemy because they were our enemy, and they lost. But the Germany of the Kaiser wasn't the Third Reich of Hitler, and trying to make his regime look misguided but well intentioned would be rightly mocked.


In Wonder Woman, much like in Thin Red Line, we have a central character who sees the world with wide eyed wonder. In the older film it's the army private played by Jim Caviezel who observes the innocence of the native South Sea Islanders and the unspoiled nature of their homeland, and through it perceives that there is a deeper reality at work: a spiritual reality that is enduring, if fragile. In Wonder Woman, Diana has spent her life isolated on a mythic island and knows of human nature from books. Her experience of war and violence is the controlled environment of the training ground. When she leaves her native paradise she is at once captivated by what she sees and repulsed by the pollution and squalor, the byproducts of human progress. As she moves closer to the real fighting she sees the consequences of war for the first time: the maimed and the dead, the refugees displaced from their homes. Once she actually engages in fighting she sees first hand the random, uncontrollable brutality of war.

Wonder Woman may be a comic book fantasy, but in some ways it makes deeper observations than Dunkirk. Diana is forced to grow, to shed her idealistic, black and white world view. At the same time she doesn't give in to cynicism. She sees humanity's flaws, yet recognizes its divine potentiality. She is faced by a personified evil in the form of the god Ares, but comes to understand that, much like Satan, he only sets the scene, manipulates the situation, whispers in our ears, but in the end it is men and women who make their free choice for good or bad. And taking him out of the equation, while helpful, doesn't always insure that we will make the right decision. 

Dunkirk, like Private Ryan, is more concerned with the men on the ground doing the fighting and the dying than it is with the big picture of the war or deep philosophical questions (though, in fairness, Spielberg does pepper his film with moral dilemmas). It is a salute to the soldiers, and even more so to the everyday private citizens who came to their rescue at great risk to their own lives. As I mentioned before, it's not an idealized picture: these men are human and at times crack under pressure. In the end Dunkirk shows how a nation united can overcome great adversity. Though muted, it is a great patriotic film that almost makes me sad not to be British.

In spite of a very enthusiastic recommendation, like just about all of the Christopher Nolan films I've seen, it left me feeling like something was missing. As I was watching the film I couldn't help but thinking that if an audience member knows nothing about the Dunkirk evacuation, they would be very confused. We are dropped onto the beach at the beginning with very little preparation and almost no exposition. The Nazi forces are only referred to as "the enemy," and that they are Germans is only mentioned during a xenophobic tirade by one of the British soldiers. They are only seen at the end, and then in out of focus shadows. Hints are made about fighting for the survival of the civilized world, but otherwise the stakes build down to the survival of the men pined down on the beach. The characters are never really developed, so I cared because I knew what was going on, not because of any emotional investment in the individual soldiers.

My cynical side tells me that they want to be able to sell this movie in Germany, so going too heavy into some pro British jingoistic schmalz would be bad for the Teutonic box-office. More likely we have a case of political correctness, that doesn't believe in drawing moral distinctions between combatants: we're both good, and are both also guilty of atrocities big or small, so we shouldn't demonize the enemy. I think this approach can be validly taken in many situations, like in the case of Wonder Woman. World War I was a failure of both sides. While the Allies in WWII were guilty of atrocities (we shouldn't fool ourselves), to not recognize that the differences between the Allies and the Axis were not just a matter of degrees but essence is moral blindness. It's true that not every German soldier was a genocidal maniac, but, knowingly or not, he was fighting to expand the interest of an imperialistic genocidal maniac. If you can't demonize a demon, the culture is really lost.

I don't want to leave you all with the idea that I didn't like Dunkirk or thought that Wonder Woman is a better film. These are two different movies, with two different target audiences (lets just say that I was one of the youngest audience members for Dunkirk, and one of the oldest ones for Wonder Woman). While Dunkirk is the better technical and aesthetic exercise, in someways Wonder Woman asks the deeper questions. Both, in their own ways, follows in the tradition of Saving Private Ryan and Thin Red Line, in presenting the horrors and ambiguities of war while honoring the men and women who served.