The war cinema of World War II: the case of Dunkirk

Abstract

War cinema enjoys a certain revival in our years of European crisis. And especially that of the Second World War, which often tells the story of "good" combatants (the Allies), as opposed to "bad" combatants (Nazis). While there have been certain approaches to a more psychological and intimate view of the conflict, such as the classic The Sinking (Der Untergang, Eichinger, 2004), or the novel Cold War (Wojna, 2018) or The Captain (Der Hauptmann, Schwentke, 2017), it is no less true that Dunkerque (Dinkirk, Christopher Nolan, 2017) presents a series of radical differences with the previous films that, undoubtedly, contribute to rediscovering the conflict with a less epidermal look than the traditional one: This is a great blockbuster product, the film practically lacks dialogues (which connects it with the photographic narrative force) and, in addition, it has a subtle sound design where the fundamental thing is the sounds of war (diegetic resources). In addition, and as a novelty in the genre, the enemy is invisible because we do not have the slightest reference to it.  His narration, finally, has many particularities that we will have the opportunity to analyze.