Being a surfer ruined the movie Dunkirk for me, at least according to my wife (who likes to blame a lot of things on my surfing). Cuz I was getting a headache from the magical waters and skies of Dunkirk. Look - it’s a grey onshore day, no it’s a glassy sunny day, look the swell is 4 - 6 foot and choppy, no the swell is 1 foot and clean, the sky is blue with white puffy clouds, no the sky is gray again with no distinct clouds. Look, it’s sunny and calm here but when I look through the binoculars its gray and windy over there!
Look it’s low tide, no it’s medium tide, look I can jump into gray murky water and suddenly be swimming in azure beauty.
Like I said, it gave me a headache. Which made me less tolerant of the constantly mumbled speech, and lack of plot. And stuff like planes crashing in an empty sea only to have rescue craft emerge instantaneously as if from the deep. And the final scene, where Tom Hardy’s plane runs out of gas, and glides effortlessly without losing altitude for a half hour.
Other than that, I thought it was a pretty good movie.
Huck, I noticed the same thing about the water. I remember a line from the book “Caught Inside” about how a surfer always looks beyond the movie or the commercial or whatever and wonders if the wave in the background could be ridden.
And why didn’t Hardy fly towards his own people instead of away.
I think the movie did the true story a great disservice. But I’m a history buff and a bit picky.
Lots of scenes in ads etc where the shot has waves reversing away from shore…such a natural phenomenon going backwards goes unrecognized by some supposedly very clever scene makers.
I think you have to disconnect from reality to enjoy any movie. Surf movies have the same problem. Big Wednesday, etc. Unless James Bond really can do all that shit and kung fu fighters really can defeat 25 armed assailants! Hah!. Mike
My wife was in Jaws2. She said the hardest thing was waiting for the right conditions so the shots would match. Pre-CGI. She was shooting for almost an entire year.
I couldn’t help but notice the conditions off the beach changing dramatically too. From pounding storm surf that no boat could beach launch through to an easy paddle out. Didn’t ruin the movie for me though, I thought it was great. They should have made the fleet of private boats a whole lot bigger.
I enjoy the Dunkirk, They kept a lot of tension in the whole movie. Yes the the storm surf to flat waves was problematic. Had to turn off my Surfer Brain. The ending also was off Iknew the Spitfires had a lot of glide but really.I don’t think Glider would have stayed airborne for that long. One of the things that I liked was they used many of the real Boats that made the crossing to rescue the British Army from Dunkirk. Many years ago someone had the idea that those Boats should be found and restored. Kind of a living museum.
