At the end of "Dunkirk", Christopher Nolan liberated us who had been on the brink of war for two hours. He let the fighter pilot (Tom Hardy) slide across the long beach. The pilot also just ended the one-hour flight.
This scene is like the silence after a storm, a long-lost relaxation after a wild bombardment. But flying in the air is far from the core of this scene. Behind the center of the picture, we see rows of houses. Their facade images-windows and styles, undoubtedly only appeared after 1940.
Nolan seems to have deliberately ignored these houses-this can almost be regarded as his blatant violation of historical facts. This historical error should be due to Nolan's aversion to computer CG technology. He requested that "Dunkirk" be a complete experience, an immersive video bath.
Nolan is not interested in the accuracy of historical description, but is interested in the accuracy of sensory experience; in Dunkirk, the accuracy of this sensory depiction is even decoupled from history. This is Nolan's exploration of reality. He tries to describe our mental landscape with millimeter precision.
But the problem still exists. When we watched the pilot flying over the long beach, the audience had doubts about his own position in the movie. Should we fear heights like Tom Hardy? Must be like him, with pain and homesickness? Even, should we be there, in the cabin?
Must the senses be realistic? Bertolt Brecht once explained the relationship between the senses and reality: "A perceptual way of writing, tasting and bathing everything, does not equal realism"; "Some art is sensory but unrealistic; some is realistic , But not the senses". In addition to the synchronization of the senses and the mind, what else can Nolan give us?
This is the only detail that needs attention in Dunkirk. The rest of the details no longer need to be excavated and stated separately, because they have nothing to do with Nolan's "sensory whole". This row of building facades—windows and styles—are the only realism in the flood of senses that obliterate everything.
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