Given that it is set to portray a historic war event it is quite baffling to see that Dunkirk hardly features any violence let alone gore. Everything looks clean and void of grittiness. What's Nolan's reasoning for this? If he wants to depict the horrors of war some degree of violence would be certainly needed. Did he/the studio plainly want to appeal to larger audiences by making it PG-13?
shareThe story doesn't dwell on combat. (like we've seen many, many times)
The camera doesn't dwell on fallen soldiers with their live's bleeding out of them while the escapees rush to the sanctuary of the beach.
In fact there's very little "objective" shots of the the effect of a weapon fired in the previous shot etc.
While on the beach the bombardments are so massive that gore is lost in the diffused destruction. Casualties are from direct hits which tend to virtually vaporise the victim.
There's no aid station or surgery on the beach so there is no gore filled scenes of that nature. There are wounded being stretchered onto a boat and they all look pretty bloody, as do the victims from the sunken troop ships floating back in with the tide.
Most of the violence comes from the dive bombers attacking ships in the channel. It's not a combat film but it has by no means been sanitised.
Thank you (very much) for this. I'll go to see it this weekend. I avoided Hacksaw Ridge specifically for its carnage-porn.
BTW, I hope your painstaking report contained at least a bit of irony for the original poster.
Yep. It's wrong to assume that gore is a prerequisite of any war story made these days.
That's because not all war stories are the same.
The violence of action and the chaos that defines battle is definitely present in the film.
People who are squeamish about being trapped underwater or in a sinking boat will not have an easy time.
I thought it perfectly captured the brutality and horror of war by showing the shocking death of the young George by falling over and banging his head. I almost had to look away at that point.
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