Dunkirk illusions

Makers of war movies, perhaps more than other moviemakers, must decide about near and far. Movies about war, like war itself and its telling, pull the focus out to wide-angle shots of the many fighting the battle, and zoom in to the woman and man agonized in single acts of combat and suffering. The drama of war on the movie screen, as in all war storytelling, is energized by context and plot, the relationship of the individual to the group, atomized action to mass struggle. One of the oldest of socially organized human activities, war catches men and women in the primal fight for survival, whether willed or by accident, in single and collective effort.