The Dunkirk spirit : how cinema is shaping Britain’s identity in the Brexit era | Film

Lors d’une interview à la radio le 15/07, la veille de la projection à Dunkerque, Nolan disait (en gros, je n’arrive pas à trouver un podcast, je ne sais même pas sur quelle radio c’était, mais je suis sure de l’avoir entendu) « "Dunkerque", c’est une histoire anglaise, qui se passe en France et qui a nécessité un budget Hollywoodien. » Pas surprenant donc que l’on parle peu des français dans le film.

The Dunkirk spirit: how cinema is shaping Britain’s identity in the Brexit era | Film | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jul/20/dunkirk-spirit-british-film-brexit-national-identity-christopher-nolan

You can’t blame Christopher Nolan for Brexit. The director was halfway through making Dunkirk, his new war epic, when the EU referendum took place last June. But if the leave campaign had wanted to make a rousing propaganda movie to stir the nation, it couldn’t have picked a better subject matter. Dunkirk has got it all: Britain standing alone against the world, our manufacturing superiority prevailing, the nation coming together – all in a literal effort to get out of Europe. If he had got the film together a little earlier, perhaps Nigel Farage wouldn’t have needed to cite Independence Day in his morning-after victory speech.

The Dunkirk analogy has already been trotted out by leave campaigners, of course. Last February, for example, three months before she (wrongly) claimed that Britain would be powerless to prevent Turkey joining the EU, Tory minister Penny Mordaunt wrote an opinion piece for the Daily Telegraph titled “The spirit of Dunkirk will see us thrive outside the EU”. “In our long island history, there have been many times when Britain has not been well-served by alignment with Europe,” she wrote. “When Britain stood alone in 1940 after the defeat at Dunkirk, we were cut off and ridiculed. True leadership sometimes does feel isolating. Yet we have never suffered for it. We are resourceful; we are well connected; our brand is strong in the world.”

Never mind that Britain didn’t actually stand alone at that precise point during the war. Or that Winston Churchill favoured “indissoluble” union with an as-yet undefeated France. Or that by standing together with our European neighbours over the past 40 years, we have avoided another Dunkirk. This is the Brexiter version of British identity in a nutshell: proudly isolated, independent, not European, and “strong in the world”. And to be clear, this is primarily English identity we are talking about, given that a majority in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain.