New Jersey Stage 2017: Issue 7 | Page 23

men during the liberation of death camps, whereas the voices of victims of earlier campaigns of genocide are growing more silent with every passing day. And of course there are still some living among us who ex- perienced the conflict first-hand. Despite this, even WWII is dominated by numbers. We may groan every time a new Holo- caust-themed film arrives, and accuse it of awards-pandering, but regardless of their filmmak- ers’ motives, we need these films - otherwise we’re left with a fig- ure, six million, too large to wrap our heads around. Dunkirk was arguably the most decisive moment of WWII. In 1940, 400,000 servicement were safely evacuated from the French coast by a flotilla of military and civilian boats. With his dramati- zation of the event, Christopher Nolan puts faces to the figures, viewing the operation through the eyes of four men. At ground level is Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), a private in Watch the trailer for Dunkirk NJ STAGE 2017 - Vol. 4 No. 7 INDEX NEXT ARTICLE 23