Does Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk ignore the role of the Indian army?

Christopher Nolan's epic World War Two film, Dunkirk, which tells the story of the mass evacuation of Allied troops from the northern coast of France in 1940, has been getting glowing reviews in India.

But many are glowering over Nolan turning a blind eye to the role of Indian soldiers in the battle. The Times of India wrote that their "significant contribution" was missing from Nolan's "otherwise brilliant" work. Writing for Bloomberg View, columnist Mihir Sharma said the film "adds to the falsehood that plucky Britons stood alone against Nazi Germany once France fell, when, in fact, hundreds of millions of imperial subjects stood, perforce, with them".

Few can deny the role of the subjects. Some five million Commonwealth servicemen joined the military services of the British empire during WW2. Almost half of them were from South Asia. Indian soldiers played a key role in major battles like Tobruk, Monte Cassino, Kohima and Imphal. A multinational force of British, Indian and African units recaptured Burma (Myanmar) for the Allies.

What happened with the Indian soldiers in Dunkirk is less clear. Yasmin Khan, historian and author of The Raj at War: A People's History of India's Second World War, says she has often wondered why there is very little factual data on their role in the battle, which many say cost Germany the war.

What is well known, she told me, is that four companies of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps, including a unit of the Bikaner State forces, served in France during the campaign on the Western Front, and some were evacuated from Dunkirk. Among them were three contingents of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps. One contingent was taken prisoner by German forces.

According to one account, India also provided more than 2,500 mules - shipped from Bombay (now Mumbai) to Marseilles - to the war effort as the British animal transport companies had been phased out. An Indian soldier, Jemadar Maula Dad Khan, was feted for showing "magnificent courage, coolness and decision" in protecting his men and animals whey they were shelled from the ground and strafed from the air by the enemy.

The Indian soldiers and the mules were eventually ordered towards the coast. Many of the men could not take their animals on the retreat and gave them away to local people in France, according to the same account.
Historian John Broich says the Indian soldiers in Dunkirk were "particularly cool under fire and well organised during the retreat".

"They weren't large in number, maybe a few hundred among hundreds of thousands, but their appearance in the film would have provided a good reminder of how utterly central the role of the Indian Army was in the war," he told Slate. "Their service meant the difference between victory and defeat. In fact, while Britain and other allies were licking their wounds after Dunkirk, the Indian Army picked up the slack in North Africa and the Middle East.

'Survival story'

To be fair, Nolan has said that he approached the story "from the point of view of the pure mechanics of survival rather than from the politics of the event". "We don't have generals in rooms pushing things around on maps. We don't see Churchill. We barely glimpse the enemy," he told the Telegraph. "It's a survival story."

Historian Joshua Levine, who is also the film's historical consultant, told me that Dunkirk was a work of fiction and "it isn't a film's job to tell the full story of Dunkirk... and nor, in the time available, could it even try to do so".
"This film focuses on a few protagonists whose paths cross occasionally, each one of whom experiences just a tiny corner of the whole story. As Hilary Mantel says about historical fiction, 'The man who is fighting can't see over the hill, out of the trench.' What I'd love to see, though, is an Indian film about Dunkirk, or WW2 generally, and I sincerely hope Indian filmmakers are working on it."

But what about the criticism that the role of Indian and their South Asian counterparts in WW2 has been forgotten? Yasmin Khan says that their "sheer scale of the contribution" has become apparent in Britain in recent years. "No longer is it simply an island story of heroic, plucky British fighting against Nazi-occupied continental Europe; it has now become increasingly customary for historians to refer to the contribution made by Asian, African and Caribbean servicemen in the 1940s", she writes in her book.

A memorial to honour the role of these soldiers came up on London's Constitution Hill in 2002. There have been museum exhibitions, oral history projects and TV documentaries to "reveal how crucial they [the soldiers] often were to the action, the sacrifices that they made in the face of terrible odds, and also to divulge individual stories of great bravery and intrepid action".

"It is no longer true to suggest that this is an entirely forgotten story," she says. Meanwhile, Indians are flocking to watch Dunkirk, which opened at 416 screens, including 10 Imax screens, across the country, on Friday. Unlike most Hollywood films, Dunkirk hasn't been dubbed in any Indian language for wider viewership. Still, says Denzil Dias of Warner Brothers (India), the film raked in $2.4m (£1.84m) over the weekend. "This is the biggest opening of an English language-only film in India," Mr Dias told me. Clearly, viewers are not fretting about the lack of Indian soldiers in Nolan's tour-de-force.

Star Trek Beyond 2016 (Rating ****)

Cast: Zachary Quinto, Chris Pine, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Idris Elba, Sofia Boutella
Director: Justin Lin

The Federation is experiencing a new era of prosperity and inter-planetary peace and has even constructed a giant new Starbase, the Yorktown. While the lives of the crew of the enterprise have gone through a few changes on the personal front, a major upheaval awaits them when the Enterprise is sent on a potentially dangerous mission to a nearby nebula. They have to fight and defeat a ruthless alien who is bent on destroying the Federation.

While Star Trek Beyond is chock-full of relentless action sequences (the first one, barely ten minutes into the film) and breathtaking space scenes, Lin and the writers of this film have taken things beyond just making stuff blow up in a dramatic fashion. A big part of the original Star Trek's charm lay in the way the characters got along and you'll see that here too.

Spock (Quinto) and Kirk (Pine) have a strong mutual respect along with being great friends. But Trekkie diehards will know that Spock and the ship's cranky doctor, Bones (Urban), had a rapport that was more lighthearted and allowed for humorous moments too. The same goes for the engineer of the USS Enterprise, Scotty, who brings his own brand of wit and humour to the movie. And so, you'll find a decent blend of seriousness and action as well as subtle humour. Lin has also taken a few risks in the film and balanced that off by also remaining for the most part, faithful to the original series. So there's plenty enough to excite, but it's not so radically different as to make long-time fans wonder about what the heck is going on.

To sum things up, get ready for some interesting side adventures, snappy dialogues, brilliant CGI, an entertaining score (the retro hit by Beastie Boys' Sabotage) and also a relationship angle, for good measure. The kind of blend that is signature JJ Abrams (he has a co-producer credit). Then there's the enemy leader Krall (Elba) who is bad to the bone no doubt, but without being over-the-top. A few logical fallacies aside, this one's really enjoyable.

London Has Fallen 2016 (Rating ****)

Starring: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Alon Aboutboul.
Director: Babak Najafi

When a film titled London Has Fallen begins with the dusty fields of Pakistan, you know where it’s heading. It’s going to be yet another American geopolitical fantasy where Uncle Sam saves the world, as it bulldozes all nuances of the topic of terrorism along its way. But to be fair, keeping its problematic politics aside, the film begins to tell its story well

We see a wealthy Muslim arms dealer Aamir Barkawi (Alon Aboutboul) in his mansion somewhere in Punjab Province. He talks business with his sons even as they make plans for his daughter’s (their sister) wedding. In the next scene, we are inside the wedding, observing all its colourful festivities. We also catch someone making a suspicious phone call. Cut to the next shot, a G8 sanctioned drone sets its eyes on the venue: it becomes a small square plot on its display screen, a button pressed and a big boom heard. Barkwai may be a dangerous man, but you are made to feel for him, for his family and the innocents who have been wiped off the face of the earth. But as it turns out, the portion was merely a guilt-trip in advance for the makers of a movie where America, yet again, emerges as the hero.

London Has Fallen is a sequel to Olympus has Fallen (2013), in which North Korean terrorists had held US President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) hostage in the White House. But the series’ protagonist is not Asher, but Mike Banning, chief of his personal security. Now, I haven’t seen Olympus, but that film showed Banning falling from grace – he was demoted from the President’s detail after he failed to save the lives of Asher’s family – only to be reinstated at the end of the film after he pulls off an impossible rescue. That backstory explains the single-minded focus with which Banning works for Asher. But in isolation of the first film, London Has Fallen carries few traces of his troubled past. 

Yet, it isn’t a total disaster because director Babak Najafi manages to pull us into his film in the first 30 odd minutes. It’s when the US president, along with other world leaders (strong allies of the United Kingdom), descend in London to attend the British Prime Minister’s funeral. Given the short notice that the event has been planned, it becomes one with extreme high-security. This stretch is taut as we are introduced to one leader after the other, knowing that something terrible is about to happen. And then terror strikes as though it is some evil alien ship taking over earth. Sure, it makes for some spectacular visuals such as the Westminster Abbey collapsing as the Italian President romances with his girlfriend on its terrace or London Bridge falling down while the French President relaxes on his boat on the river Thames. While the impact is superficially pleasurable, London Has Fallen treats terrorism the way big, dumb blockbusters treat apocalyptic tsunamis or other natural disasters. 

So much more could have been extracted from Banning’s relationship with Asher. Banning is not just Asher’s personal security but also a confidante. Asher treats him as an equal, going for jogs together or putting up a sparring boxing match. But the film portrays Butler as an American superhero masquerading as an US agent, mouthing offensive lines such as “Go back to F**khead-istan or wherever it is you are from”, single-handedly saving his President from a terror attack planned for years. Butler isn’t bad, but he plays the character straight, as you expect him to. And an actor of Ackhart’s calibre seems severely underutilised and you just wish he had a better written character rather than a one-note helpless President. When both come out unscathed from a helicopter crash (leaving their third partner, um, a black character dead), Banning tells Asher that after everything else has failed, London by foot might well be there best option. I thought London by foot would be a great opportunity to take the film to an unexpected direction, giving us a tense, cinematic tour of a broken London. But no, turns out it was a short cut to get into a house. And from there to another one. London Has Fallen becomes too clichéd to make us care for its characters, an overdose of American self-righteous heroism, that the world already has had too much of.

The Mechanic 2011 (Rating ****)

Starring: Jason Statham, Ben Foster, Donald Sutherland.
Director: Simon West

The basic plot of The Mechanic—a loose remake of the 1972 Charles Bronson movie of the same name—holds boundless promise for action fans, and mostly fulfills it: A preternaturally skilled hitman (Jason Statham) teaches a young loose cannon (Six Feet Under’s Ben Foster) the tricks of his slick, deadly trade. But things aren’t that simple, naturally. The duo connect at the funeral of Foster’s father (Donald Sutherland), who was also Statham’s mentor in the killin’ business—and whom Statham murdered early in the movie, under orders from his clearly no-good handler. Feeling some pang of regret even though Sutherland double-crossed the company, Statham takes the hotheaded, boozed-out scamp under his wing and sets about making him into an ice-veined killer. It’s the least he can do, right?

For a good chunk of its running time, The Mechanic is a buddy movie about two guys really enjoying murder together. They almost seem ready to high-five after a job well done, even as Statham’s character glumly explains “I wanted you to see one up close.” In order to ease the audience’s conscience, the protagonists’ victims are conveniently more awful than they are: an arms dealer “who’ll sell to anybody,” a ridiculous cult leader, a hulking gay assassin who wants to fuck Foster. Statham’s hit-plans are frequently complex, and he’s always eight or nine steps ahead of everyone else—so much that it would’ve been nice to see these guys actually planning more assignments instead of just watching those assignments unfold. But that would leave less screen time for strangulations, splattery headshots, and murder-by-fireplace-tools, so maybe it’s just as well.

Statham and Foster play off each other nicely, and director Simon West (Con Air) strikes a playful balance between carnage and conviviality, gore and gregariousness. A confrontation between the two leads is inevitable, and since The Mechanic is so morally muddled to begin with, it’s difficult to tell where things are headed, or how to take sides. That isn’t because these characters are well-drawn or terribly complex—they assuredly aren’t—but it’s still an unusual, intriguing path for a movie like this to travel. The only thing certain going into the climax is that guns will be fired and things will explode in style. Couple that with actual acting—Statham is the most winning action hero around, and Foster brings some nuance that the script probably doesn’t deserve—and it’s bloody fun.
 

Central Intelligence 2016 (Rating ***)

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Aaron Paul, Jason Bateman, Amy Ryan
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber

Call it the superhero scourge or the blight of franchise but the big-dollar cinema, which invariably has few brave men saving the world – sometimes in spandex, sometimes not-- seems to be throttling everything else. If a courageous film like the quirky buddy comedy Nice Guys finds its way to the theatres, we the audience decide to look the other way.

You, O Hollywood, have conditioned us. Even when we are talking bromance, we want it with a generous serving of formula, and – please, oh please – someone save the world. Enter Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart and buddy comedy 101, Central Intelligence. The film keeps so much to the bromance formula that it is funny in itself: We get jokes on anatomy (Dwayne Johnson’s character is called Robbie Weirdicht), fart jokes, the mandatory marital counselling session and other vulgar gags.

But leave it to the pocket-sized Hart and his buddy, who is not called The Rock for nothing, to squeeze out the comic juice from this unevenly-paced thriller comedy. There may be crater-sized script holes but you still guffaw as this unlikely pair goes about sending CIA in a tizzy.

Now, for the plot: 20 years ago, Hart was the star of his high school, destined to great things while an overweight, awkward Johnson was the butt of all jokes. When Robbie is pushed into the school assembly naked by bullies, Hart is the only one who comes to his rescue.

Fast forward two decades and Hart is a burnt out accountant and Johnson is, well, back to being the buffed, muscled Johnson we know. He is also a CIA agent who may or may not have gone rogue. He definitely idolises Hart still and gets in touch with him. CIA boss woman (Amy Ryan) follows suit and a kerfuffle ensues. At stake are secret nuke codes which can destroy the world.

Hart and Johnson share an easy chemistry and there are enough lines in there to keep the jokes coming. Johnson calls a befuddled Hart “snacksized Denzel” and “like a black Will Smith” at various points in the film.

The muscled Johnson plays Robbie like a goofball who is still struck on Hart’s high school charisma. His love for unicorns, fanny packs and schmaltzy films keep the laughs coming. And hell, who has a name like Sting, or The Rock for crying out loud?

The trouble lies in director Rawson Marshall Thurber’s patchy handling of the story. There are moments when the film is slow and sluggish, and then it is on steroids with hyper action. Those are the moments when you thanks god that you are in this ride with a big Johnson and a little Hart. Also, watch out for the cameos both credited and not.