@@SpaceRanger187 they couldn't transport them back to UK (people could be evacuated by a miracle), just like the vans, so horses were killed in order to Germans don't get them (and use them against UK). It is surprising how important the role of horses in the WWll still was.
I was lucky enough to be an extra in this scene, as the white horses rumble past James shoulder after the bandstand scene im sat on a pile of bricks smoking a fake cig! Brilliant 3 days shot at Redcar near where I live.
The fact that the Oscars couldn't even manage to give Joe Wright a nomination for Best Director for this film is a travesty. This scene alone warranted a nomination for him. I'm consistently disappointed by the Oscars.
Certainly made it look a lot more crowded than Dunkirk did. They got four hundred thousand people out of there, Nolan could barely show four hundred. Plus, I like the emphasis on how they have to destroy their own equipment to keep it out of the enemy's hands. The materiel losses of the evacuation put Britain on the back foot something nasty. Got plenty of men out, but vehicles and heavy weapons had to be replaced from scratch.
Your point is? Three months later we beat Jerry in the Battle Of Britain, 18 months later 4th Army kicked Hitler and his cronies out of Africa spread that on your toast and eat it. Has for Nolan he's famous your're not.
@@dinocrank7007 Lol and if it wasn’t for us Americans your little island would have eventually been taken and you’d all be speaking german with the french.
I was an extra in this scene, just as you see the horses been shot, you see a group of men running across the screen, im wearing the big overcoat near the back of the group. Amazing 3 days i wont ever forget. Filmed in my home town of Redcar, Yorkshire.
@@jlasf Hello, no all the people you see were all real just over 1000 extras. All local people and quite a few veterans who were disabled i.e an arm or leg missing to make it more realistic. Absolutely brilliant 4 days I had on set.
@@markabbott1736 The faces of the soldiers singing amidst the chaos felt so real. Knowing some extras were real veterans added authenticity. It felt more like a glimpse into history than just a film.
@@markabbott1736 Thanks. That's amazing. Unfortunately, people have lost the awe of large crowd scenes because so are many done with CGI. When you watch "Cleopatra" (1963) now, people don't realize 20,000 extras were used.
One of the most impressive and haunting sequences in British cinema. Dario Marianelli's music here breaks your heart as you remember all those who never made it back and all those who did but were so horribly scarred. The sequence was famously filmed on Redcar beach with the locals as extras. This morning at 9 am (23 11 22) the blast furnace at the steel works that can be seen in the background was demolished by controlled explosion and the last vestiges of Redcar's biggest employer was no more. I guess as well as being an Elegy for Dunkirk this is now an Elegy for Redcar...
@@jimomaha7809 well Jim you are wrong Nolan's is more accurate. Atonement is more dramatic then fact. Photography and my grandfathers recollection would beg to differ
@@TB-su4bz I am from the Netherlands and a local who was in the Dutch army. He flew to Belgium when his unit was overrun. He was with a few other Dutch soldiers he did not know directed to Dunkirk. (He recollects they got a few weird looks as the Dutch uniform was grey.) Still they were taken to Britain. According to him the whole place was devestated and huge amounts of equiptment everywhere. Perhaps the first days on the beach were only a few hundred men.
@@TB-su4bz there were still modern buildings undamaged in many of the scenes in Nolan’s Dunkirk. Even though Dunkirk had been shelled and bombed heavily lol. So much for accuracy
The use of the wonderful hymn " Dear Lord and Father of Mankind" into this part of his score was unalloyed genius..sure to grip every church-going Protestant's heart
The Dunkirk scenes in "Atonement" are so much better than the entire film "Dunkirk." Far more accurate and realistic, despite the fact that they make up only about ten minutes of "Atonement", as opposed to the entire film "Dunkirk." The character development is far superior as well.
I have seen "Dunkirk" only once and i never want to see it ever again. Woefully inaccurate. I 100% agree with you. BBC's Dunkirk 3 part documentary from 2005 was much better as well.
It took a lot of work by very experienced trainers to get them to do that. One or two of the horses didn't quite understand the scene and still attempt to get up, but it's still impressive.
Having done some work in production, this is awe-inspiring. I can't even imagine the months of prep for this day! And simply try to follow the actual steps of the cameraman. He has to go up the steps on the left of the gazebo and down the ramp on the right. I don't even know where to begin to comprehend the number of PA's and behind-the-scenes people who were also running around. All the wardrobe, make-up, etc. My only problem artistically with the shot is that it's SO amazing; it distracted me from watching the movie. I thought, "What an amazing shot!" rather than being IN the movie experience. But that's not a criticism of an unbelievable film achievement.
This movie devastated me. The fact that someone could tell a horrific lie- young lady, but old enough to know right from wrong. Utter hole in my stomach. It is so haunting. There was no happily ever after. I have read someone; I am not sure who it was - say that Americans seem to only want films wrapped up nicely with a bow at the end. This film worked precisely because the opposite. What a diabolical thing it was to annihilate someone’s reputation and well-being! His every integrity!!! Hopelessly tragic.
I like Dunkirk for creating a sense of dread and hopelessness as the ordinary soldier would have felt but I agree this scene does a more realistic view of the actual Dunkirk. I like that here there is still some sense of discipline of troops being where they need to be in their own companies and such. As someone who was in the military (Reserves) the first thing you think of is finding your squad, platoon, company, battalion which the main character of Nolan's Dunkirk never did. Very unrealistic.
I've read that they didn't have the budget to portray Dunkirk in its totality, but in the book, it was one of the most horrifying episodes I've ever read (and I've read many books in 78 years.)
Get real people and watch the 1958 film 'Dunkirk' one of the best British films ever and actors who served in WW2...it tells the whole story and is brilliant
In Nolan’s Dunkirk they portray the beach as only having a few lines of men, and while yes the movie Dunkirk is not just just set on the beach but is split between the rescue boats, spitfires and of course the beach, it’s still pretty lousy that they didn’t show 350000 men on the beach, equipment being destroyed to prevent them being captured as well as doing other things, this feel a lot more real then 6 thousand men just standing in line, this because Nolan wanted real people and not cgi but the end result seems underwhelming because it’s just so small
@@etrangeetranger7729 Well done! (I have't confirmed it, but sounds convincing!). Translates as 'The Dock of Mists'. Very apt if this is actually Robbie's feverish hallucination/recollection of events.
Because there weren't enough military boats to evacuate everyone, many British citizens came with their own boats. It was both a horrifying and proud day for Great Britain.
@@f3lla776 They were stunt horses, it is a film, and the horse are trained to do such stunts. normally they are in cowboy films, but there was not much work this week, so they took a holiday by the sea instead.
They wouldn't have been easy to evacuate and they didn't want them falling into enemy hands. It was incredibly cruel what happened to so many working animals during both World Wars. Even after World War I was over, the British slaughtered thousands of horses to avoid having to transport them.
scorched earh policy - deny your opponent resources. Sometimes, in the past, in a game of Fortnite, I've smashed crates of blue juice and hid discovered legendary weapons even though I didn't need them, to deny my opponents it, and to prevent it being used against me later. Outside the virtual World of course, war is fucked up and the scene with the horses symbolises that perfectly.
@@bien.mp4 Aspect ratios can be easily changed. But that aspect aside, no matter what your aspect ratio is, you can upload videos on RU-vid stripeless, just omitting the unnecessary ugly-looking black bars against the white background. RU-vid gives you that option, and almost all video editors do.
I wonder why thousands of armed soldiers were just standing at the open beach...retreating from the enemy!This clearly shows how sick their superior commands were as well as Stalingrad,thousands of soldiers were charging without any weapons and lost their precious lives!If i were a commander during Dunkirk...i would have led the soldiers towards the city fighting the enemy without just waiting for miracle at the goddamnn beach!
How is Stalingrad relevant here? The Soviets actually fought the Germans and won. No one was fighting without weapons in Stalingrad. I'm not really sure where you got that from.
@@sirleo5103 During the battle of stalingrad....since the Germans were advancing and keep taking the soviet positions,due to lack of weapons and soldiers,men were told to pick up the weapons and charge the Germans,even the officers take down who are retreating.There is no clear story/information about this but I've heard this somewhere in the past and I think it true about it!Its a little bit similar with 'Enemy at the gates' but since the movie is a fictional story,can't relate dude!
Like most modern movies about historic events, they don’t have the correct “feel” of what actually happened at all. Half of what you just saw only in no way have actually happened at Dunkirk. It is a fantasy version. Soldiers on that beach 80 years ago just did not look or act in the way that this movie suggests.
Sadly, they were horses which were killed for the film. They were old and were going to be put down by the vet no matter what. Horses always have a sad end, as they are worth more standing up than lying down if they are ill. Pet food fctory controls the price in the end.
Can I get your source on that? I already spent some time Googling it for another comment asking if horses were killed on set, but couldn't find anything conclusive...All the questions even mentioning the horses are asking "why did the soldiers shoot the horses," etc. However, I didn't dig through interviews or trivia sections, so I'm not ruling its existence out. I really want to know who spilled the beans, so I can go back to the other reply I made and update it. I guess the horses about to be put down anyways on top of being shot in the head could maybe avoid running afoul of animal cruelty laws...but I have no doubt a lot of people would be enraged at this news and horse lovers would discuss it on social media. The fact I couldn't easily find people talking about it made me more confident that my first assumption (about the horses not being shot) was correct. There's also the fact that, (1) the horses could've been trained to fall like that, and (2) that was *definitely* a little CGI blood spurt, with no real blood seen before they're (admittedly soon) off camera. Another reason I assumed they didn't fire real bullets is because of how dangerous it would be to fire live rounds into the forehead of a bunch of horses with people flanking them on both sides. Already film sets do not like having real bullets anywhere near set, much less in a gun, and much less a gun firing multiple times on set! Such a crowded set too, with the added distractions & pressure caused by it being in one take in that location. But mainly, look how close all those people are (as they have to be to control the horse). The shooter is practically pointing the gun in their face! One slip up from the shooter or just the horse shaking its head could mess up everything. (Not to mention how loud all those gunshots going off right next to the horses' *and* humans' ears would be! There's a limit to how much a couple people standing next to a horse can control a horse from moving, especially head/neck movement.) If it was just one horse, fine. The first horse wouldn't have a chance to react to the gun and the gunman could focus all his effort on standing still, aiming perfectly, etc. Instead, there is a line of horses, and in one take the gunman has to walk along, only giving him a second to stop & aim. By the last horse, there are still multiple horses left who just had to suffer multiple live rounds being fired next to their ears, with multiple horses dropping dead in their field of view. Yet they don't flinch or show any signs of discomfort based on what I can see...not even in response to the response of the people flanking them, who I suspect would at least subtly react to multiple gunshots being fired THAT close to them. It's not technically impossible that we don't see the people reacting to live gunfire because they have practice and are far enough away from the camera...but the horses are right next to them, and trained horses are usually fairly good at picking up human cues, even if that's just a flinch or general stress. Which again, I don't know how the humans could avoid, unless they were all deaf? Same with the horses? Even then, though, the sound wave gunshots produce when that close don't just vibrate the inner ear to produce "noise" (according to the brain's perception)...It would still vibrate more of the head & body, and would be rather unpleasant. I'm still not ruling out that you are correct, and that they found some horses on death row and dangerously shot them in the head in one take while surrounded by humans, and even the biggest horse lovers who have written blogs about being bothered by this scene never found out about it (or, even less likely, found no issue with it just because a professional vet was going to professionally & carefully put the horses down)... I really want some evidence either way but I can't be bothered to somehow find & then go through every time anyone involved with the film has talked about it on the off chance they mention the horses...since, if they have, I haven't found the clip or comment being cut out and uploaded by itself. Maybe it's buried in some trivia section that links to proof. Whatever the case, if you one day see this reply and can at least point me in a general direction, let me know who you heard it from, I would seriously appreciate it! I took for granted that they didn't shoot any horses until now and I don't want to accidentally spread misinformation...especially if I can find conclusive evidence.
this long take looks so pretentious, I can't help myself, it looks like an operetta, it is very clear that every action is done for the camera. so unnatural.
In a film its not possible to show every little detail about the war in such little time. This scene was made to feel like theater intentionally. Because films, just like poetry are supposed to show us a lot by saying few words. The spontaneity is not real but the feeling it invokes probably is.
@@thesheeplewillhavetheirsay7288 No. As above: THEATRE. That is the way this director organises material, as theatre. Please reference the "Anna Karenina" made by the same director, also with Kiera K. 10-15(?) years ago.
How many black guys were at Dunkirq? And how many were in the regular Army recruited from the UK proper not colonial troops? I'm gonna guess not many. In 1940 the black community in the UK was far smaller than today so the odds of having a black soldier were smaller if we're talking about units recruited from the UK proper. I guess someone said 'he needs a black friend can't have anyone suggest that maybe our 1940 protagonist is possibly a bit a man of his time'. The black guy serves no purpose except that. He doesn't do anything of note other than tell a modern audience 'don't worry the white guy is just like you not like how your grandparents were'.
@@georgewilliamson5667 bro is big mad over one (1) black person lmao Britain lifted the "colour bar" at the outbreak of WW2, allowing black soldiers to perform (almost) the same responsibilities as white soldiers, and it's far from unbelievable that a black man from Britain itself or one of the *many* British colonial possessions would have found himself fighting alongside the BEF. There were black volunteers from all over the British Empire, some of which coming from military backgrounds themselves. I cannot fathom being so bothered by the presence of a single black person, let alone when there are roughly 4000 white actors and extras throughout the entire scene. It's entirely historically possible and moreover...it's literally a movie LOL.
@@quickhistory5486 Our friend @ivanus here is trying to act all "historically accurate" (despite the fact that as you said while maybe not common it is entirely plausible that a black soldier would be with the BEF) but you and I both know what's going on. Black people make little ivanus uncomfortable. He's pearl clutching.
