譯/王麗娟 It is a little surprising that World War II would grab the cinematic fancy of Christopher Nolan, given the dystopias, demimondes and dreamscapes that have sprung from his fertile mind.
He has conjured underworlds peopled by tattooed amnesiacs and broody superheroes; he has plunged audiences into Escherian dreams within dreams within dreams; he has tested their grasp of wormholes and gravitational singularity. The yoke of reality never seemed to be his thing.
看著這些來自克里斯多福諾蘭豐富心靈的反烏托邦、下層社會和幻景，讓人有點訝異，二次大戰也能刺激他的電影幻想。
在諾蘭變出的地下世界中，有紋身的失憶者和悶悶不樂的超級英雄；他讓觀眾跌入錯覺藝術大師艾雪的夢中夢中夢；他也測試了觀眾對蟲洞和時空奇點的想像力。現實的束縛似乎從來不是他的菜。
But with his new movie, "Dunkirk," , Nolan ventures into the harsh world of a real war, which outwardly seems like well-worn terrain, except that he has never tackled anything like it before.
"It's the first time I've taken on any kind of real subject matter, any kind of historical truth, and that was very daunting," Nolan said in an interview at his sun-dappled offices on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. "I don't want to sound too precious about it at all, but, you know, I wanted to do something that frightened me a bit."
但在他的新電影《敦克爾克大行動》中，諾蘭冒險進入一場真實戰爭的殘酷世界，從表面看，它似乎是用爛了的題材，只不過克里斯多福諾蘭從未處理過類似的題材。
在伯班克的華納兄弟片場，諾蘭於陽光斑斕的辦公室接受採訪說：「這是我第一次處理一種真實題材，一種歷史事實，這非常的艱鉅。我完全無意讓自己聽起來很珍貴，你懂的，我想做點讓自己害怕的事情。」
Nolan's film is about the astounding rescue of 338,000 Allied troops from the beaches of Dunkirk, France, in 1940. Hemmed in by German forces, the Allies were trapped as German aircraft strafed and bombed the sands, with the only way out across the English Channel. Shallow waters prevented British destroyers from coming close to the beaches, so the call went out to private boat owners in England to help ferry the soldiers to safety.
A flotilla of hundreds of pleasure boats, barges, yachts, ferries and fishing boats set out, many piloted by civilians, and, under bombardment from the Luftwaffe, helped pull the rescue off. Had they not, the war could have taken a much different course.
諾蘭的電影主題關乎從法國敦克爾克海灘救出33萬8000名盟軍的驚人任務，時間是1940年。遭到德軍包圍的盟軍受困於海灘，德國軍機則不斷掃射和轟炸沙灘，而橫越英吉利海峽是唯一出路。英國驅逐艦因水淺而無法靠近海灘，因此號召英國私人船主幫忙載運軍人脫險。
數百艘遊樂船、駁船、遊艇、渡輪和漁船組成的船隊出航救人，許多船隻是由平民掌舵，在德國空軍轟炸下，協助完成了拯救任務。若不是他們伸出援手，戰局的發展可能會大不相同。
"If Britain had surrendered, it effectively would have left Europe Nazified," said Joshua Levine, a historian and author who worked closely with Nolan on the script. "Barbarism and intolerance would have become the natural order of things."
The term "Dunkirk spirit" is carved into the British psyche and evokes people coming together in tough times. Yet as pivotal as the event itself was, it is often not well known in the United States, which did not enter the war until late 1941. Of the dozens of feature films made in recent decades about the war, none focused on Dunkirk (a British feature film about it was released in 1958).
歷史學家兼作家，且在劇本上與諾蘭密切合作的約書亞．雷文說：「若英國投降，形同讓整個歐洲納粹化。野蠻和偏狹必然大行其道。」
「敦克爾克精神」一詞深烙英國人心，喚醒人們患難與共。儘管此一事件關鍵無比，在美國卻往往並不為人所熟知，美國直到1941年年底才加入二戰。在近幾十年以二戰為題材製作的數十部劇情片中，沒有一部聚焦於敦克爾克（英國於1958年發行了一部與敦克爾克有關的劇情片）。
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文/張佑生
作者連用三個押頭韻（alliteration）的單字開場，指涉導演不同時期的作品，是圈內人（在這裡是諾蘭的粉絲）才能心領神會的in-joke。
「蝙蝠俠黑暗騎士三部曲」故事的發生地「高譚市」（Gotham City）是典型的dystopia。源自法文的demimonde字面意義是半個世界（half-world），尤其是下層社會或高級娼妓；諾蘭1998年的處女作「跟蹤」（Following）藉由描繪鼠竊狗盜之輩勾勒出倫敦的陰暗面。Dreamscape當指夢中有夢的「全面啟動」（Inception）。
導言後的第一段，作者連用三個現在完成式而非簡單過去式的句子介紹諾蘭的作品，凸顯其成就，但還是不寫出片名，重申現實題材（real subject matter）不是導演的菜。
作者用venture into和tackle形容導演接拍新片的挑戰，前者指大膽去做某項刺激甚至危險的事物，tackle是對待、處理，通常是困難的問題或工作。
史家指出，當年要不是法軍冒死牽制德軍，英軍撤退不會如此順利。然邱吉爾和英國政府對此大多輕描淡寫。此為後話。
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