What’s in a color?
(Dunkirk)
Somebody other than Nolan is really going heavy on the Batman and Dunkirk Smurf filter. Nolan’s excuse is he is red/green colorblind and it was sort of cool for a while. More power to him for being an iconic cinematographer and director despite (because?) of this.
Here we have - All Smurf on the Smurf Front - the true blue face of the Blue World War. Based on the acclaimed book describing the horrors of the blue filter and blue obsessed cinematographers who think war is blue. Even the mud is blue. Watch it in select blue cinemas.
From the trailer, I didn’t cherry pick the pictures, it is impossible to find a frame without blue:
Even the mud is blue and of course the eyes are blue.
Blue for me means genocide - with the terrible Prussian Blue springing to mind.
(Prussian Blue - a series of Holocaust paintings by Yishai Jusidman via Times of Isreal)
When I see Prussian Blue I think militarism and genocide.
So maybe the color choice is apt. But I think somebody is trying to outNolan Nolan instead of making a statement about genocide. The color palette is being abused for coolness rather than creatively (Saving Private Ryan being a case of dominant greys via color reduction for instance. Other war films make other choices, I think of green and red when I think of Apocalypse Now). I could be wrong and its a brilliant deliberate choice relating to the color of militarism.
Brown dominates the 1979 film except with the iconic blue stahlhelm, which is a more ‘realistic’ choice. Yes, you can style your films, just don’t abuse it - which I think Dunkirk does and the new AQTWF looks like repeating.
The iconic book was of course banned in Nazi Germany.
Nazism’s connection with the German soldaten trench life and nostaliga is covered here by Philip Blood in his book, Bandenbekämpfung - Hitler’s Bandit Hunters and the SS In Nazi Occupied Europe.
If you want an author’s $2 EBook PDF copy of Bandenbekämpfung - Hitler’s Bandit Hunters and the SS In Nazi Occupied Europe, use the link.
Special signed EBooks with a dedication are available here.