photo by Screen Rant
Sitting in inner loop Houston traffic at the wrong place at the wrong time can feel like, well, hell. It is especially hellacious if that time is in the middle of August where temperatures can reach 100 degrees with an accompanying humidity of 85-90%. The humidity in Houston is definitely a legitimate sidekick to the heat. If the heat doesn't get you, the sidekick will finish you off. Aside from the heat, the constant worry of a car in your blind spot during traffic no matter how many times you have looked over to change lanes can be psychologically defragmenting. Your neck will slip a disk if you try to look too much to be too sure, and if you look too much you may rear end the car in front of you. But perhaps the worst part of being stuck in massively congestive traffic is loss of control. You have somewhere to go and you have no idea when you will get there and if it will be unscathed. In Houston during rush hours there are not axillary routes to take, they have all been thought of and plugged with congested cars as well. You are just trapped. This feeling of entrapment slowly drives you either into an illogical road rage or into a docile compliant creature, one that has given up on what ever aspirations you had once deciding to drive to your destination. Some flow from rage to docile and broken spirited during this experience while in traffic. Some go the reverse order. Others undulate between the stages several times, depending on the length of the traffic jammed arrest. This is usually me. But then finally it happens. Yes it. You finally surrender fully to the uncontrolled moment and you just notice the beauty of the moment. The sound of the cars stopping and going. The seeming orchestral sounds of honked horns of enraged cohorts on the road venting at each other through their horns, who have not obviously arrived yet, like you, into the state of blissful and nirvana-like peace you have entered, unexpectedly. In these moments of salvation while in traffic I also find that I am uncharacteristically thankful. I often say thank you God for seemingly menial things. "Thank you God for my air conditioner" and "Thank you God for my car", and "Thank you God for my favorite song just coming on the radio" and even "Thank you God for these feet I have that allow me to repeatedly press the brake and gas pedal effortlessly and with precision." "Thank, thank you, thank you." And then you arrive at your destination, quicker than thought. It is weird yet joyous when salvation comes in the midst of pain, frustration, arrest, and fear , most likely because of the sudden unexpectedness of it. That is what experiencing the film Dunkirk is like, and Nolan pulled it off beautifully.
"Hope Is A Weapon"
Of course being pinned down on a beach with no other means of escape from the unrelenting threat and pressing reality of certain and eminent death is not exactly the same experience as being stuck in city traffic. I know that. I am not an idiot. I made a choice to relate a situation that we have all been in most likely with one that most of us likely have not, which is being pinned down by enemy forces during a war zone. Hopefully you get the point, regardless, and remembered that in those experiences of hopelessness the desire to look up for hope is there and it drives you on to the desired end you are longing for. Some of us have gone through other and more legitimate excruciating and hopeless moments of pain in which the desire for salvation and deliverance are our only weapons. Perhaps a moment of abuse in a relationship that you felt trapped? A lost job with no solution for how to pay incoming bills? Finding yourself in the place of failure and dissatisfaction over and over no matter what direction you turn or path you take? The loss of someone you love and the subsequent hole that is left behind in their absence? Real pain. Real desire for relief. This is what Nolan wants to capture in Dunkirk, and he does. He does it too well almost.
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Often times we have "fail safes" in our minds that we are convinced will be there and pull us out of a problem when we need them, but often times those exit routes are not really as reliable as we have deluded our minds to believe. Nolan takes us there during the film and builds a nice comfortable nest of suspension while at it. He doesn't let us leave that place too quickly, at all. There are conventional heroic figures in the film in the form of field officers, attack fighters, etc. and they are all rendered as helpless as us all watching the war scene unravel on screen with popped corn. We are left thinking, "when will relief come? When will this end?" Eventually, when salvation comes it comes from an unlikely place, from an unlikely people, and at an unexpected time. If you are looking for and longing for the conventional hero to save the day in Dunkirk Nolan doesn't give it to you. If you are just looking for a savior to come from any place and by any means due to desperation, insane hope beyond hope, and fear for your life Nolan delivers. Perhaps the most profound thought that Nolan left me with after watching Dunkirk is the truth that real hope often comes from the least desired, least expected, and least recognizable place, but if it is real hope we have and real deliverance we want we will take it. As a person of faith I could not help but think of the verse from Isaiah that is a prophecy of the Christ when I think of deliverance coming from unlikely places:
...my servant grew up in the Lord's presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his presence, nothing to attract us to him. He was despised and rejected - a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Yet it was our weakness he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down ~ Isaiah 53.2-4
I am not here to preach a sermon to you. Often times though the only way to convey the depth of the most real and visceral types of experiences is to use biblical analogy. Nolan uses this metaphor often and does so again in Dunkirk with the words hope and deliverance being used in the film along with metaphors and imagery of light and rest coming from above kinds of places. In one scene in particular a soldier is about to drown until at the last possible moment a boy reaches out a hand from a boat to save his life. Behind the boy is light from the sky and the boy seems more radiant in appearance than when you see him before or after that particular scene. Also, as the soldiers are encamped and surrounded on the beach there are many scenes of them looking up to the sky for planes to come to save them or in hopeful relief as fire fights ensue from above, also very metaphorical of hope from above places. Often times the only way to experience true peace and relief we must go through the most undesirable kinds of pain and torture, ones in which there is no deliverance coming from our own personal premeditated means, ones in which a deliverance has to come from another place. And then in those moments we are saved, we arrive. It has been almost a month since I saw Dunkirk and I am still trying to escape the shore, the emotions and imagery stay with you long after. Yet in this I remember, deliverance comes from the least expected place, as we keep hoping. The film is so gripping and intense. Go see the movie and if this post gave you a renewed perspective on the film then go see it again. A renewed sense of hope is what Nolan's final intension is for the viewer to have after seeing his masterpiece.
I am a creative writer and story teller that enjoys writing about movie and sports narratives in connection to culture, history, race, faith, and politics. I also love the Titans and enjoy sports and fantasy blogging. For more follow me on twitter at @howardlee58 or follow The Saintly Savage.
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