A day for remembrance in the West,
known here and there as Veterans'
Day or Armistice Day, was chasten-
ed from some righteous pomp by a
screenplay by Christopher Nolan,
which he filmed as "Dunkirk." As
a memorable passage, shown above,
records the survivor's modesty,
we're led by train to the follow-
ing morning, to see this soldier
demand of an impromptu comrade,
that he read a news account of
Churchill's unforgotten speech
to the House of Commons. In one's
own estimation, this unavoidable
dramatic climax of Nolan's story
was unexpectedly enhanced by his
giving of the speech in a voice
fogged by fumes of newsprint, af-
ter inhalations of cordite, flame,
oil, salt, gore, shit, sand, and
aviation fuel in the previous week.
It was a face framed as Ford had
done for Fonda's Tom Joad, and it
just may endure as long in memory.
But the reader/actor is English
and responsibly educated, so the
rhetoric was far from compressed
in the flatter delivery of the
exhausted, unrehearsed soldier.
Unrehearsed, except in the life
and mind of that uncanny writer.
A speech, voluptuously elegiac
yet cast in a tone of defiance,
shone as candor, prosaically,
irony verifying its brilliance.
Enlistment breathed it life,
its impetuosities innocently em-
bodied and rescued, dutifully,
simply; not to be doubted at all.
Enough.
Sir Isaiah Berlin
Personal Impressions
Winston Churchill in 1940
Hogarth Press, 1980
3rd Edition
Princeton University Press, 2014©
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