Dorothy rabinowitz dunkirk

This summer’s big movie is “Dunkirk.” Since its July 21 opening, it has taken in over $100 million in North America and been hailed by ecstatic critics everywhere.

I have seen the film twice, admiring it even more the second time.

Hollywood has consistently exposed Nazism as evil.

It is a stupendous achievement, although more than a little odd. It’s a war film for the Trump era. It is deaf to history.

Dunkirk is the French port on the English Channel where both British and French troops were trapped by the Germans in May 1940.

The allies had their backs to the Channel, always an obstreperous body of water.

' Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon/Warner Bros.

Dunkirk without Context.

Winston Churchill is missing in action from the new film by the director of 'Batman.'.

I am not a German bitter-ender.

The left hasn't been as upset about Christopher Nolan's film as conservative writers appear to have expected – but they're fighting back.

Across the Channel lay England, which Hitler was intent on conquering.

Winston Churchill, the new prime minister, was fully aware of the stakes. There would be no chivalrous surrender ceremony. Every member of his cabinet, he wrote, “was ready to be killed quite soon.” This was a war of extermination.

Aside from an opening scroll, none of that is mentioned in “Dunkirk.” More start