A couple of weeks ago I watched the movie Dunkirk, which came out in 2017 from Warner Bros. I heard about it and had seen Christopher Nolan’s films Inception and Interstellar, but I hadn’t seen Dunkirk yet. It was actually a really good movie. It stars Fionn Whitehead, Harry Styles, Kenneth Branagh, Barry Keoghan, and other actors. I had seen Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies. I knew Harry Styles from his music, but I hadn’t seen him act before. He was really good in this movie. I also really love that Tom Hardy was in this film because I saw him in Inception and he was really good in it.
The film reminded me of this film by Sam Mendes called 1917. Even though Dunkirk took place during World War II and 1917 takes place during World War I, both of these films capture the horrors of war. 1917 I’m pretty sure gave me nightmares I think just because the way they shot the movie was so unique; it looked as if it was all just one shot, so I only saw what was going on from the perspective of the two soldiers (William Schofield and Tom Blake) who have to go on a mission to deliver an important message. In the film, there was one scene that stuck with me where William and Tom are walking alone through a field of flowers on their way to deliver the message on the other side, and they talk about earning medals of honor for their service. They talk about how the medal means nothing to them because of the disillusionment and trauma they have witnessed on the battlefield. It reminded me of this piece I played in high school called Cello Concerto in E Minor by English composer Edward Elgar. Elgar wrote this concerto in the aftermath of World War I and was disillusioned by the war’s destruction on society, and in this concerto he conveys a lot of this hopelessness and disillusionment. In particular, the first movement of the piece conveys these feelings, opening with a bold mournful peal of anger from the cello because so many men lost their lives in the war and everyone dealt with trauma and anxiety about the future. Every time I practice the first movement of the concerto or listen to recordings of it I get chills.
That scene in 1917 stuck with me because going off to war to protect the country was noble but it also brought with it a lot of shell shock and horrors that stayed with many people, and it was literally a life-or-death battle for many people. In Downton Abbey some of the staff fight in World War I and they hire someone new on the staff who deals with shell shock after fighting in the war. Because this was before extensive mental health counseling and few people had adequate language to talk about post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) they couldn’t really know how to support or encourage the staff member and he was soon let go. After the soldiers are evacuated from Dunkirk, there is a huge celebration and when Alex and Tommy are on the train heading back to England they read the paper and find a huge headline celebrating the soldiers being evacuated from Dunkirk. As they rid the train people hand them food and other nice things and they cannot believe their eyes. However, as heroic as the ending was I am sure that they couldn’t erase a lot of the suffering they endured while trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk from their memories. I am glad I saw the film Dunkirk because I watched the movie Darkest Hour and while it talks about Dunkirk, the focus is on Winston Churchill’s time in office and how he handled the evacuation from Dunkirk so I didn’t actually see what the war was like for those soldiers trapped at Dunkirk. There was a key scene towards the end of the film when Alex and the other soldiers are being evacuated from Dunkirk, and an older blind man expresses his appreciation to them for their service, and Alex says that all they did was survive, but the man responds by telling him that even just surviving is enough. This was powerful because it showed that because war was a serious battle between life and death, even just the fact that they made it out alive was enough. They didn’t have to do anything flashy or extravagant to seem like heroes; them making it out alive when so many other men were killed in battle was courageous in and of itself.
Seeing this film from the perspective of Buddhism helped, because the Buddhism I practice is based on the Mahayana teaching called the Lotus Sutra, which teaches respect for the dignity of each person’s life. Each person’s life has such precious immeasurable potential, and so I think watching Dunkirk from a Buddhist lens helped because I was thinking about what the blind man told Alex and thought about my own grapplings with life and death, and how Buddhism helped me appreciate my life through developing a more profound understanding of life and death. I haven’t fought in a war so I cannot imagine what the soldiers who were evacuated from Dunkirk went through, but there have been times when I was in a dark place in life and wondered whether my life had meaning, but after practicing Buddhism I have developed more appreciation for my life even when the day may not seem glamorous. Absolute happiness means that life itself is a joy. When I practice Buddhism I feel this what we call life condition deep from within me, and even when I am doing daily stuff like going to the grocery store, clocking in at work, or eating dinner, I can take time to appreciate each day of my life. I think dealing with depression was an experience in learning how to appreciate my life because in Buddhism we talk about the mutual possession of the Ten Worlds, which means that even though people have different conditions of life they operate in and react to different situations based on these life states, at the core of their lives is this life state of Buddhahood, which is the unlimited potential of each person’s life. Hell is the lowest life condition, and when I am in a life condition of Hell it feels that life itself is suffering. When I operate from that life condition and don’t transform it through my Buddhist practice I resort to complaining, blaming my environment and feeling powerless. In a life condition of Hell I resort to apathy, anger, resentment and hopelessness. War is a larger-scale manifestation of the world of Hell because it involves the taking of people’s lives and a lot of destruction. On a smaller scale when I am in the depths of my depression I experience the life condition of Hell but when I practice Buddhism, even though I may be in a life condition of suffering I can elevate that life condition so that even when I am suffering, I can still appreciate life itself and the little things in life I often take for granted. It is still a process to appreciate my life, but Buddhism has allowed me to transform my life condition each day. That was kind of a tangent that wasn’t totally related to Dunkirk but it was a thought that popped up while I watched the movie.
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