Why are there two fades to black at the end of Dunkirk?
At the end of Dunkirk, there are two fade to black / cut to black instances:
- Farrier's plane on fire, fade to black,
- Tommy on the train just finished reading the newspaper, cut to black.
That really confused me as I've never seen that before. Initially I thought it's because the movie is composed of three stories told at once (or just one big story told from different point of views), but if that was right, there should be three fades to black and not just two.
So, why are there two of those? What do they signify?
Best Answer
First fade to black:
The fade to black for Farrier signifies that his story has ended. He gets captured and probably killed later, but that part isn't important for the story. What matters is what we saw in the film: that he became a hero at Dunkirk.
Second cut to black:
While initially jarring, the final scene with Tommy and Alex is a sort of epilogue about how the war is not over. Like the end of Peter and Mr. Dawson's story, this scene doesn't fade to black, because just like the war, their story does not end there.
Pictures about "Why are there two fades to black at the end of Dunkirk?"
What happens to Farrier at the end of Dunkirk?
As soldiers pour onto the flotilla of small vessels lining up on the beach, Farrier, now effectively gliding with no juice left in the tank, uses his last precious few minutes in the air to head off a potentially deadly assault from an enemy fighter.Why did the old man touch his face in Dunkirk?
The guy is handing out blankets. He's not looking at anyone because he's blind. There's a short scene where he reaches up and strokes a soldier's face as a blind person would do, reinforcing this fact.Are there two timelines in Dunkirk?
Instead, Nolan presents his film with three plots across three time frames, each starting at different points in relation to the evacuation's end.Is Farrier from Dunkirk a real person?
In researching the Dunkirk true story, we discovered that while the character Farrier is not directly based on an actual person, his experience most closely resembles that of Alan Christopher "Al" Deere (pictured below), a New Zealand Spitfire pilot.Quentin Tarantino on What Makes ‘Dunkirk’ a Masterpiece | The Rewatchables | The Ringer
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