Summary
Suddenly, from within the grounded vessel, the Scottish soldiers hear a noise on the deck above and prepare to fight the enemy from below. Tommy grabs the man in an instant and they ask him if he's German, holding him at gunpoint. He insists that he is Dutch, from the merchant navy, and that he is there to help them. "Why'd you come back?" they ask him.
The scene flashes back to Collins' crash. His plane goes into the water, and he struggles to get out of the cockpit. As it fills with water, he unstraps himself and begins to try to open the overhead, but it is jammed. Spotting the crash, Peter tells Dawson to steer Moonstone away, but Dawson insists that Collins might be alive and they may be able to help him.
In the grounded vessel, the soldiers huddle together as someone begins shooting at it from the outside. When the men arm themselves, preparing to fight back, Tommy points out that all the bullet holes are in a small cluster on the side, which suggests that the enemy does not know they are in there and are using the boat for target practice.
Suddenly, water begins pouring in through the bullet holes in the side of the boat, and one of the Scotsman tells another to plug the holes. As the soldier goes to plus it, another bullet comes through the side, hitting him in the face.
Alex wants to get the boat to begin floating, and determines that the boat is too heavy. "Somebody needs to get off," Alex says, and looks at Gibson. He calls Gibson a German spy, and says, "Have you noticed he hasn't said a word?" Tommy tells Gibson to speak, as Alex cocks his gun at Gibson.
Gibson reveals that he is French, and Tommy tries to defend him, saying that he's just trying to escape like the rest of them. Suddenly, more guns begin to fire at the boat, and Alex urges Gibson to get off. "Somebody's gotta get off, so the rest of us can live," Alex says to Tommy, but Tommy suggests that one man isn't going to make enough of a difference to the weight. The vessel begins to float, but Germans keep shooting at it.
Just when it seems that Collins is going to sink to his death, the cockpit opens and Peter extends a pole for him to climb aboard Moonstone. Meanwhile, Farrier watches as more destroyers get bombed from the air. On Moonstone, Collins looks at George, and determines that there is not much they can do.
At the mole, Bolton and Winnant watch as a the grounded trawler begins to float, getting fired at all the while. On the trawler, Tommy struggles to swim as soldiers order one another to plug the holes. They cover them with their hands as the Germans shoot more.
On the mole, Bolton notices something in the distance, and smiles as he realizes that a number of civilian boats, like Dawson's, are coming towards them to pick up soldiers. We see a destroyer filled with soldiers cheering for the civilian boats, then the beach filled with more cheering soldiers.
On Moonstone, the shell-shocked soldier asks Peter if George is alright and Peter resentfully tells him that he's not. After an explosion takes down a destroyer, Collins watches Farrier's plane chase a German one. Peter points out that there are a number of men in the water nearby. The men from the destroyer climb aboard Moonstone, just as Collins notices that they are covered in oil. "You're getting into oil!" he yells to Dawson.
Farrier shoots down a German plane, just as his engine begins to stall. On the trawler, the Scottish soldiers, Alex, Tommy, and Gibson all climb off. Alex tells Gibson to leave the boat, but his foot gets caught on his way out of the trawler and he sinks with it. Alex and Tommy manage to escape.
Analysis
More parts of the story converge in this section. We have already seen the shell-shocked soldier coming into contact with Tommy and his friends when they asked to get on the lifeboat. Now we see Collins' crash and watch as Dawson and Peter make their second rescue. Having shifted around in time, the film now settles down as we witness the various moving parts coalescing into one shared story of bravery and hope even in the darkest times.
A major theme in Dunkirk is duty, and the narrative explores the ways that characters must go beyond what is comfortable to try and help those in need, even in the most desperate of circumstances. The image of war that Christopher Nolan creates is not one of tense battles or well-practiced commands and executions of strategy, but of human beings struggling to do what's right when that seems impossible.
A figure who is especially representative of sacrifice and duty is Mr. Dawson, a civilian who goes into the fray even though he does not have to. Time and again, he tries to help the people around him, and even when his son Peter tells him to continue on, he insists on picking up Collins to see if he is alive. He is emblematic of a character going above and beyond to help, even when the risk his high and his contribution is small.
Director Christopher Nolan is a master of suspense, and his layering of the various plot lines creates an anxious tone that keeps viewers at the edge of their seats. He groups together different events in ingenious ways. For instance, in this section, he interpolates three stories of entrapment and escape within one another. The scene shifts between Collins trying to escape from the sinking plane, then to Farrier who must land his plane as it runs out of fuel, then the group of soldiers trapped in the grounded boat that Germans are using for target practice. Flashing back and forth between these various tense scenes heightens the tension enormously.
The defining feature of the battle of Dunkirk is the fact that civilians endangered their lives in order to help the soldiers trapped on the beach. Nolan makes the arrival of the civilian boats momentous and moving, as Hans Zimmer's score swells with emotion and Captain Bolton's eyes fill with tears at the sight of the fleet. In lieu of actual military backup, the English people must band together to help their own, and they arrive in great force to relieve the soldiers and bring them home to England.
