Harry Styles is about to teach his fans some serious history | New York Post

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Harry Styles is about to teach his fans some serious history By Elisha Maldonado July 13, 2017 Worried the young’uns increasingly don’t know much about history? Harry Styles is here to help. Proving that he’s the gift that keeps on giving, Styles, one-quarter of the beloved boy band One Direction, is making his acting debut on the big screen in Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk,” opening next week. Expect teens to flock to the movie for Styles — because, really, who wouldn’t want to see Harry Styles in a uniform? — and in the process get a serious history lesson about one of the iconic moments of the Second World War. And if all of the hype and accounts so far are to be believed — and I wholeheartedly believe without having yet seen it — Harry Styles can act. After all, there’s really not much Harry Styles can’t do. BBC Radio 1’s Ali Plumb tweeted: “If your big #Dunkirk question is ‘So is Harry Styles any good?’, I have the answer: he’s good. Acquits himself admirably. Points for Styles.” From Bustle’s Anna Klassen: “Will also say Harry Styles’ DUNKIRK role is surprising . . . that’s all I can really say. But I applaud Nolan for casting him as he did.” “As a director,” Nolan told Entertainment Tonight, “I have to trust my instincts and my ability to figure out who’s the right guy for the part. What I was seeing [in Styles] was a very charismatic guy, but who clearly had truthfulness and subtlety in his ability to perform as a film actor.” He added that Harry was “perfect for the part. He pulled it off with incredible grace and reality.” Perhaps that One Direction hit “Nobody Compares” was really about Styles. But the best part is that a bunch of young people around the world are unwittingly going to get a much-needed lesson in what happened before they were alive. “As a filmmaker, you’re looking for gaps in the culture, pop culture at least; you’re looking for things that haven’t been addressed in movies. “And Dunkirk, for whatever reason, has never been addressed in modern cinema,” Nolan said. Reviews so far cast the film more as a beautiful cinematic story of survival than a traditional war movie that hinges on specific characters. But the kids expecting to see Styles on the big screen like they’re used to seeing him on the stage with his bandmates are in for a . . . surprise. Mostly the ones who’ve tweeted things like: “kinda excited for Dunkirk, hope Harry would sing on screen” and “is harry gonna sing a war song on the soundtrack of Dunkirk” and “just want to watch Dunkirk so I can see Harry Styles my boyfriend.” To be clear: While the story is the main draw for me, I don’t judge people for wanting to see a movie because Harry Styles is in it. In fact, whatever puts butts in the seats, since every generation seems desperately more in need of learning history than its predecessors. And this history is worth learning: The epic rescue of 338,000 Allied troops from the beaches of Dunkirk, France, in 1940, was the biggest evacuation in military history. From May 27 to June 4, the Allies were surrounded on all sides by German forces, while the Luftwaffe repeatedly bombed the beaches. The water, too shallow for British destroyers to get close to the beach, required British civilians to step up, piloting everything from private yachts to barges to lifeboats, all while under bombardment. One of the posters from the film reads: “400,000 men couldn’t get home. So home came for them.” Without their aid, the outcome of the war might’ve been far different. “If Britain had surrendered, it effectively would have left Europe Nazified,” Joshua Levine, a historian and author who worked with Nolan on the script, told The New York Times. “Barbarism and intolerance would have become the natural order of things.” The fate of the free world depended on fishing boats — and the uncommon bravery and valiance of the men steering them. So if it takes Harry Styles to get young people to learn about how close Europe came to the abyss, so be it. The dramatic rescue meant the Allies still had a fighting chance. The fat lady would not be singing at Dunkirk. So it’s OK that neither will Harry Styles.