Arromanches 360° Circular Cinema — Attraction in Bayeux

If you you want to know about the Mulberry Harbour and Normandy Landings look elsewhere. I assume the sadly skewed tripe we had to stand and endure for 25mins was assembled by some sixth formers on day release. This expensive installation is located at the actual site of the extraordinary Mulberry Harbour, arguably one of the most important engineering feats of the 20th Century, however you will not learn who designed it, how it actually got there or see much of the remaining infrastructure outside in use - in fact the British, apart from a minuscule quote from Churchill are hardly represented at all, possibly they were there but really didn’t do a lot. More time is spent with footage of sobbing French women who lost homes and loved ones in the distraction raids that preceded the invasion - massively outnumbered by the young blood of foreign allies who were to liberate them. The credits are played out for some bizarre reasons to an American Deep South black blues track which would have been unknown to all but the most avant guarde of the allied services. An expensive and uninformed load of tripe that could - and should be so much more. I suggest they employ adults and re-do the whole thing as it’s not worth a fraction of the E7.00...

The idea is a good one. An immersive 360 cinema experience transporting you back to 1944, the D-Day landings and the 100 days of the war in Normandy that followed, should be great. Sadly the realisation doesn't live up to the vision. Obviously there's no actual 360-degree footage from the war itself, but it feels like more effort could have been put into staging and filming some reproduction scenes, or doing something similar, to take advantage of the 360 setting. As it is, the only true 360 degree content is some lazy drone footage in the closing title credits.

The actual experience is mostly a series of still images or short movie clips, played out across all of the screens. The effect is quite disorienting - a visual barrage, you're never quite sure where to look (although the content is actually repeated every third screen). The style makes it hard to follow any particular thread or add meaningful context to what you're seeing. It's an "experience", just not a particularly meaningful one.

By comparison, the film at the Bayeux Battle of Normandy Museum covers the same subject matter (the first 100 days of the War in Normandy), and while the content is much drier it moved me much more, and I came away far...

I’m not sure who thought up this reverse theater-in-the-round conceit, but hopefully they learned from their mistake and never tried it again.

Some of the footage was incredibly powerful, but the editing and lack of context made it terribly disjointed. The only way to make it even more disjointed would be to spread it across 9 screens surrounding the viewer. So that’s what they did.

Another serious issue: no air conditioning. We went in during a mild day in August, but when you pack 80 people into an enclosed unvented room, it sure heats up fast. It had to be approaching 27 degrees Celsius in there. And did I mention there’s no (or very limited) seating? I’m surprised only a few people left early.

Anyone who knows anything about WWII history would be going “WTH?!” And anyone with no knowledge of history would be going “WTH?!”

In short, a bad gimmick that dilutes the sacrifice and heroism of the military and local civilians.

One last note: Far from impressing on visitors the horror and tragedy of war, the gift shop seems to very much be celebrating the...