Tell me I'm being a dick

[Scribblegirl]

I just had to walk out of a screening of the new Dunkirk film.

I was crying inconsolably. This happened. These were real boys. Men who actually existed. It can and will happen again.

DP is still in the cinema and I'm camping out in the local spoons, attracting attention of all the local weirdos please share something that makes me feel ok? I feel a bit bereft of humanity right now

I've got a photo of DP and BIL before they left for Iraq in 2003, literally kitted up about to get on the plane. I can't bear to see it on display, because they look like babies. Both just turned 18, both so young and full of life. Some of the other lads in the pic never came home, BIL came home with PTSD and has never been the same since, DP is changed too. It breaks my heart to look at it.

You're being a dick.

Just kidding. I do think this is how the film wants you to react - it's an incredibly visceral film. The DoP on it is absolutely amazing, the soundscape (I can't use the word soundtrack for something that innovative) is incredible, the sense of random lives being torn apart is utterly upsetting, and Mark Rylance is a God who Walks Among Us.

However, had you stayed in the film, you'd have been able to hide your tears (and most other people were also crying in the screening I went to) more easily than in Wetherspoons, where you are likely to be given mansplainy advice by the local drunks.

I want to take my boys (15 and 12) to see it but I worry it's too much. On the other hand I want them to understand how many and how much was sacrificed to give them the freedoms they have now.

And I just tried to describe the film to my 12 y/o and started welling up at the emotion of it all. So OP, no, you're not a dick!

I can't watch any war films. I feel bad because it really happened and should be remembered. But they just upset me so much.

I knew it was horrific but I didn't know it was that bad. Makes me realise how lucky it was that drelative survived and came home else i wouldn't be tying this now.

He must have only been a young lad then too. He must have been so afraid. Made me wonder if he thought he was going to die there. I expect a lot of then did think they were going to die there. And a lot of them did. I don't know who he came home. If it was a small boat or if he made it onto one of the big ones. If he waited in line for days or if he was on one of the first boats.

I cried in the cinema thinking of him and all those others. Waiting in line for a chance to be blown up on the way home. And the civilians who come to help. Real people. And without them having done what they did at such a young age life would be very different.

Another one to say not a dick. I went with friends because my OH couldn't face it, and I wept throughout. My father was in the RNVR on a minesweeper, he survived three sinkings.

Dd (12) went to see it with her friend. They both loved it. It hasn't traumatised her, but she has been obsessed with all things ww2 since she was about 5. I found it hard to watch, also the noise/soundtrack really really affected me. I spent ALOT of the film with my hands over my ears