Christopher Nolan’s epic Dunkirk has so far received glowing reviews from global audiences, but this man’s opinion has a gravitas none of us could understand.
Ken Sturdy, a 97-year-old Calgary man who was at the battle of Dunkirk in 1940, attended the premiere at his local Westhills Cinemas on Friday.
Here’s what he had to say:
Sturdy, a decorated WW2 veteran, was impressed with Nolan’s feature film, saying:
I had the privilege of seeing that film tonight and I am saddened by it because of what happened on that beach, I never thought I would see that again.
It was just like I was there again. It didn’t have a lot of dialogue. It didn’t need any of the dialogue because it told the story visually and it was so real.
Sturdy, at just 20 years old, was a signal man with the Royal Navy and helped evacuated soldiers reach waiting boats from the chaos on the beach.
He recalled the Dunkirk evacuation and told Global News:
I was in those little boats picking them out of the water. I was 20 when that happened, but watching the movie, I could see my old friends again and a lot of them died later in the war. I went on convoys after that in the North Atlantic.
I had lost so many of my buddies. One of my mates was taken prisoner. He wasn’t killed on the beach. They marched him up to Poland and he spent five years in a German prisoner camp.
Sturdy passed comment on the hardship of war, and questioned humanity’s motives, adding:
Tonight I cried because it’s never the end. It won’t happen. We the human species are so intelligent and we do such astonishing things. We can fly to the moon but we still do stupid things. So when I see the film tonight, I see it with a certain kind of sadness, because what happened back then in 1940 – it’s not the end.
You can watch the trailer for Dunkirk below:
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Sturdy encouraged youngsters to go and watch the film, saying:
Don’t just go to the movie for entertainment, think about it, and when you become adults, keep thinking.
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A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.