Our church asked if we’d host the senior high kids for a movie night in our home theatre. Nothing R rated. It was Remembrance Day, so we asked them to pick Dunkirk or Casablanca. In a surprise to no one, teenagers picked Dunkirk.
I was in and out of the room getting pizzas and popcorn and stuff like that, so my rating is mostly based on what they said when they were done watching it. None of them have a home theatre, so I think this was novel for them.
But the movie itself was a hit. One kid sat there with his jaw permanently dangling towards the floor from the opening gunshots to the final music swell, which was kind of hilarious.
I was reminded of what it was like to be 16 or 17. At that age, I felt like I was encountering hundreds of new ideas and ways of living every day. Nothing was surprising because everything was surprising. I was around that age when I first started properly getting into movies. They were an introduction to a lot of new ideas and concepts, and it’s my firm belief that cinema has as much power to inspire and instruct as any art form.
I don’t know if anybody walked away feeling a bit of magic like I did from films like The Godfather or V for Vendetta or Lord of the Rings when I was there age. But I really hope they did.