The opening starts with D-Day and it destroyed my emotions. I was ricocheting from terror to grief back to terror and being drowned in sensory overload. Twenty minutes of cinema around the horror of war and the mass infliction of death was unbearable. I cried for an hour afterwards and I can never bring myself to watch it again. The movie was definitely a masterpiece, and it’s a story that should be told, but it is brutal.
That was also realistically powerful. I am glad I made it through the picture, if only to be reminded of the horror of sending young men to kill each other. Saving Private Brian is a masterpiece, but most of us aren’t capable of more than a single viewing.