Saving Private Ryan begins and ends with two long, extended battle sequences. These scenes are shot hand-held with little dialogue and they have the feel of on-location documentary footage. Because Private Ryan is a Spielberg film, and because it has that Spielberg style that feels good-hearted and hopeful even in the midst of war, I think people tend to forget how real and raw these scenes are. One of the most brutal and violent depictions I've ever seen. Kubrick may have had the more dark and calculating reputation, but shot for shot, there's really nothing in Full Metal Jacket that comes close to what you see here.
But it's not just violence for the sake of violence. The two separate scenes and the feeling their images invoke serve as milestones that gauge the evolution worked in the audience's mind through-out the film. The first scene depicts the D-Day landing at Normandy. The shots are fast and low, and they give you an uncanny, unnerving feeling or being right there with the soldiers. You feel you're experiencing the battle with them, and the one thought that goes through you mind, the same thought that must have gone through so many of their minds, is simply that you don't want to die. Beneath the withering fire of the German guns the whole point and purpose of the battle and all other considerations are pushed aside. Life is torn to pieces all around you, and you just don't want to die. Nothing else matters. Then, the movie closes with another epic battle scene, as the characters fight to defend a bridge where the German army plans to cross. Again, it's a harsh and violent scene, and again you feel like you're down in the middle of it with the characters, but yet somehow the fear of the opening scene is gone. Death is still there at every turn, and a character is even show paralyzed into inaction by his own fear, but that feeling of stark and intense mortality that drives every other thought from the mind is gone, replaced by a feeling of nobler purpose. It is the deceptively simple story that takes place between these two scenes that causes the change.
So what is this nobler purpose? The movie barely touches on the political agendas and moral issues behind the war itself. The subject of the holocaust is raised through a Jewish member of the squad that goes searching for Private Ryan, but this is more a matter of characterization than theme. The German soldiers aren't cast as villains, and in fact, there is one scene where we can't help but feel sympathy for one of them. So this "nobler purpose" isn't just a matter of good fighting in a righteous cause against evil. The feeling is more like men put into an unfortunate situation where they're forced to kill one another. In the heat of battle they're driven to a murderous rage because the enemy is trying to kill them even though they're also trying to kill the enemy in turn. The absurdity of this is demonstrated clearly in one scene in particular. The saying, "If God be for us, who could be against us?", is even raised in a conversation between the men, but it's clearly not where the movie's heart lies. This is just the soldiers trying to make sense of the situation they find themselves in.
No, the nobler purpose is to be found in their mission to find Ryan. "This time, the mission is a man.", one of the soldiers observes. It's the fact that even in the middle of a war, with men dying all around, one individual human life still has value. It ultimately doesn't matter whether Ryan goes home and "invents a longer lasting light bulb." What matters is that a human life was saved. The importance of this comes to be something that goes beyond the "math" of the mission and even the senselessness of war itself. One single man's life still has value.
In the end, they stay to defend the bridge. Not because the Germans are evil and have to be stopped. They stay because Ryan doesn't want to abandon "the only brothers he has left." They stay, because they stay together. So when that final battle comes, it's no longer just a case of men thrown senselessly into the face of mortality. It's men who have chosen to fight and even die to try to keep each other alive. They've learned that isn't a question of nine men sacrificed to save one, or one sacrificed to save nine. It's life that matters, regardless of the numbers.
The movie was indeed harsh and very realistic. Having never been in combat, I can only imagine what that was really like and the mere thought of it makes me knees weak. I can only imagine that men in battle aren't thinking about the greater good or the big picture or the morality of the situation. All they are probably thinking is "How the hell go I get out of this alive?"
ReplyDeleteAnd when they landed on that beach, there was no way to even go back. It was push forward or be killed. Retreat wasn't even an option.
ReplyDeleteI hated "Saving Private Ryan" the first time I saw it. It was sad and loud and violent and I didn't like the way it ended. A few years after I saw it my best friend joined the Marine Corps and at his suggestion I watched Full Metal Jacket.
ReplyDeleteI suppose my tastes had changed because I loved Full Metal Jacket. So I watched Saving Private Ryan again, and I liked it the second time. I found myself drawn to Copy. Or, I think in the movie he's actually called Corporal and he's writing a book about the brotherhood that forms between soldiers during war.
Anyway, all the sad things that I hated about the movie the first time I found I liked or understood the second time. Except for the noise. I hate the noises of war. And I still hate the way it ends. But I can appreciate it now, even if I don't agree with it.
Yes you are right, that first scene is pretty shocking. It feels like your their with them trying to survive, trying not to get hit. Such a complicated thing war is, but if you can take anything positive out of it is definitely the sense of camaraderie. Another brilliant series that brings light to this, which I enjoyed, is Band of Brothers.
ReplyDeleteThe other best war movie I've seen is "We were soldiers". The kind of thing that made me proud I joined up and served my time (7 years) and so very very happy that I never once got shot at. Just the luck of the draw, I guess.
ReplyDeleteI never saw that one. I did like "A Thin Red Line", but that one's so stream-of-consciousness that it's hard to even classify it as a war movie.
ReplyDeleteI’m grateful to you for this deeply-felt review. I haven’t yet seen the film because I wasn’t sure it would be my kind of thing, suspecting (without knowing it was a Spielberg film) that the nobler purpose would be American patriotism, which doesn’t interest me for the sufficient reasons that I don’t care much for patriotism and am not an American.
ReplyDeleteI saw Clint Eastwood’s two Iwo Jima movies, from the Japanese and American viewpoints respectively. I was impressed, moved and harrowed. If you or a reader could compare Private Ryan with those for me, I might be persuaded to see it, for the nobler purpose of being shown once again what I already know, that war is a horrible, even a disgusting thing; but that you can still be a noble soldier and do a job that has to be done.
I haven't seen the Eastwood films, but your statement "war is a horrible, even a disgusting thing; but that you can still be a noble soldier and do a job that has to be done" is pretty much spot on when it comes to Private Ryan. It certainly doesn't hammer hard on any notes of patriotism. If the subject comes up at all, it's only in a fairly superficial way.
ReplyDeleteFeel free to leave a follow-up comment, if you get a chance to see it. I'd like to hear your thoughts on it. Definitely my favorite film of its type. Very different from many other war movies, and much closer, I believe, to the reality of the young men who actually fought in the war, rather than the "tough-as-nails" portrayal of the soldiers you sometimes see elsewhere.
I haven't seen the Eastwood films either, but I plan on it. One of the best war films I ever saw for seeing both sides of the war was "Tora Tora Tora" made back in 1970. It showed the horrible mistakes and bad judgment that led to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
ReplyDeleteBand of Brothers was my favorite depiction of this time. The fact that it was a series allowed you to get more involved in the story, which was real.
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