The Films I Love: Saving Private Ryan

In the 1990's director Steven Spielberg arguably made the two most important films of his career.  The first, of course, being 1993's groundbreaking and monumental Holocaust Biopic Schindler's List and the second being 1998's harrowing war film, Saving Private Ryan.  The opening twenty five minutes alone are now a part of film history.  Most agree that the opening battle depicting the landing of Omaha Beach and the invasion of Normandy is the greatest modern combat scene ever put on the screen.  It has been given this prestigious title because it is unflinching in its depiction of gruesome violence, nauseating disorientation and the sheer horror of battle.  This scene would be enough to ensure Saving Private Ryan's enduring legacy as a great war film.  But what makes the film earn it stripes after the opening is it's pure and true human quality.  In the end Saving Private Ryan is just as much about the camaraderie between soldiers and the bond between all humans who fight for their country as it is about the horror of war.  Because of this Saving Private Ryan is probably the most positive, patriotic, and humble anti war film ever made.  It realizes that war can at times be a necessary evil, but does not shy away from the atrocities that can and have been committed.  It is a film that salutes the veterans that have served this country and depicts them in a sincere light.

I should state outright that Steven Spielberg is my favorite filmmaker.  His name has become synonymous with people of my generation who love film.  It is almost a cliche for someone my age to say that he is their favorite filmmaker.  But I cannot deny my beliefs.  There is a reason why Spielberg has such an enduring legacy in the history of post 70's filmmaking - he has captured the hearts an imaginations of disenfranchised film goers the world over.  He abandoned the bleak and sometimes hopeless filmmaking style of the sixties and seventies and instead made optimistic films that made you look to the stars and beyond.  If one were to look at his filmography no one can disagree that he has made many indisputable modern classics that have changed the way that we look at movies - Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Jurassic Park, and Schindler's List.  His work post Private Ryan has been much more experimental and bleak with Minority Report and Munich (the former being one of the best science fiction films in twenty years and the latter being the most challenging film Spielberg has ever made).  In a way Saving Private Ryan really seems to be a transition film for Spielberg.  He made the film for his father, who served in WWII.  It's a very adult film, much the same way Schindler's List was.  In Ryan you can see Spielberg struggling with the things that have made him the director that he is and trying to move on into something more bleak and honest.  Spielberg is examining the mind of a soldier and why we fight and die for our country.  In a way it's a more difficult film than Schindler's List because in that film it was very clear who the villains really were... not so much in Ryan where one German in particular is brought to the forefront and explored.  At the end of the film we realize that all these men were fighting for their country, which can at times be a very dangerous moral decision - case in point Nazism and to some extent the war we Americans are fighting now in the Middle East.  

What Saving Private Ryan deals with so well is the price and weight of a human life.  What does it mean to kill a man?  What are the implications?  And how much is the life of one man worth?  These are questions that the film explores, but it doesn't necessarily find an answer because there probably isn't one, especially not in war.  But the deaths in Private Ryan hit hard because we are forced to witness them in brutal detail and the deaths of the central characters hit even harder because we hear parts of their stories and can identify with them.  The main characters of the film are just normal men caught in an extraordinary situation and a monumental moment in history.  The film takes stock war movie characters and turns them on their head.  Take for instance the Vin Diesel character, who looks like the tough brute, but in actuality turns out to be the ignorant soldier with a soft heart.  It's a great switch on a stock character.  But the most surprising of the leads is Tom Hanks who plays the man in charge, but he is no John Wayne war hero.  Instead Hanks is a normal man who was a school teacher back home and is now taking charge of a group of men and he knows that many of them will not make it home to see their families ever again.

Tom Hanks's performance is really what holds Saving Private Ryan together and makes it human.  He is the glue behind all the decisions, right or wrong, made by the characters in the film.  He holds men's lives in his hands and the decisions that he makes ends up killing many of them.  But he rationalizes that the sacrifice of one mans life means that he saves hundreds more.  The problem with his rationalization is that in the case of his mission during the course of the story, he has to save one man.  How many men is one man worth?  Hanks is quiet yet commanding of the screen and his scene where he breaks down after the death of his medic is powerful because he has to hide his true emotions by cowering in a ditch as he cries his eyes out.  Even more powerful still is the monologue he delivers describing who he really is as the moral of his men starts to wane dramatically.  It's probably Tom Hanks's most subtle performance and as a result one of his very best.  I would argue that he was robbed of the Oscar for this film, but at the time he was lucky to even be nominated considering his more showy competition that year (including Roberto Begnini who won for Life is Beautiful and Edward Norton for American History X who many at the time felt was robbed). There are many other great performances in Saving Private Ryan both large and small including a very young Matt Damon in the title role.  His monologue (which was entirely improvised) towards the end of the film describing his last night with his brothers is probably the most emotional part of the entire film.  It's rewarding for the viewer to see that Ryan isn't an asshole and that these men did not necessarily die in vain.  

Saving Private Ryan is one of many films that Steven Spielberg will be remembered for long after he has passed (which I hope will not be anytime soon, the man has many years left yet).  But more importantly it will be remembered as one of the greatest war films ever made.  It is a testament to the veterans of our country who fought, bled, and died for not only our liberty, but for the worlds.  As veterans day approaches, I would recommend anyone who has not seen this film or not picked it up in a while to do so. You wont regret it.

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Dir. Steven Spielberg

170 Minutes

Academy Award Nominations: Best Actor (Tom Hanks), Best Art Direction, Best Make-Up, Best Original Score, Best Original Screenplay, Best Picture

Academy Award Wins: Best Cinematography, Best Director (Spielberg), Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Film Editing

Note of Interest: In a strange and awful move by the Academy they decided to award Shakespeare in Love the best picture Oscar over Saving Private Ryan.  While the former has been quickly forgotten, the latter lives on.  Smart movie Academy...