| THE 'THAT GUY' FEATURED FILM OF THE WEEK July 7, 2001 |
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| SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998) Directed by Steven Spielberg Written by Robert Rodat CAST Tom Hanks as Captain John Miller Tom Sizemore as Sergeant Michael Horvath Edward Burns as Private Richard Reiben Barry Pepper as Private Daniel Jackson Adam Goldberg as Private Stanley Mellish Vin Diesel as Private Adrian Caparzo Giovanni Ribisi as Corporal Irwin Wade Jeremy Davies as Corporal Timothy Upham Matt Damon as Private James Francis Ryan Ted Danson as Captain Fred Hamill |
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| WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS Up until Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg was thought of predominantly as someone who made films that appealed to the small, daydreaming child in all of us--big, exciting fantasies loaded with dazzling special effects, about events we could never hope in our wildest dreams to face in our own boring old lives. While most of his movies, including E.T. and Jurassic Park, were undeniable crowd pleasers that both made around 274727 trillion dollars at the box office, and were hailed as technologically brilliant by critics, it was still slammed by more than a few sourpuss Siskel and Ebert wannabes for being populated with underwritten, one-dimensional characters, overshadowed by those billion dollar special effects. Tired of being considered more or less an overrated hack by critics who couldn't hope to earn what he made in his lifetime so far, Spielberg buckled down and got to work on a pet project of his--an adaptation of William Kennealy's Schindler's List, a biography of Oskar Schindler, a previously little-known German businessman who helped thousands of Jews escape execution during the 1940's. The finished result, released in 1993, was one of the most gripping, deeply moving films of the decade, if not the finest film treatment of the Holocaust ever (God knows it handled it better than Jakob the Liar). Filmed in stark black and white (in fact, the only bit of color is the bright red of a little girl's overcoat, making it easier to spot her later as she lies dead in a pile of corpses), Schindler's List presents the atrocities of the Holocaust in such a blunt, unblinking fashion that you sometimes think you're watching a documentary. Critics who were able to find flaws in the film were immediately searched for membership cards to the American Nazi Party, and Steven Spielberg finally won an Academy Award for Best Director. |
| Following that triumph, Spielberg took a rest and went back to his roots, writing and/or directing films like The Lost World, and raking in another 12635 trillion dollars or so towards his kids' college funds. He got serious again when he took on 1998's Saving Private Ryan, a World War II epic starring Tom Hanks that, like Schindler's List, easily became one of the most unforgettable films in the past ten years. A battlefield drama that manages to celebrate the bravery and sacrifices of American soldiers without becoming wrapped up in a lot of flag-waving, hooray for the USA sentiment (I know you're out there, Pearl Harbor, I can hear you breathing), Saving Private Ryan is filmed in the same style as Schindler's--dark, gritty, and without a lot of distractions to divert your attention from the story at hand (it was originally shot in color, but more than 60% of the color saturation was removed, giving the film an effectively moody murky gray-brown veneer, like you're watching it through a rainstorm). In direct opposition of this style was another WWII film released at the same time, Terence Malick's The Thin Red Line, a well-meaning but meandering movie that was just stretched out further by superfluous shots of lizards, exotic birds, and blissfully ignorant natives. The film opens with a brief establishing shot of a farm wife receiving news that her son has been killed overseas. We soon learn that this is the third of her four sons to be killed in battle, and that the government has ordered a mission to locate her sole remaining son, Private James Ryan, so that he may be relieved from duty and sent home. Immediately realizing the gravity of the situation, the next scene is an astounding twenty-five minute long combat sequence set at the Omaha Beach landing during the historic invasion of Normandy. Most of the sequence was shot with hand-held cameras at a first person perspective, giving it an unsettling "you are there" sensation as the soldiers wade through the water onto the shore, run across the beach, scramble up sand dunes, and narrowly avoid getting shot or blown to bits. The camera refuses to turn away from the horrors of battle--a victim of an expertly aimed hand grenade is thrown in one direction while his severed leg goes in another, while one young soldier is shown as perfectly fine one moment, then with a gaping crater where his face once was the next. When the battle is over, broken bodies litter the shore like piles of driftwood, and the sea literally runs red with blood. |
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| The film then focuses on the squad that has been assigned to locate Private Ryan. The squad leader is Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks), a former schoolteacher who has been in combat so long that his hands are left with a permanent tremor after constant use of machine guns and automatic weapons. His faithful second in command is Sergeant Horvath (Tom Sizemore), and together they lead a small squad of young men who have been in battle long enough that they are fairly efficient soldiers, but not long enough that they're entirely comfortable with where they are and what they're doing there. Spielberg made an excellent decision in casting relative unknowns to play the soldiers in Blah's squad--they have an "Average Guy" appeal that makes you like and identify with them. They are neither the dead-eyed, battle-hardened phantoms of movies like Platoon and Apocalypse Now, nor are they the impossibly naive, Beaver Cleaver-esque "let's do this for Uncle Sam!" patriots of The Green Berets and Born on the Fourth of July--they're just regular guys who, if they weren't lying in a ditch with bullets flying over their heads, would probably be seen working on their cars or chasing girls. The squad members include the boisterous Caparzo (Vin Diesel), abrasive Reiben (Edward Burns), sarcastic Mellish (Adam Goldberg), spiritual sharpshooter Jackson(Barry Pepper), sad-eyed field medic Wade (Giovanni Ribisi), and nervous, cowardly Upham (Jeremy Davies). The men initially question the seriousness of their mission, then when they realize they are in fact all but obligated to bring this mysterious Private Ryan to safety, some of them become hostile towards it, and even to Ryan himself (played by Matt Damon) once they locate him. Another truth Spielberg wasn't afraid to bring to light--most soldiers really were interested in self-preservation before anything else. |
| Whatever morale the men might have had plummets when Caparzo is killed during an attempt to rescue a little girl, an event that also brings whatever luck they might have had surviving the invasion of Normandy to a quick and bloody end. Prepare yourself--our likable heroes die and die hard in Saving Private Ryan, none of this floating daintily to the bottom of the ocean, like Leo DiCaprio in Titanic. By the film's end, virtually the entire squad, save for Ryan and two others, is decimated--even good old Captain Miller, who by all rights probably should have been removed from active duty ages ago, is shot, his last words to Ryan being a demand that he earn the sacrifice his fellow soldiers have made for him. The closing scene is of Ryan in the present, an old man now, standing at Miller's grave, hoping to himself that he has finally earned it. Few movies have inspired such a vast array of emotions as Saving Private Ryan. I felt pride in knowing that both my grandfathers had taken part in the war effort, sorrow for the real-life Caparzos and Irvings, relief that Ryan managed to survive, meaning the mission was not in vain, and genuine sadness for the vivid characters in the film. It's difficult to bring out distinct characterizations for each member of what is essentially an ensemble cast, but Spielberg and, most importantly, the actors manage it beautifully. Spielberg and screenwriter Robert Rodat don't shy away from showing the soldiers doing less than heroic things, such as callously swiping through a pile of blood-stained dog tags, looking to see if Ryan's is among them, while shell-shocked survivors of a recent attack wander past, or cowering, puking, and even sobbing in terror as the world explodes around them. There are even a few moments of light humor, such as when Mellish taunts a bunch of captured German soldiers by showing them his Star of David medallion, Miller has difficulty communicating with a soldier who has been struck nearly stone deaf after an explosion, and when they locate the wrong James Ryan, who nearly falls apart in hysterics until he realizes that they couldn't possibly be talking about his brothers because they're still in grade school. Many have debated over whether or not Saving Private Ryan was intended to be some sort of anti-war film, and some sticklers with way too much time on their hands questioned the historical accuracy of it (regardless of the fact that nobody passed it off as any sort of WWII documentary in the first place), but even looking beyond all that nitpicking, it's impossible to deny that the film is surely one of the most realistic depictions of war ever brought to screen, if not one of the most heartbreaking. There are no Rambo-esque scenes of one of the soldiers rising out of the water with a machine gun to ambush the German soldiers, nor are there any slow motion running away from the fireball sequences (and thank God for that). Young men who should have been going to college, getting married and having babies, or just working for a living stumble bewildered and confused into the crossfire, are ripped apart by bullets or shrapnel, and are just as quickly replaced by more young men just like them. For those of us who are lucky enough to not have experienced such a tragedy in our lifetime, Saving Private Ryan makes you mourn the past and pray for the future. DID YOU KNOW... --Saving Private Ryan is loosely based on a true story. Three brothers by the name of Niland were killed in action, and an order was issued to retrieve the fourth brother and release him from duty. The fourth brother was never located, but was later discovered to have survived combat. One of the brothers believed to be dead also later turned up alive. --All of the principal actors were put through a grueling army training program before filming began, except for Matt Damon. Steven Spielberg believed Damon being left out of the training would lead to authentic resentment from his co-stars. --Real amputees were used for shots of soldiers with missing limbs. --This marks the sixteenth collaboration between Steven Spielberg and composer John Williams. --There is print available of the film with its full color restored, requested by numerous digital and satellite cable providers. This is because during the first few times the providers aired the film in its original format (with the color saturation reduced by 60%), they were deluged by customer calls complaining that there was something wrong with their cable service. Dumbasses. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON 'SAVING PRIVATE RYAN' |
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