The movie Tom Hanks said was “uncomfortable” to make
Throughout the years, Tom Hanks has starred in some brilliant movies, but perhaps few were as impactful as Steven Spielberg’s 1998 World War II epic Saving Private Ryan, a truly acclaimed work of cinema which also starred the likes of Matt Damon, Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore and Vin Diesel.
The film tells of Hanks’ Captain Tom Miller, who is tasked to lead a group of soldiers through the Normandy frontlines to locate and rescue Damon’s Private James Ryan, whose brothers have just been pronounced dead in action. It was a box-office hit and remains considered one of the best war movies ever made.
However critically lauded and commercially successful Spielberg’s film was, there was no denying that the subject matter of the narrative was somewhat difficult to broach. Hanks once admitted that certain points of the production made him feel uncomfortable from a personal perspective.
In an interview with Graham Bessinger, Hanks said that he had something of a connection to the nature of World War II after he saw a picture of a young Jewish boy being taken from his home in Poland when the actor was just ten years old. “I did not know anything about The Holocaust until I was in fifth grade,” Hanks said.
“The moment of finding out about what The Holocaust was, it was a rite of passage,” the actor continued. “It was like a slow-motion entry into adulthood. It was having a window onto a degree of human behaviour that made absolutely no sense to my 10-year-old brain.”
Saving Private Ryan was shot in Ireland and England, and Hanks noted that the experience of production was somewhat tactile. “It was an uncomfortable movie to make, but we couldn’t wait to get to work every day.” Ultimately, the film’s dark and realistic tone made it a success, and Hanks pointed out this facet.
“Because no one had touched that subject matter in quite a long time, and we were shooting it from a kind of like, under the helmet perspective, as opposed to something grand,” he said. “You know, there’s not a lot of big floored speeches in there; there’s a bunch a lot of guys slugging through and running, being scared out of their minds.”
The film’s opening scene on Omaha Beach is perhaps its most iconic, and after production wrapped, Hanks went and visited the real location. “And to see that there, after we had gone through this kind of thing, it was—kinda rocked me,” he said. “Made the hairs stand up on the back of my head. And walking back down, back to the very famous cemetery there, I just realized I was in a holy place.”
