Steven Spielberg – ‘Saving Private Ryan’
Over the years, war has become one of cinema’s biggest spectacles. There’s something about the true tragedy of warfare that has us cinema fans flocking to the screens to somehow find meaning amongst the trauma and the bloodshed. Alongside the Vietnam War, perhaps the most alluring of all cinematic global battles is World War II.
There have been countless movies made surrounding the infamous mid-20th century conflict, from those that provide a serious look at the theatres of warfare like Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk to those that imagine an alternate version of history such as Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. One of the most memorable of the former kind, though, is surely Steven Spielberg’s 1998 epic Saving Private Ryan.
Starring Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Edward Burns and Tom Sizemore amongst a widely-impressive cast, Spielberg’s movie tells of a US Army troop of soldiers led by Hanks’ Captain Miller, who are tasked with a mission to, as the title suggests, save a missing Private-ranked soldier named James Ryan (Damon).
Of course, scores upon scores of Private-ranked soldiers died during World War II, but this particular young man is a special circumstance seeing as his three other Army-serving brothers have recently been killed. The US Army generals don’t want Ryan’s mother to lose each of her sons all at once, so they make his rescue imperative. Immediately, the narrative serves a sense of sentimentality that is often the bread and butter of war movies.
Where Saving Private Ryan comes into its own, though, is in the truly Spielbergian set pieces of conflict. The opening beach sequence is violent and bloody and disorienting, genuinely as authentic as it might have been on the shores of Normandy. In that sense, Saving Private Ryan does not shy away from telling what is undoubtedly the truth, even if there is that certain Hollywood sheen to its narrative and production.
In many ways, though, that’s what makes Spielberg’s movie all the more alluring; it’s an oh-so-American telling of World War II, unashamed in its sentimental notions of tragedy. There are all the makings of a classic war movie, the initial distrust of a leader in his troops and their later understanding of his methods, set pieces which shock and amaze, and smaller narratives of the individual soldiers that attempt to resolve themselves.
Hanks delivers a typical Tom Hanks performance, a friendly blank face to bounce a story arc off, never quite convincing enough in his anger, frustration or sadness, but not quite terrible enough to find his effort an irritant. Damon, on the other hand, when we finally find him, provides a welcome counterbalance to the occasional affectlessness of the cast of the film’s first half – although Edward Burns does a more than admirable job.
So while there’s perhaps an oversentimentality to Saving Private Ryan, there’s also a genuine confrontation of the grim reality of World War II, with the moments of conflict providing an authentic sense of disorientation and fear. But it’s also that very sentimentality that affords us audience members to consider the sanctity of life that was widely sacrificed less than 100 years ago.
There are no punches pulled in terms of hiding from the barbarity of the events that occurred in Europe in the mid-20th century, undoubtedly horrific and ultimately shocking. That’s exactly where the strengths of Saving Private Ryan lie, even if the general script is occasionally derivative of war movies in general.
Still, there’s no sense of desensitisation nor glorification of the loss of life through warfare, and each battle scene is meaningful in its terror and provides a genuine backdrop for the ultra-American narrative to occur. Perhaps the most memorable of all occurs right at the beginning of the movie, overshadowing the remaining two-and-a-half hours or so, but it long lives in the memory. Admittedly as does its climax.
War films are ten-a-penny. For some reason, we’re persistently drawn to acts of violence, perhaps because we find the experience cathartic and can learn from them. With Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg delivers a shocking portrayal of war that tugs at the heartstrings in good measure in a way that only he can.
