One for the angels...

Rating: 10/10 (23 June 1999)

I grew up believing that the greatest silliness the Academy ever managed was naming Annie Hall "Best Picture" for 1977. The Academy Awards are trivial in the grand scheme of things, true, but when The English Patient swept a few years back, I allowed myself to be pulled back in. This brief period of interest in the Academy came to an abrupt end, however, last March. Not only was Ryan stiffed, but the Best Picture Award went to not even the next-best film. Shakespeare In Love pales next to Elizabeth, let alone the greatest war movie ever made. Yup, from now on I'll let my heart and head guide me...to hell with lists. This, of course, is not the greatest lesson one may glean from Ryan; in this age of reckless exposure it is truly satisfying to hear Tom Hanks say that the memories he has of his wife are his alone. Some things need to die with us, otherwise our lives are mere vehicles. Don't think that this movie falls to long, distancing reflections about intangibles--that was The Thin Red Line. Everything here is grounded in the mud, blood and rusty mechanisms of war. That Ryan anchors itself so firmly, yet still evokes such beauty is its greatest gift. Maybe that's what we have been looking for in war films all along...an angel that greets us during the massacre.