Setting a higher standard for "war" movies

Rating: 10/10 (22 September 1999)

Every once in a while a movie comes along and sets a new standard for the class. In this case "Saving Private Ryan" has achieved that place in two areas: the "war" movie and the "human condition" movie. On one hand "Ryan" does not mask, shield, or taint combat in any manner from the viewer and lets the experience of war happen in all of its stark reality. I have a feeling that any movie depicting war will use "Ryan" as a model from now on. The strongest message that the movie sends is that in war there is no motivating sound track and people do die horribly, without mercy, and often without reason. Drowning in eight feet of water within reach of the beach, applying a bomb that goes off prematurely and having no effect on the target, being shot by an unseen sniper, are all displayed without glory or the indication of some greater purpose being achieved in the end. What is left are those alive and those that are dead and those that are alive must live with the horror of what they have been though.
But, the really great "war" movies are not really about war, but are really about how people react to an extreme condition that they are faced with. In this case "Ryan" moves from one gender to another without the viewer realizing it. Much has been said and written about the battle scenes in the movie and far too little has been said about the emotion between the squad of soldiers and how they feel about trying to rescue someone they have never met. In the countless movies I have seen about the same basic topic this one tells the untainted truth about this emotion. The soldiers do it because they are ordered to but like every American soldier, marine, sailor, or airman that I know, they don't like it and they will let everyone know about it. But beyond that the film also shows the American combat soldier as they really are: crass, vulgar, dirty beyond belief, prone to raw humor. But where this film excels is the depiction of why they are how they are: long days of stress, fatigue, danger at every moment, living moment by moment. By the time the troops leave the beach and the horror there, the viewer accepts their condition and forgives their behavior and manner. Even the word "forgives" is bad word to use. The film generates the emotion in the view that these troops have "earned" the right to behave in any manner that they please. They have paid for that right 1,000 times.
But the humanity prevails in many ways, some large and some small: the raw emotion when one of their squad falls in combat, the sharing of gum from one mouth to another, the group resentment of those who have not been through the hell that they have been though, the appreciation of a piece of music that will relieve them of thinking of their situation for only a moment. It is these moments in the film that elevates the movie beyond a regular war film into a classic that other films will be measured against. I have seen "Ryan" four times now and it has not failed to generate a strong emotion in me every time. There are no heroics in this film. There is only an accurate display of humans, placed in a situation that is beyond belief, who do things because they have to, not because they want to, and to they best they can without reward or commendation. Their only reward is survival.