Being a great director is not just about shooting great scenes

Rating: 6/10 (16 November 2016)

On the same day in July 1916 my great-grandparents received three telegrams from the War Office, informing them that their three eldest sons were all missing in action, presumed dead. (Two were soldiers taking part in the Battle of the Somme, the third a sailor on the convoys to Russia). In fact only one of the boys turned out to have been killed, but my great-grandmother never recovered from the shock. (Her husband seems to have borne the loss of his eldest son more stoically).
I well remember my grandfather, the youngest of four sons and whose name was James like my own, telling me this piece of family history, and "Saving Private Ryan" always reminds me of it because it deals with a very similar story. Except that here all three boys really are dead. One day in June 1944 a Mrs Ryan receives news that her three eldest sons have all been killed in battle, two in the D-Day landings and the third in the Pacific. My grandfather was too young to fight in the war, but Mrs Ryan's fourth and youngest son, also named James, is also serving with the US Army.
At the U.S. War Department, General Marshall orders that James Ryan must be sent home immediately to spare his family the pain of losing all four sons. The problem is that he is a paratrooper who has parachuted into Normandy and nobody knows exactly where he is. Captain John Miller and a squad under his command are ordered to find him and bring him back.
Oliver Stone accused the film and its director Steven Spielberg and scriptwriter Robert Rodat of promoting "the worship of World War II as the good war". I am not sure that that should really be a criticism; the great majority of American or British films about World War II have portrayed it as a just war against the aggression and brutality of the Axis powers. It would be a brave director who set an anti- war drama against the background of this particular conflict- "Catch-22" is perhaps one of the few exceptions- and I note that not even Stone has dared do so. It is much safer for those who wish to make anti-war films to stick to World War I or Vietnam.
Moreover, Spielberg can hardly be accused of ignoring the human cost of war. The film has been praised for its graphic battle scenes, particularly its harrowing opening sequence, lasting nearly half an hour, showing the American landing on Omaha Beach. Spielberg does not flinch from presenting war as cruel and bloody or from realistic depictions of men being killed or maimed. At first the assault appears to be completely chaotic, yet as it progresses we begin to realise that this is not so, that the Americans do indeed have a strategy and that they will succeed in taking the beach, albeit at a heavy cost in casualties.
The film may have its critics, but it also has its admirers, and there are many who believe that it should have won the 1998 "Best Picture" Oscar ahead of "Shakespeare in Love". (Spielberg did indeed win "Best Director"). It is one of those films which, when it gets something right, gets it very right indeed. The above-mentioned battle scene is the best example of this, but I should also mention John Williams' Oscar-nominated musical score, especially the deeply moving Hymn for the Fallen which plays over the closing titles. I also liked Spielberg's use of hand-held cameras and desaturated colour. He was aiming to reproduce the look of American wartime colour newsreels (British ones during this period were all in black-and-white), and I found his pale, bleached colours much more appropriate to the mood of the film than brilliant Technicolor would have been.
And yet I cannot share the widely-held view that this film is a masterpiece. The visceral intensity of that opening sequence is allowed to dissipate as, for the next hour-and-a-half, the film proceeds slowly as we follow Miller and his unit across Normandy. Only when they finally find Ryan towards the end, followed by a second battle scene, does Spielberg recapture anything like the brilliance with which the film opened. During this lengthy interim the action is too slow-moving and attempts to focus on the conflicting personalities of Miller and his men never arouse much interest; it is as though individual human beings are dwarfed by the sheer immensity of the conflict raging around them.
My vote for "Best Picture" of 1998 would have gone to "The Truman Show" and, despite Spielberg's undoubted technical mastery, for "Best Director" to Peter Weir. Being a great director is not just about shooting great scenes, it is also about making a great film, and here I think he does not succeed. "Saving Private Ryan" is a technically accomplished film, but not a great one. 6/10