a fresh perspective

Rating: 9/10 (22 February 2008)

'Saving Private Ryan' is Steven Spielberg's brave attempt to redefine the conventional war film, and specifically World War II films. More than that even, it's an attempt to explain the conflict itself to a generation that never knew it firsthand. Spielberg proceeds from the assumption that baby boomers are hardwired to doubt their country's motives in any war and 'Saving Private Ryan' seems to be his way of saying there was at least one war the U.S. fought where it was clearly and completely in the right. Whether he succeeded is something that's difficult to gauge. In many ways, 'Saving Private Ryan' is your standard-issue combat flick, albeit a very well-made one. Some scenes would be almost interchangeable with those from any number of movies where G.I.'s trudge across Europe and engage the Germans at various points in heated battles. But there's something else at work here that none of those earlier films put across in quite the same manner. At times, it's almost intangible. There is a feeling of the here and now about the film, that we are really living and experiencing what the soldiers did. Nothing puts this across more vividly than the opening scene. After a brief prologue in a present-day French cemetery, the scene shifts to the bloodiest day of the war, when the Allies landed on the Normandy beaches. I think it is fair to say that there has never been a more realistic depiction of what the first few army units faced in those first awful hours, the chaos, the death, the wholesale slaughter really of thousands of young men trying to gain a foothold on the beaches there. I remember reading about an early screening of 'Ryan' for WW2 veterans; one was asked about this scene, and the old man replied grimly and succinctly, "That's pretty much how it was." Though nothing in the rest of the film is quite as brutally graphic, the scene sets the stage for what is to follow. We are reminded that the vast majority of Americans were not professional soldiers; they were ordinary people lifted from ordinary jobs to fight in the most consequential armed conflict in their country's history, which makes their sacrifices and their courage that much more profound and poignant. The story, which can easily be seen as an allegory, has to do with a group of four brothers, all soldiers serving in the war. And all have been killed in action, except one, the Private Ryan of the title. It is decided that this family has sacrificed more than its share, and so a special army squad is dispatched to find Ryan and send him home. Tom Hanks is perfectly cast as the everyman, generically-named Capt. Miller, the schoolteacher turned combat soldier. His dying words to Private Ryan, "Earn this. Earn it!" are the message he (and Spielberg) hoped the following generation would take to heart. Again, it's hard to know whether or not that generation has.