Amazing, powerful film

Rating: Null/10 (31 July 1998)

It isn't often that I leave a movie theater with a new appreciation of life, but that is what Saving Private Ryan has given me. I remember driving home afterward in silence, just staring at all the beauty around me and think, "My God, I am so lucky to be alive." Not only was this a brilliantly filmed movie, technically, but its message was so extremely powerful, and necessary in a world such as ours. The vast majority of Americans who have never experienced the horrors of war first-hand learn their history from textbooks, which emphasize only the facts surrounding certain battles, and the figures of generals who rarely fight in the trenches alongside the ordinary men. Saving Private Ryan shows us the experiences of those men in graphic, terrible detail, and begs the question - How could these men, no different from you or I, transcend themselves and rise to the occasion in these terribly unordinary circumstances? This film, just as in Schindler's List (perhaps the only film of the 1990's that equals SPR's brilliance in filming and emotional intensity) demonstrates the fundamental goodness of man and the endurance of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming adversity. I will not go so far to say that the film is perfect - even the greatest film has flaws, and SPR is no exception - but its technical merits and sheer emotional power more than make up for any of its defects. All in all, it is, as many have said before me, a masterpiece - a film that will be remembered by me, and hopefully by every American, for a long, long time.