An intelligent film. See it twice and think about it.

Rating: Null/10 (21 September 1998)

Some thoughts about SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (SPR).
It's an intelligent and carefully made film. You must view it intelligently and carefully, and see it two or three times to be able to see the detail.
It will be a misunderstood film, I think. Naturally, there is no ONE right way to view a film. The better the film, the more ways it can be viewed. But SPR has already been evaluated in a very unidimensional way.
People have commented that there is a good action sequence at the beginning, a good action sequence at the end, a long boring middle with no character development, and 'bookend' sentimentality. The "opening 25 minutes" were very realistic...but is that all that the film is about? You can view it that way, but perhaps the film is more than a technically masterful B-film.
The film's message is "war is hell"? If that's all it was, it would be shallow realism. A dog has four feet, war is hell, sugar is sweet. These are just preconditions for telling a story. Consider this possibility: that the realism and attention to detail is MORE than the sound of bullets against steel or sand.
Shallow character development? You don't know enough about the soldiers to care? What's that supposed to mean? That you look at a cross-filled cemetery and feel nothing? That you see a landing boat full of men killed before they can disembark and you feel nothing because you don't know who they were? Think about this: veterans report not wanting to know anything about their fellow combatants. It made the loss more difficult. And isn't it interesting that part of the story of SPR has to do with the soldiers wondering who Captain Miller is. Why don't you ask yourself why? Character development? The war context has to do with how you behave there and then. That's how you assess each other. Now: think about whether such a message can be carried to other everyday contexts. Observe the soldiers and how they behave. That long 'boring' bit in the middle?? That's the whole film! Look at the events and think: why am I being shown this? Why not something else? Isn't it interesting that the ONE German soldier that Upham kills is the one who both killed Miller AND witnessed Upham's own failure to live up to his responsibilities (cowardice?).
Go see the film a second time and think about it. Ask yourself: why, amid the chaos of the Omaha beach landing, we are not only shown slow motion pans of Miller staring without comprehension at corpses and men cringed in fear, but also of him later, equally white-faced, staring at coffee being poured, at a man shaving, at a sandwich being eaten?
A good film can work at several levels. Is this a war film? An anti-war film? Is that all that SPR is about? If so, then the so-called bookend pieces are indeed cheap sentimentality. But consider another hypothesis: Perhaps the film is also a character study of one person in particular, of Captain Miller. And it's not simply about 'war'. The war is a context to make something else meaningful. No, not just "earn this", something else.
When I saw the film there was a veteran who began crying when another message was given, at the very end.
Interesting, wasn't it, that we don't hear triumphant music and see the stars and stripes in full glory. We could have been shown this, but we weren't. We see a bleached out remnant of something almost unrecognizable as stars and stripes, and music dying away in a long sad whisper. Earlier, we hear Miller's own comments on the standard Emersonian line on the value of war "Perhaps that's his way of seeing the good side of things". You can accuse Spielberg of being a sentimentalist. Miller HIMSELF would not buy the sentimentality interpretation.
Whatever else the film might be, SPR is also good enough to give me something to think about after I view it. Something else, about the rest of everyday life. Don't waste your time thinking about whether it's the best film ever,or the best war film ever, or how many academy awards it will win. Who cares?
Forget about that guy looking for his arm on Omaha beach.
View the film and then think about this: Are YOU a good person? Are YOU living a good life?
Then go back and look again at those dying and dead strangers and weep for your own life.
Perhaps Spielberg made a better film than he intended...