Feeding the arrogance of the baby-boomer generation

Rating: 4/10 (17 September 2001)

As a younger man (22) I've grown up in a society was molded to fit baby-boomer self-centeredness. So perhaps I shouldn't find this film surprising. But I can't stomach the idea of another generation of people following their twisted view, so here goes...
No matter how much you want to stoke your own ego, there is no way that you can realistically equate the men who fought and died in WW2 to yourselves. Give up. This film is a terrible blow to our veterans.
Spielberg tries to make the soldiers seem like they're the same as you and me, but they weren't. All of the introspective musings in this film would make you think that these guys returned home after the war and started discussing Sartres in their local coffeehouse. These are 40's people who are portrayed thinking like 90's people. At least in "Thin Red Line", the film made no effort to portray itself as a true-to-life salute to those soldiers. "Thin Red Line" was a juxtaposition of a WW2 backdrop with Vietnam-era sentiments, and it made to portent of being anything else.
The WW2 generation didn't feel this ridiculous desire to explore their feelings and share them to the point of fault. They didn't have to connect to their fellows on some mystical, spiritual level. The entire war did not revolve around them as individuals, nor did they feel the need to ponder some existential connection to the war around them.
This film is simply another attempt by the baby-boomer generation to "prove" that they are as good as any other generation before them. This is their self-centered mythos. If a film actually showed the superior qualities of these American soldiers, it would destroy that myth. In truth, the American people felt a duty to their country back then. And they did not feel the need to wax philosophic at every turn in some attempt to justify the world's existence in the face of how "inconvenient" it may have been to their own selves. This contemporary psycho-babble had no place in their lives, and Spielberg had no right to put it there.
As for the characters who don't partake of this attitude, they are so paper thin that they add nothing to the film except to exacerbate the problem by making the mystics and coffeehouse types seem the more realistic.
If you have any respect for America, pass this film by.