Could have been

Rating: Null/10 (10 September 1998)

What can you say about the opening battle scene at Normandy and the climactic final scene in the village? They are probably the two best war scenes ever recorded on film. The images from the beach landing will haunt me for a long time; the soldiers praying, crying, vomiting, and then dying, dying so fast and furious you don't even have time to breathe before the next one goes down. And yet they are all very human, which is what breaks your heart. The same can be said of the final battle scene. The way the momentary peace of listening to Edith Piaf singing in French while the educated young soldier interprets for the others is shattered by the rumbling of the treads of the German tanks. Your brain starts going, why is this happening? For this reason, the reality and ridiculousness of war is made clear. There are other good scenes in this poignant and terrifying film; most of the deaths are treated with the shock of cold reality and at the same time with dignity.
However, I was totally disgusted by the director's 'good guy vs. bad guy' depiction of the Nazi soldiers. I'm sure that the Germans loved their mothers, too, that they were afraid to die, that they were also following orders from above, and not deranged Hitlers. The lone German character in the film is portrayed as a sick, evil clown, and that is all we're allowed to see him as. How sad that we have to do that to appreciate what our soldiers did for us. Woudldn't it have made it an even better statement if the movie had shown us how crazy war is from BOTH sides of the fence? It was an opportunity lost.
Beyond that, I agree with the other viewer that I also would have appreciated seeing the daily hardships that the soldiers must have gone through; the cold, the wet, the hunger, etc. I think this would have made it a more complete and realistic film.
Still, congratulations to Spielberg. He gave us his heart.