why this film is powerful and important

Rating: Null/10 (1 December 1998)

This is a powerful and important film, first, because it is about salvation or redemption in this world, rather than in heaven. On the physical level private Ryan gets saved and Captain Miller's squad gets wiped out. On the figurative level Captain Miller's squad, and everyone in it, is redeemed--saved. Saved, because, in spite of the obstacles--including the squad's own internal dissension--it accomplishes its mission. But saved most importantly because it has identified a mission that was worth sacrificing for. At first the squad does not accept the mission as worthwhile. It comes as a result of a military command from "top brass" in distant Washington, D.C.; they don't know Private Ryan, and besides, they have mothers too. Gradually, and mostly because of the quiet insistence of Captain Miller, they come to accept the mission as their own personal redemption. They are not going to do it because Washington ordered it. They are going to do it because it is meaningful in their own lives--it is their ticket home; they, along with Ryan, will have earned the right to go home; they will have done their duty. This personal sense of mission is what the squad finds worthwhile sacrificing for. It is what keeps the squad together. It is why they accomplish the mission. And--for the world is pitiless--it is why all but two die for the mission.
This sense of personal redemption, of having a personal goal or mission in life worth sacrificing for, is the most American theme in the movie. It is probably why most Americans respond instinctively to the movie.
But Saving Private Ryan is also about art. It defines art and embodies its definition. Specifically, the movie defines art as meaningful communication. Meaningful communication is communication that is meaningful to both sender and receiver, and that occurs in an effective medium. Within the film's story, the most meaningful communications are the soldiers' letters home. They are literally from the heart, as they are stained with the soldiers' blood. Examples of miscommunication or bad communication abound in the movie: foreign languages, yelling at a deaf soldier, telling the wrong private Ryan that his brothers are dead, not telling a glider pilot that his glider has been armored and is therefore heavier than usual, letters from a national government telling mothers that their sons are dead, even the order coming from Washington. Meaningful communication can be noisy, but it can also be silent: the silent cemetery, the unfurled flag, Captain Miller's silences. Captain Miller is the film's expert communicator--he teaches English composition in civilian life, a pointed fact in the movie. To the spectator outside the film, the most meaningful communication is the believability of the fact of war--its din, gore, horror. And, more than anything else, the fact of the sacrifices that soldiers made in that war. Which brings me to the third and final point. This movie is powerful and important because it portrays the utter desolation of war. No other movie has affected me the way three scenes in this movie did: Caparzo's lifeblood streaming out and away from him in the pouring rain; Wade, a medic, begging for more morphine; and Mellish in a life-and-death struggle with a German soldier while an airborne ranger, shot in the throat, is in his own death throes. Nothing is worse than being a combat soldier. No one else faces hopelessness and despair like this.
A word to the non-American viewers of this film, some of whom appear to resent its Americanness. Americans are entitled to portray American experience in their films (and other arts). Ibsen wrote plays about Norwegian experience, Patrick White wrote about Australia. That is not to be resented, that is to be respected. Viewpoints differ. What else is new?