"The goddamn rules just walked off"

Rating: 7/10 (27 February 2012)

Since the popularising of pacifism in the 1960s, the war movie has largely existed only to convey anti-militarist sentiment. But by 1998 there hadn't been a major decent one of those for years, and it was time for another makeover. Saving Private Ryan harks back to the genre's peak in the late 40s and early 50s, when war movies were exciting pictures about heroism and unquestionable moral reasoning. However, the intervening time in cinematic and social development can't be ignored, and so this time around combat must be realistically hellish, and there has to be some kind of philosophical questioning going on.
This is all very well, but Saving Private Ryan is also very much part of the modern era's blockbuster strand, and it seems a conflict between brutal realism and cornball simplicity. In between the battle scenes there is some woefully clichéd dialogue and dramatically flat moments. Characters like Upham are just lazily-written stereotypes, and the point-making about the perils of showing mercy to the Germans is heavy-handed. Then there's the John Williams score, which is just like so many other overblown and slightly smug-sounding John Williams scores. You wouldn't think a musical score could be condescending, but this one is.
Director Steven Spielberg won his second Oscar for Saving Private Ryan. As with Schindler's List, the frequency and arbitrariness of the killing soon makes us desensitised to it, and immerses us in a world where randomised death is a constant threat. And Spielberg clearly knows how to balance this. For example, about halfway through the battle we see Hanks and his men gradually making some headway. The troops aren't dropping like flies anymore, but the sheer brutality of the previous ten minutes means we never forget the danger the men are in. But the trouble is Spielberg occasionally resorts to techniques like slow-motion and sound distortion, putting the experience upon us in a way that feels obviously artificial, as oppose to letting the images draw us in. And he makes a basic error, I feel, in showing a few point-of-view shots from the German gun positions. Surely the whole point of this scene (and the movie in general) is keeping us with the US troops and never being objective, and yet Spielberg violates his own premise.
And yet this is overall a well-made piece and there remains much to like. Despite the weaknesses in the screenplay's minutiae, its odyssey structure gives it a powerful sweep and makes up for the deficits in characterisation. The picture gains resonance is it goes along, and to my mind the later battle sequence at Ramille with its eerie sound effects and man-versus-tank dynamics, is superior to the opening one. Saving Private Ryan is not without its flaws, but it is enough to reinvigorate a genre that was starting to flag.