A myopic, americentric view of the human side of war

Rating: 2/10 (12 March 2001)

When it came out, Saving Private Ryan was lauded for it's "realistic depiction of war," and for its "attention and sensitivity to the common man caught up in the sway of forces far beyond his control." It was supposed to be a story about the men more than a story about the war.
Unfortunately, it was none of these things.
The message of this movie seems to be that war is a very deeply affecting and moving experience, as long as you're an American. Common everyday plain old American Teachers, as shown by Tom Hanks' character, are sent into the fray and forced to become fighting men. We are shown, however, that the humanity of that Teacher is still there, even as he is fighting the "Evil Bloodthirsy Germans."
And this is where my problem lies. How can a movie that uses cookie cutter Nazis, that treats German soldiers as simply "the enemy," even make the claim that it is a realistic depiction of war? Somehow, only the Americans in Saving Private Ryan have a human component, the Germans conveniently having lost theirs. Compare this with the Japanese soldiers shown in The Thin Red Line and you'll see that Saving Private Ryan's praise for being an understanding and sensitive picture of that war is little more than a joke.
Now, I'm not saying i do not understand why the Germans are depicted as so flat. If I were Jewish and had family members who had been in concentration camps, I probably wouldn't be able to depict Germans in anything but a dehumanized capacity either. Having said that, however, the dehumanizing of the enemy, the labeling of a people and the flattening of their character and humanity, is what allowed the Germans to kill so many Jews.

This movie is anything but a realistic depiction of the Second World War.