The Fate of Rebels

Rating: 8/10 (11 November 2005)

Seeing it again, nine years after its release, you can't help being struck by how familiar things are: the pale blue cast of the photography, the distinctive special effects, the squib charges exploding not with blood but with dust when a man is hit, the clank of bullet against armor, the shaky camera, the enemy seen as dark phantoms scurrying through the murk of the battlefield, the tiny fountain of cork chips as a bullet slams into the dirt, the attention to period detail, the necessity of reloading at particularly awkward moments.
All of this is familiar now because it's been so often aped, often in strong films like "Band of Brothers" and "Blackhawk Down". I doubt that anyone could make an "ordinary" war film anymore. Slow, cheap ones like Sam Fuller's or even innovative grunt's-view stories like "Platoon." If you're going to make a war movie now, Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" is the bogie you have to match. It is the fate of rebels to found orthodoxies.
And what an innovation this movie was. Oliver Stone must be applauded for tackling a subject like the Vietnam war that was so controversial that the conflict was avoided for more than ten years, because of the still smoldering emotions the war had generated. If Vietnam had been a human being it would have had to stalk around dressed in rags, tinkling a little bell, and crying "Unclean, unclean." "Saving Private Ryan"'s subject is less controversial. First, the enemy really WAS our enemy. (Germany declared war on the USA first, not the other way around.) Second, well -- we won, didn't we? But it is probably more original in its details. And candid too. A German and an American soldier are locked in bitter mano a mano conflict, and the German wins! And not by cheating either! He is the bigger man and finally overpowers the American and inch by inch sinks the American's own bayonet into his chest. He does not gloat or smile. It's no tennis game to the German, but a deadly necessity, just as it is for the American soldier. "Relax," the German pants in a low voice, "it's very simple," as the tip of the knife slowly penetrates the American's chest. The scene is phenomenally stark.
The most complex character is Upham's. The rest of the Americans play their assigned roles, performing impossible feats of bravery. This is precisely what the Germans are doing too. But Upham fails at a crucial point and costs the lives of his allies. The viewer can sit back and make Olympian judgments about Upham's character, but consider that for every hour Upham spent in combat he was as valiant as everyone else for fifty-five minutes. He translated, was almost run over by a tank, ran across open spaces under fire, and carried ammunition. But those fifty-five minutes don't count on his side, only the five during which he was frozen in tonic immobility, a fundamental mammalian trait which -- not having been in Upham's place ourselves -- we can condemn him for.
Maybe nobody can define an "anti-war movie." They ALL claim to be anti-war movies. How could you possibly market a PRO-war movie unless we were formally at war with another nation? To many people, an anti-war movie is a simple excuse to give us more action and more blood. Put Steven Segal in combat boots. Others are anti-war because they give us a glimpse of the enemy's humanity somewhere along the line. But in all the anti-war movies we always seem to win, as indeed we do in "Saving Private Ryan". (The cavalry comes galloping to the rescue.) All war movies, even those depicting a "defeat" like Pearl Harbor, seem to endorse the same bumper-sticker slogan: "No matter how sneaky or noble they may be, they can't whip us." I guess it takes an enormous amount of courage -- in Hollywood -- to ask an audience to pay money to see a movie in which we lose a war or a battle or a fist fight with an enemy. It's what I admire about a movie as flawed as "A Bridge Too Far." And it's what makes me feel more involved in the tragedy shown in "Saving Private Ryan." That hand-to-hand fight that the American loses contravenes established war narratives. What? We LOSE? It's as shocking as Hitchcock's killing of Janet Leigh half-way through "Psycho." Don't miss "Saving Private Ryan," a milestone at the time.