Saving Private Ryan

Every few years Steven Spielberg proves to audiences why he is the most influential film director alive by conceptualizing a film (the word directing doesn't do his creativity justice) in the most imaginative way possible and then translating this point of view onto the screen. He reinvents himself in front of audiences in each of his great films. He defined what a great or best film is in a particular genre with his movies; for suspense - Jaws, science fiction - CloseEncounters of the Third Kind, adventure - Raiders of the Lost Ark, fantasy - E.T., the African-American drama - The Color Purple, and for the Holocaust - Schindler's List. These films resonate with a perfect comprehension of an idea; a gifted eye for seeing things as the common man perceives it. Spielberg has now turned to the subject of war, and frankly, after this film there will be no need to for anyone to direct another war film again.

Saving Private Ryan is the story of how a troop of soldiers is commanded to travel behind enemy lines to save the last surviving sibling of the four Ryan brothers. This morality question, one which has seen many forms in all wars past or present, is a sharp allegory to the macrocosm of the entity that is war, which is: What is the value of life? Is a sacrifice that one may never see or weigh the rewards of, worthwhile? The focused plot delves into the common occurrences, large and small, that present themselves in every maelstrom of carnage: the atmosphere of battle, the reaction back home, the courageous and fearful soldiers, as well as the lucky and unfortunate ones.

Tom Hanks gives a performance (surely one of his best) that only he could give. An every-man performance not of the "Tom Hanks persona" (which has traces of Jimmy Stewart), but of a Tom Hanks that has been through the war; a truly changed man that has acquired a grim look on his face and a war-induced condition. He plays Captain John Miller, the head of the troop searching for Ryan (Matt Damon in a short, yet solid performance), and is flanked by Sergeant Horvath (Tom Sizemore, in a memorable performance), along with the melting pot of soldiers that typically make up any unit. The story is long enough for all of the characters to develop and serve their purpose and the script teems with lines that etch themselves into people's memories.

The film as a whole, and as a piece of directing, is spectacular. The first half-hour of the film, which documents the invasion of Omaha beach in Normandy is the most riveting and breathtaking war sequence ever filmed (far better than that in Platoon). Spielberg, along with his cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, sped the film up in the editing process and ran through the set with hand-cams to give the most realistic feeling possible: that of a soldier running with a limited peripheral vision. Spielberg then had the sound level raised, the battle scene unscored and the colors in the film stock filtered to remove their glossy, commercial look. Bullets whiz by - a simple, yet final touch in this tour-de-force of filmmaking, whose genius in conception and execution is enough to teach a film class.

In comparison to war films of the past, there is much to discuss yet little to disagree with. Classic war films, or any war film for that matter up until the late 1960's, simply never had any realism to them. The heroes' triumph is usually glorified, and never put in context of the complete war or battle. The good soldiers always lived, and the traitors were killed (unless depicting a historically lost battle). Even if some realism existed (as in a film like All Quiet on the Western Front), the censors rarely permitted gritty portrayals of truth, and much rather preferred death sequences in which a character announces that he has been shot, or those in which a soldier falls to the ground without screaming crying or clutching insides that have ventured outside.

In Saving Private Ryan, war is real. The only way to present the value of life is not to cheapen it with pompous bravery, but to embrace it with the notion of mortality. Soldiers sift through piles of dog-tags, forgetting for a moment that each dog-tag belongs to someone killed. Troop members rewrite letters of their dead friends to send, since the originals were soaked in blood and would be too painful to read. These scenes are as intense as they are honorable. Millions of people have been lied to by the movie industry; they have been viewing a rose-tinted picture of war for far too long.

A major cinematic issue that now arises is where to rank Saving Private Ryan amongst the war films of our time. This film gets to you; you exit feeling like a pathetic rag of a human being after seeing a film this powerful. The Deer Hunter and Coming Home show more of the aftermath of war and its effects on soldiers and their families. Apocalypse Now may be considered artistic, but it portrays an odd situation in an already odd war. Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July mostly questions the necessity of war and examines the way veterans were treated. His film Platoon, much like Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, is realistic and offers a snippet of what war is like. Saving Private Ryan surpasses the realism of he latter two films, since it doesn't simply look real; it makes you feel like you're there.

Francois Truffaut, famed film director and critic, once mentioned that the highest stature a film can achieve, true cinema (more commonly known as cinema verite), occurs when a film blends completely with reality. Saving Private Ryan reaches this height. It is a must-see experience, bound to win handfuls of Academy Awards and should be placed with Spielberg's highest achievements.