|
Alphabetic Index
|
Ratings Index
|
Web Resources
|
Alphabetic Index
|
Ratings Index
|
Web Resources
On his way to fleshing out the most significant anti-war movie since All Quiet On The Western Front, the Hollywood wunderkind-turned-movie mogul launches an unremitting assault on the senses -- an upsetting panoply of such mind-blowing, bloodcurdling proportions that one must wonder just how far art can go in the candid quest for historical truth.
In a brief preface meant to frame what is to follow, an elderly gentleman visits a veterans cemetery. Then a pause. And then all Hell breaks loose. Spielberg amazes with a monumentally harrowing, twenty-minute rendition of the June 6, 1944, invasion of Normandy. It is nightmarish. Omaha Beach is awash in blood; dying men try to stuff the entrails back in their bodies and cry out for their mothers.
It matters not how much you gird for this seat-edged inferno. Spielberg is Rembrandt with a movie camera, a cinema genius conjuring a veritable library of filmic techniques to shape his unspeakable ride through the bowels of human experience. After assuring the integrity of the astonishing reality he creates, the artiste then applies intuitive strokes to vary impact. Once the plot evolves, Spielberg the storyteller dabs the doings with nuance, meticulously feathering his unique notions of Americana at just the very edges of screenwriter Robert Rodat's searing tale of horror, heroism and confused ideals.
In the movie's finest performance, a certain Academy Award nomination, Tom Hanks is Captain John Miller, the humble hero who can barely hide his nervousness from the troops. Mr. Hanks creates a classical portrait of the ordinary man rising to the challenges of extraordinary circumstances, adding an emotionally convincing update to Gary Cooper's reluctant warrior in High Noon and several similarly inclined, regular guy heroes Jimmy Stewart fashioned so well during his illustrious career.
Following Miller through harm's way in fine ensemble performances are, Tom Sizemore as hulking Horvath, the loyal second in command; Barry Pepper as the religious Southern sharpshooter; Edward Burns as Private Reiben, the wisenheimer Brooklynite; Adam Goldberg as Mellish, the scrappy Jew; and Jeremy Davies as the self-loathing coward. Disparate as these personalities may be, they have one thing in common: a disdain for Private Ryan; and they haven't even met him yet. Which brings us to the matter of the title character, played with appropriate spark by Matt Damon.
Shortly after D-Day, a secretary at the War Department notes that a Mrs. Ryan in Iowa will that afternoon receive notification that three of her four sons have been killed in action. The War Department is determined to bring home Mrs. Ryan's sole surviving son, James, rumoured to be lost somewhere in Normandy. Captain Miller's squad draws the search and rescue mission. This immediately puts into motion just one of the excellent script's plethora of philosophical inquiries: Is Private Ryan's survival worth more than any of the one or more lives that may be lost trying to find him?
Attaining a real-life documentary look through the judicious use of hand-held cameras and a remarkably innovative use of filters, Saving Private Ryan achieves an ebb and flow one second, a delirious staccato the next, and virtually every gradation of mood in between. And it's all accomplished with nary a false note or the slightest hint of visual cliché. The result is totally absorbing, seamless footage that claims the viewer not only with its compelling battle situations, but also by the sheer energy of the movie effort itself. Production values don't get much better than this, from Tom Sanders' phenomenal set designs to John Williams' suitably understated musical score.
At every turn, Mr. Spielberg's eclectic choice of motion picture methodology becomes a veritable lesson in filmmaking: e.g. the alternately stark and surreal light in one battle scene recalls Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin. Exquisite editing here by Michael Kahn proves invaluable.
Though Spielberg virtually reinvents the war movie, he still sings a paean to the genre in a pick and choose style that serves his storytelling purposes. A little All Quiet On The Western Front here, a respectful nod to A Walk In The Sun there, and perhaps a notion of camaraderie from Battle Cry. However these borrowed shadings are always de-Hollywoodized, skimmed of any impulse to glamorise combat. That is, plenty of guts and very little glory. So don't expect any swagger a la The Dirty Dozen, though Captain Miller's motley crew does in part resemble the stereotypical, war movie display of American heterogeneity.
At Veterans and Memorial Day parades these days, the number of WW II participants has dwindled. Many of the remaining marchers have grown frail. Some from the so-called "warrior generation" no longer have their uniforms -- so they proudly wear their service hats and civvies. After Spielberg's stirring disclosures, we look at these old men in their leisure suits with a new-found respect.
The movie stays with you, haunting in its articulations, disturbing in its revelations. The indelible images flit back and forth through your psyche, causing you to think in their profound mechanisms, weigh their inspired messages, and wonder if, even after a thousand years and a thousand more movies like Saving Private Ryan, the human race will ever save itself from the horrors of war.
|
Alphabetic Index
|
Ratings Index
|
Web Resources