Dave-El's Weekend Movie Post: Saving Private Ryan

Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day so I decided to write today’s movie post about what many consider to be the best war movie of all time.

 

Directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks, it’s Saving Private Ryan.

 

Nearly 30 years after the film was originally released, I finally got to see the damn thing in order from start to finish earlier this year.

 

Before this year, I had see the opening Normandy invasion sequence at least a dozen times. 

 

I had seen the end of the movie almost as much.  

 

And bit and pieces here and there in between. 

 

It’s a weird and quite frankly bad way to experience movies.  

 

But time and circumstance do not always afford me opportunities to sit down and watch a long movie at one time in the right order.  

 

I finally got to see Saving Private Ryan as God and Spielberg intended and it does live up to it’s reputation. 

 

The Normandy invasion sequence that opens the film is astonishing in its visceral power. 

 

Anyone who thinks being a soldier is some kind of grand adventure would be disavowed of that notion witnessing the Normandy invasion.  Soldier are sitting ducks in a shooting gallery for the German army. Some men die before they can get off their boat. Others falling bleeding and screaming into the ocean waves. Making it to the beach is no guarantee of success or survival as the hail of German bullets remains unabated as more men die, calling for mothers who cannot hear them.  

 

It is not a pretty sight and it is unrelenting. 

 

For the men who survive, all is chaos as carefully laid plans for what to do when they reached the shore go out the window and new strategies need to be improvised.  The German are still firing but they are out numbered and outgunned if the American and Allied troops can get their shit together.

 

There is no choice but to go forward.  

 

There is a war to be won.

 

In the middle of all this blood and carnage is Captain John Miller,  a taciturn taskmaster who know his mission, accepts his duty and does everything he can to lead his men to the fulfilment of that mission, that duty and hopefully not die in the process.  

 

Miller is not some of kind of rough ‘n’ ready war hero. He is not immune to the trauma that comes from being surrounded by some much violence and death.  There are moments when the cacophony of war falls away to a dull roar as Miller disassociates from the war around him. With an effort of will, Miller reasserts himself back to reality, back to the mission.

 

There is a war to be won. 

 

The opening of Saving Private Ryan is an amazing cinematic work, sights and sound and dizzying camera work of the key invasion that changed the course of World War II  to lead towards victory over Hitler’s Third Reich.  And the dire costs that were paid by so many men to make that happen.

So many sons.

The United States Department of War receives communication that three of four Ryan brothers have been killed in action; the last, James Francis Ryan of the 101st Airborne Division, is listed as missing. 

General George C. Marshall orders that Ryan be found and sent home, to spare his family the loss of all its sons. 

Capt. Miller is put in charge of this mission and he assembles a team to march across France to the approximate location Ryan's unit would've parachuted into Europe.  

This is far from a safe mission.  Despite the success at routing the Germans at Normandy, the German army still has a stranglehold on France and it's up to the U.S. and allies to pry that grip loose. 

It will take a lot of bullets and blood.  

Miller's rag tag group has a few not so kind sentiments about this Private Ryan they are putting their lives on the line to save. if Capt. Miller has any qualms about this quest, he keeps them to himself.  He has his orders, his mission and his duty. 

Nobody knows anything about their commanding officer.  The squad has a betting pool for who will be the first soldier to find any out anything about who John Miller was before Hitler invited them to the Nazi Dance Party.   

Miller's crew has several engagements with the Germans along their eastward march. They have some success at pushing about against the Germans but not without cost. 

Miller's band of soldiers keeps getting a bit smaller at each stop along the way.  

SPOILER: Miller's crews finds Private Ryan but he's not prepared to be saved just yet.  His unit is charged with stopping an advance of German tanks.  Failure to stop the tanks could undo all that the Allies had sacrificed so much for. Ryan will not abandon his unit until the mission is complete and the tanks have been stopped. 

Another SPOILER: Private James Francis Ryan will be saved as we see decades after the war when an elderly Ryan visits the Normandy Cemetery to honor the men who gave their lives to save his and fervently hopes he has lived a life worthy of their sacrifice. 

Well, this movie is quite the emotional ride that does not let up. Even after the bloody spectacle of the Normandy invasion, the stress does alleviate. There is tension in even the quiet moments, constantly being on guard against any moment when the fighting will flare up again and the dark haunting knowledge that there is no promise of escape from this war.   

There may be some temptation to see Capt. John Miller has some kind of flinty steel eyed war hero but that's not what Tom Hanks gives us. Miller has accepted the mantle of war time command but this is not an easy role for Miller. His hands shake under stress, he disassociates during the cacophony of war. But he shakes it off as best he can because he knows his men need a strong commander if they are to fulfill their orders and maybe, just maybe, get home alive.    

Steven Spielberg wanted an unknown in the role of Private Ryan and chose a relatively inexperienced actor named Matt Damon.  But before Spielberg could finish his war epic, a little thing called Good Will Hunting came out and all of sudden, Spielberg has a hot new movie star popping up in the last act of his movie.

Considered one of the greatest films ever made, the techniques used to film battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan have influenced  subsequent war, action, and yes, even superhero films.

The picture is credited with having helped to renew interest in WWII at the turn of the century, inspiring other films, television shows, and video games set during the war. 

In 2014, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

And it deserves this and I regret it took me so long to finally give Saving Private Ryan the attention it so richly deserved.