Review of Saving Private Ryan, directed by Stephen Spielberg. 2 hours and 50 minutes.

by Scott Fairbanks

August 25th, 1998

Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan is a jolting blow to the senses of the audience after just five minutes into the film. Spielberg offers probably the most bloody look at the D-Day invasion of Omaha Beach; a half hour of carnage that is both visceral and gory. It is not intended for children under thirteen years of age at least. For everyone else, this is a must-see and should win several Oscars.

Tom Hanks plays Captain John Miller, an English high school teacher who leads his men through the hellish slaughter of Omaha Beach only to be given a dangerous public relations mission. One Private James Ryan, a paratrooper dropped somewhere into France, has lost three of his brothers and the government wants him out. The rest of the movie explores the paradoxical mission through the men sent to find him. Are eight men worth the life of one man of whom they have no loyalty to let alone have even met? The group of soldiers is really pretty much standard fare, but there are some standout performances including:

1. Miller's Sergeant Horvath played with fierce loyalty by Tom Sizemore. He is Miller's one true friend throughout the film.

2. Private Jackson, the expert sniper of the group who says a prayer before every shot. As the others notice, Jackson is the one who can sleep best without any guilt keeping him up at night.

3. Corporal Upham is played with subtle skill by Jeremy Davies who could be in line for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. His inexperience with combat speaks for the audience as he is eventually literally overburdened with the tools of war.

I mainly enjoyed Saving Private Ryan because of the rather simple story with the age-old theme of the quest. In this case, I believe the quest was to really save the innocence within Private Ryan. He is played by Matt Damon in more of a supporting role than the previous Good Will

Hunting. By innocence, I mean the mission seems to be preventing James Ryan from further exposure to the insanity of World War II so that he can actually live on. The insanity of the mission itself does not go unnoticed by Private Ryan either and by the end of the movie, the old man's admission that he still doesn't know if it was worth it had me in tears.

This is purely a war movie and the characters are the usual characters in a war movie. But each one's little quirks make each one interesting. And even though this may by the film's one slight flaw, Spielberg eventually deconstructs each character and strips them of the glories usually afforded to such people in other war movies.

I also enjoyed Spielberg's visual style throughout this film. He has claimed that he wasn't trying to be an artist but more of a cameraman. In his previous film, Shindler's List, Spielberg worked as an artist when he featured such memorable shots as the little girl wearing a jacket bearing the only color in the film and the road made of tombstones.

However, I think that a lack of a real visual style is a style unto itself. Both Spielberg and his photographer Janusz Kaminski have taken away the gloss of today's usual films in place of a worn out look with drained colors to give the feel of watching news footage. He has also used hand-held cameras and skipped frames to give the battle sequences a shaking feel as if the camera man was actually running through the raining bullets. There are also some nice symbolic touches that I noticed as well. One of the large themes of the movie is communication. Those who carry a letter home for a fallen comrade also suffer the same fate. And Corporal Upham who is the unit's translator is the one to mentally breakdown. The jacket and helmet that Upham wears carry a ying-yang symbol, often a sign of peace and balance. In the final battle, he is loaded down with grenades and bullets and cannot climb the stairs to those who need help.

As mentioned before, this movie is very graphic. Spielberg is merciless and unrelenting in exhibiting the kind of horrors that occurred. Children should not see it until they're older. This is more intended for those who have lived it and for those who have lived with the veterans of World War II. Spielberg is showing that none of what happened during that war was the way it has been romanticized in other films. He is showing that it was just as insane as any other war fought in the world's history.

Yet, the fighting is also breath-taking after I saw this film a second time and I almost feel guilty for feeling such a rush of adrenaline. The first viewing just leaves you in shock. And as confusing and ragged as the opening battle is, the final sequence upon the bridge is just as well done even though there is more sense made of it. There is also a sense of honor, determination and weariness in what Captain Miller does on the bridge as an enemy tank approaches. In closing, I believe that Saving Private Ryan by Steven Spielberg is bound to win Best Picture along with many of the technical awards. The sound mix is excellent and facilitates the feel of being in battle. I almost expected more from Matt Damon, but I guess Robert Rodat's screenplay wanted to relegate him more into a supporting role so that those on the actual mission could shine. This film both punishes the viewer to the point of exhaustion and then rewards with an emotionally satisfying ending for those still sitting in the theatre.