Saving Private Ryan

The first 23 minutes of this film is rated at a 12.

My good friend and I took our sons, 17 at the time, to see this in a theater. I am a senior military officer who experienced combat in 1967 - 68 - 69. We wanted the boys to see the horror of war, the slaughter.

I have had to pack up the personal effects of my comrade to send back to his mother after he was killed in the Viet Nam war. Those of you who have not done this cannot even comprehend.

After the opening combat scenes the film was an 8. Well done.

War is hell and to those of us who have been there ... well I don't know what to say.

Neither of our sons joined the military ... thank God.

I have never been affected by a movie the way Saving Private Ryan affected me. That movie really took me out of my seat in the movie theater and practically had me believing I was really in the battle with John Miller. When somebody was dying in that movie, it felt as if you could almost feel their pain. Speilberg did an unbelievable job of putting realism into this movie with the camera-work and everything else. Simply amazing. An all time great.

I know it's fashionable to trash successful movies but at least be honest about the trashing... Pvt. Ryan was fiction but it was pretty good HISTORICAL fiction. The details were well thought out and based on reality.

There was nothing stupid about the portrayal of the German army... Rommel DID blunder in his placement of force, The high command DID think Calais was going to be the invasion spot, not Normandy. Hitler didn't wake up until noon on that day and his aides were afraid to wake him. The Rangers did come in right behind the first wave and did take a beach exit by sheer will to get the hell off the beach. The bluffs were the scene of heavy close fighting. The german defenders were mostly Eastern European conscripts from defeated areas. (note that the 2 men that tried to surrender were NOT speaking German). There WAS a young man rescued from interior Normandy after his brothers were all killed. He WAS an airborne trooper (the difference was that he was found by a chaplain and was removed from the front.)

The battles inside Normandy were small actions town to town, street to street, house to house. Small actions like taking the radar station happened. Small actions like a handful of men defending a river bridge against odds happened. Small squads of men, formed out of the misdrops banded together ad hoc to fight. There were all enlisted groups and all officer groups. A General did die in the glider assault. FUBAR aptly described much of what happened that day.

And there were only Americans in the movie because the Brits and Canadians were many klicks away in a different area... this was Omaha beach. The story was an American one. And Monty DID bog down the advance and everyone knew it. And as for "American Stereotypes"... well those pretty much define America: my college roomie was a wise-ass New York Jew. My best friend was a second generation east coast Sicilian. My college girlfriend was a third generation German. My first wife was French and English. I'm Irish, my boss is Norwegian and I work with a Navaho... you get the point?

So much for it being bad history. It was in fact an excellent way to let a jaded and somewhat ignorant-of-their-past generation *feel* something of what their grandparents (LIVING grandparents) went through. It is perhaps less important that the details be exact as the feel be right. Even now the details are not fully known or knowable about that campaign... it was too big, too complex and too chaotic to be knowable. There is not even an accurate casualty count of D-Day itself.

Now as to the depth of characters. What I saw there was the extraordinary circumstances into which ordinary people were thrown and what happened to them. I saw the things that would mark a generation (I have heard in my elderly male patients sentiments similar to what Cpt. Miller was expressing when he announced his ordinariness) I saw the dehumanization that occurs with war and its mitigation moment to moment, man to man... Cpt. Miller didn't know anything about Ryan and he didn't care... until Ryan revealed his humanity to him with his story of his brothers. Pvt. Reiban was ready to walk out of the situation until he discoverd his captains ordinariness and his humanity. Then he began to look to him almost as a father. Pvt. Mellish rightfully delights in his revenge for all the times he's had to take it because he was Jewish by telling German captives he's "Juden!" Nerdish Cpl. Upham can stand alongside his bigger, stronger, braver Ranger compatriots and describe the poetry and melancholy of Edith Piaf's song... then face his cowardice, turn around and stand up in the face of danger and finally demonstrate the dehumanization of the enterprise he was enmeshed in by executing Steamboat Willie... even though Willie had no more choice about being there than Upham did and in other circumstances would have made a friend.

I could go on and on with this but enough already. OK, perhaps it is not The Best Movie Ever Made but it is still a good movie. And if one will take the blinders of fashionable negativism off they will see it. Finally, this is not a patriotic story... if anything it is an acknowledgement and thank you to all those old men still out there that did so much for us. To them I say a deep and sincere thank you.

My grandfather fought in WW2 somehow surviving D-Day. He was apart of Operation Neptune and stormed the beaches of Normandy. He told us a lot of war stories but rarely ever spoke about that day. Before he passed away he did an interview with a local newspaper and detailed what he saw despite it being very difficult for him to speak about. He loved watching war movies... not sure exactly why. Some about that soldier life never really leaves them I guess. He absolutely hated Pearl Harbor cause of the horrible way they portray the military to be a bunch of toothbrush wielding babies who don't know what to do in the event of being attacked. He had a friend stationed there who lost his life and thinks that movie is a disgusting display of ignorance. Soldiers don't take girlfriends on private plane rides. And they most definitely know how to swim. Maybe I'll give that movie a good ripping one day.

But Saving Private Ryan was a respectable "I can't watch this" reaction. He said no movie has come that close to capturing what that day was like. He said it was too realistic. Whether or not the story is based on real or fiction, that intro was 100% realistic. I'm not sure if he ever did finish watching it but he appreciated it for capturing that chaos like no other movie has before. I watched the movie a dozen times now and keep it in my collection as a reminder of my grandfather. A scene he was technically in. Which makes me appreciate how strong of a person he really is.

War is hell and this movie not only shows that while being an entertaining experience but also captured what soldiers are left behind with. My grandfather was not afraid of anything. I've seen this man walk into a cellar full of black widows to get firewood and not even shake them off. The only time he ever experienced fear was when he went to bed. His nightmares of his time during the war would haunt him in his sleep. This movie helped me understand why.

I went to see Saving Private Ryan twice in the theatre. I was very impressed the first time I saw it, and the battle scenes were so haunting that I felt it would be worthwhile going again. While I again enjoyed them, they obviously did not have the same impact as when seen for the first time and this caused me to give greater attention to the remainder of the film. It didn't hold up well.

I feel it would have been best for Spielberg to have begun this film right off in the boat. No advance warning, no sentimentality. It would have been perhaps the most amazing first scene in cinematic history. But he had to overdo it. The first graveyard scene can be accepted, though it is undesirable. But the second was insulting, not just to me, but to the film itself and the message it had attempted to convey. He can understate well, as the scene in which Mrs. Ryan is told of the fate of her sons proves.

(The rule which is so often broken by film makers today is don't tell, show. But they are so used to talking down to the audience that it is seen as desirable and normal. I see it as manipulative and condescending).

It also seemed as if I could actually see the seams in the movie, the transition from one scene to the next. It was obvious that it was _written_. Yes, of course, all screenplays are written. But a truly good film can draw you in to the point where it IS reality. SPR did not do that for me. I'm sure there has already been sufficient comment on the stereotypicality of the characters. And of course the scene in which there is an argument over whether or not to take the child along with them.

There is a sense in which films like this are protected from artistic judgment because it is felt that the message they are conveying is so important. I believe this is part of the reason it has received as much praise as it has. While the battle scenes and cinematography are truly magnificent, those things alone are not enough for a film to be considered the greatest film of all time, nor even the greatest war film of all time.