SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
WenQing
Written by : Richard Rodat
Directed by : Steven Spielberg
Main Cast : Tom Hanks, Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore, Matt Damon
Length : 170 min approx
Rating : * * * out of * * * * *
Official Web Site: http://www.rzm.com/pvt.ryan/SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
This Review Filed: 26 September, 1998.
NOTHING SPECIAL TO SAVE
We've heard the message that "war is hell" about a gazillion times, and we've watched it retold with varying body counts, different contexts (Vietnam, World War One, Midway, Pearl Harbour, etc), a whole gamut of different directors, a whole slew of different faces and a torrent of public opinions that range from welcome, satisfaction, celebration and plain horror and distaste. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, like many Spielberg movies, comes into our hands with lots of lyrical praise waxed about its artistry, vision, poignant message and amazing depictions of war. But it really isn't that great a movie after all, I mean it.
Many have jumped on the bandwagon of lauding the opening sequence of PRIVATE RYAN with being a definitive cinematic experience, and being a horrifying and realistic depiction of the landing of American troops on Normandy in June 1944. The real opening sequence is a fluttering American flag against the sky, and a tubby old man doddering around Normandy in present day looking for the grave of someone who died during the war, presumably his friend. Clearly this is going to turn out to be Private Ryan, whom we find in not so prosperous days (yes, he used to look like Matt Damon too). It reminds me so much of the gratuitous conclusion to SCHINDLER'S LIST, where all the descendants of the Jews Schindler saved lay stones on his grave, and are named one by one by subtitles as though it were a docudrama and not a movie. It's often cheesy and indulgent, and extremely unnecessary. This is not to mention the entire family of this aged Private Ryan scampering after him (and they play all of five minutes importance to the whole plot), and Ryan himself concluding the movie so patheticallyŠ but I'll get to that later.
The problem with PRIVATE RYAN is that it has one too many flaws which prevent it from attaining that status of a masterpiece, and this has long been a nagging trait of Spielberg's recent dramatic films like SCHINDLER'S LIST and AMISTAD.
One big problem is the sinful explicitness of scenes that at the same time get us no closer to the truth. In SCHINDLER'S LIST the frightening Auschwitz concentration camp is so easily portrayed as just bleak buildings in snow that it severely diminishes any kind of emotional weight it might have carried if less explicitly depicted. In AMISTAD the cruelties of slave traders to kidnapped Africans on a ship are shown with such callousness that it resembles nothing more than a gratuitous excuse for a body count.
But it is a body count with no feeling attached to it. With SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, the so-called mind-blowing landing of American troops on the Normandy beachhead approximates this same explicitness to no real effect. Sure there are men torn in half, limbs cast about, blood raining on everyone, bullets cracking open heads and dead men everywhere, but the scenes are so excessive, and invested with so little care, that all we are left with after that protracted war sequence (and it is long enough to dissolve any tension, believe me), are the two words : "So what?"
One can jump to PRIVATE RYAN's defence and cry that this callousness about life is precisely the message that Spielberg is trying to convey, but I think that's a pretty pathetic cop-out of a message. If the callousness of life were indeed the point, then we shouldn't be numbed by the death toll but instead anguished by it instead.
I remember an Edward Zwick film called GLORY, where enough characterisation was done so that while many died needlessly in the American Civil War, their deaths weren't nameless and were attached to a painful sadness at their passing. If the blatant disregard for life and the nameless deaths were what Spielberg was driving at, he managed to make us just as disregarding and just as uncaring as any other person on the Normandy beachhead. While making us callously complicit is quite an interesting turn, I doubt if that was what Spielberg was even faintly driving at (the rest of the film dithers around vague heroism in war), and I don't believe it's even an appropriate meaning that should be associated with the deaths of so many, especially when the film opens with some pseudo-patriotic American flag fluttering and the anguish of an older Private Ryan over the deaths of his friends.
That's one big problem, explicitness without feeling and meaning. Another problem is my own minor complaint about the expectations I build on the reputation of Spielberg and his team of film-makers. A team of eight men are assigned to rescue Private James Francis Ryan, and you can guess that after awhile, members of this team start dying in combat. The problem is, even though one member has been killed earlier, the whole team viewed from a distance still numbers eight. This really got to me for some reason, it's almost like shadows of cameraman appearing in the scene or reflections of the whole film crew manifesting in the shiny surface of car paint in some movies (like LA CONFIDENTIAL, but I guess nobody noticed that). That was quite disappointing.
A third problem I had with PRIVATE RYAN is the question: "Where are we going with this movie?" It is clear we're out to watch Tom Hanks and his team find and save Private Ryan, but while we have minute stabs at apparent philosophical issues like the team of eight risked on a near-suicidal mission for one mama's boy, and the question of whether Ryan actually deserves to be saved, not enough time is given to this discussion. Too much time instead is fed to warfare, action sequences, sound effects and an inordinate amount of bloodshed. Even the characterisation is quite anaemic. And if this movie is supposed to be about heroism (at one short respite from shooting and killing, Tom Hanks and Tom Sizemore discuss their roles as soldiers), then surely more effort should be made to flesh out the main characters, their motivations, and the heroism they find in themselves. Instead, not only do members of the team start dropping off like flies, they become just as nameless as the other troops of Americans they join forces withŠ and as faceless as the Germans they're fighting. We don't know them at all- so when they die, it doesn't matter either. There is no heroism in that. And the script's clear recognition of the deficient characterisation comes when all of a sudden, there is a torrent of dialogue as the American soldiers await the arrival of German troops they are going to engage in combat. This conspicuous detour into characterisation comes too much too late, and really much too inappropriate when we've been weaned on warfare sequences for the last two hours.
Where are we going with this movie? PRIVATE RYAN switches from a vague comment about the meaningless sacrifice of lives in war to nothing more or less than an action movie (set in war of course). It just doesn't seem coherentŠ as though the script was really at first about the action movie and some themes of heroism, but that it was Spielberg who ran away with himself in wanting to indulge his portrayal of the landing at Normandy, twisting the thrust of the film until it was no longer clear what he was getting at.
The last 45 minutes of the film sticks out like a sore thumb. It feels like any other cheap action flick, where the good guys set traps for the bad guys in some little base of operations (like a playground drama in fact, where all the nerds come up with ingenious tricks to punish the bullies). So where is this film going? I'm not sure after the landing at Normandy, and by the time Private Ryan (who doesn't want to be saved) is found, he is nothing we expect and not really very interesting at all (unlike of course, Rowan Atkinson who was the mystery prisoner of war saved by Charlie Sheen in HOTSHOTS! PART DEUX- a frivolous film that at least knew how to turn expectation about the mystery character on its head). It's as though the film hasn't any idea what to do with Ryan when it finds him.
Finally, I had a bit of a problem with Private Ryan being saved. He grows up into an old man and is deeply insecure about whether he has earned the right to have survived the war. We've only seen him in some minor skirmishes in the film, but to have the old man ask his wife at the grave of Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) whether he has been a good man or lived a good life is just too much. She says "yes" of course, but instead of reassuring us, I think this casts us into even further doubt about whether the sacrifice of Tom Hanks and his team is worthwhile. How do we know whether Private Ryan has had a good life? Should curiosity be even directed towards his life after the war? And since it is, shouldn't we have more of a reason to believe Private Ryan has led a good life than his three absolutely beautiful granddaughters (and they don't even have speaking partsŠ even his son just says : "Dad?")?
There is just one amazing moment in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN that touched me in a profound way. And that is when the camera follows the progress of the troops as they crawl in the sand towards the machine-gun bunker at the beachhead (gunfire is cutting people to bits as you can guess). We're running behind a soldier, hitting the dirt with the soldier, crawling inch by inch with the soldier, and most of all, for fleeting seconds in time, we're just as insecure as the soldier, with bullets zipping around us and explosions everywhereŠ for just a moment, we're almost afraid we'll get shot too (this is not to mention it might vividly conjure up army days for National Servicemen)- and that insecurity about life, that profound fear, just goes right to the heart of the matter and saves the whole film from being a washout.
Before and after that of course, the cameraman never conveys anything quite as lucid and gripping again. One may gasp in wonder at a later scene of explosions lighting up the night sky and Tom Hanks and his team walking the land, but we need to realise what that beautiful and exquisite scene is truly about- Spielberg indulging in meaningless imagery for the sake of meaningless imagery, and never actually getting the message across.
The Flying Inkpot's Rating System
* Wait for the TV2 broadcast.
** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Gotcha!
*** Pretty good, bring a friend.
**** Amazing, potent stuff.
***** Perfection. See it twice.
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