This past week marks the twentieth anniversary of the release of Steven Spielberg's blockbuster hit Saving Private Ryan. Let's take a look back at what Mark had to say about it in 1998:
When Saving Private Ryan was released in America, I made a mild observation to the effect that its premise was a lot of hooey, and received in response several indignant letters pointing out that it was 'based on a true story', that of the Sullivan brothers. Er, not quite. The Sullivans' story is stirringly told in The Fighting Sullivans (1942, directed by 42nd Street's Lloyd Bacon): after Pearl Harbor, all five brothers enlist - and all five die aboard the battleship Juneau at Guadalcanal. As a result, to avoid the recurrence of such a freakish tragedy, the United States changed its policy on family members serving together. Steven Spielberg's film is not 'based' on the Sullivans, except insofar as General George C. Marshall, the US Army's chief of staff, mentions their fate to explain his decision.
Rather, the film is a kind of extension of the thinking behind the policy change: when three out of four Ryan brothers are killed in action, General Marshall orders a rescue mission to retrieve the sole surviving sibling, whose general whereabouts are somewhere behind enemy lines in Normandy - and all this a couple of days after D-Day. No such incident took place: no Allied commander would have thought it worth the risk in lives to assuage one distraught mother's potential further bereavement.
Spielberg's mistake is that, as one of the last remaining hardcore Clinton groupies, he's thinking in Clintonian terms - about publicity, image, spin: the death of another Ryan brother would not 'look good'. When Spielberg has General Marshall read out a letter from Lincoln to a mother whose sons all died in the Civil War, we're certainly meant to find his consoling words - that they gave their lives in a great and noble cause - inadequate. It's a measure of the gulf between 1944 and 1998 that The Fighting Sullivans was released during the war because it was thought the supreme sacrifice of one family would be inspiring. Alas, not to baby boomers.
So much has been written about the unprecedented 'realism' of this film's war scenes that the equally unprecedented unrealism of its thinking has passed virtually unnoticed. You've probably seen a zillion articles about the film's prologue - a recreation of D-Day which lasts almost as long and doubtless cost a lot more - so I'll say only this: yes, it's impressive; yes, every shot of blood and tissue and body parts is underlined by adroit effects; yes, every moment is a testament to Spielberg's command of cinematic technique; but that's the problem - you react to it as technique, as showmanship. There's one perfect shot after another: the silence underwater, with its dangerous illusion of respite; the pitterpatter of rain on leaves gradually blurring into rifle fire. The whole thing is oddly pointless: you're not engaged by the predicament of the troops because you're so busy admiring the great film-maker behind them. A film cannot really be 'authentic' if all you notice is the authenticity.
Purporting to be a recreation of the US landings on Omaha Beach, Private Ryan is actually an elite commando raid by Hollywood and the Hamptons to seize the past. After the spectacular D-Day prologue, the film settles down, Tom Hanks and his men are dispatched to rescue Matt Damon (the elusive Private Ryan) and Spielberg finds himself in need of the odd line of dialogue. Endeavouring to justify their mission to his unit, Hanks's sergeant muses that, in years to come when they look back on the war, they'll figure that 'maybe saving Private Ryan was the one decent thing we managed to pull out of this whole godawful mess'. Once upon a time, defeating Hitler and his Axis hordes bent on world domination would have been considered 'one decent thing'. Even soppy liberals figured that keeping a few million more Jews from going to the gas chambers was 'one decent thing'. When fashions in victim groups changed, ending the Nazi persecution of pink-triangled gays was still 'one decent thing'. But, for Spielberg, the one decent thing is getting one GI joe back to his picturesque farmhouse in Iowa.
Saving Private Ryan isn't an anti-war film in the sense that, say, principled pictures like All Quiet on the Western Front are. Instead, as usual with Spielberg, it's his take on his own childhood: it's an anti-war-film film. As far as the real war's concerned, it seems to be too much for him to comprehend. In a few coherent interviews, he's suggested that the war was worth fighting because it produced the baby boomers. But it's flattering him to pretend he has any view on the war one way or another: with his customary lack of imagination, he simply cannot conceive of a world where men are prepared, quietly and without fanfare, to die for their country. Perhaps he has a point: in a narcissistic Clinto-Spielbergian culture, it's hard to see what would now drive the general populace to risk their lives.
In that sense, Saving Private Ryan is the antithesis of Casablanca: the problems of one human being are what count; it's all those vast impersonal war aims that don't amount to a hill of beans. You'd have more confidence in this general proposition if Spielberg weren't so wretchedly inadequate at conjuring vivid human beings: Hanks's unit is a perfunctory round-up of single-trait types - one Jew, one coward, all very unmemorable. The nearest to a real human being in the film is General Marshall, not just because he's played by the sturdy Harve Presnell but because Marshall is an actual real human being and thus the director has something to latch on to. Otherwise, Spielberg's approach to making drama is as impersonal as Ike moving pins around the map in the operations room.
from The Spectator, September 12th 1998.
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I must admit that I have not seen a Spielberg movie since "Schindlers List" (admittedly a masterful film.) I just don't find his story-telling very compelling anymore. When everything is technique, manipulation and "The Visual Wonder" of CGI, who gives a damn anymore? I can see Marks point about "Saving Private,Rtan" - Who needs a war movie that is just a war movie about war movies? I am sure that Spielberg really doesn't have a point of reference about World War II except what he has absorbed from other films. The idea that there may be something more to the conflict other than cinematic sentimentality would simply not occur to Steven Spielberg. The idea if real death and sacrifice in a noble cause is foreign to our generation of hip, "gritty" and CGI obsessed filmmakers.
I could not make it past the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. It seemed almost cartoonsh. But then, I don't watch many movies. Most of what I will watch are oldies, like Cat On A Hot Tim Roof, which I watched recently. One thing I notice when comparing movie stars of the past with those of the present, is that the vintage stars seem to be much more genuinely beautiful, as in the case of Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. More current stars like Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper cannot hold a candle to them in that regard. Or pick any other two and the same is true IMO. Perhaps with the female stars it is the Weinstein effect and those who get the biggest movie deals are those who, ahem, put out, beauty and talent were secondary.
On a somewhat similar note, how about Cheap Trick's "Surrender" for a song of the week? With the original lyrics about the WACs. "Surrender" wasn't expected to be a top chart hit, but it has been used in many movies and TV shows from Fast Times at Ridgemont High to Scrubs, and is instantly recognizable.
Years ago my wife and I spent a weekend at the Thayer Hotel on West Point. The bar in the hotel is named Patton's Pub so we stepped in to enjoy an adult beverage. The bar is adorned with various Patton memorabilia and photos. The young bar tender asked me if they ever made a movie about General Patton and I replied that they had. He went on to explain that he had a very unpleasant experience with a prior customer who attempted to come over the bar and teach him a thing or two because he was unaware of the film. Apparently, the customer was an old WWII veteran who served with Old Blood and Guts during the Battle of the Bulge. I offered a piece of advice and told the lad that if he's going to work in Patton's Pub, he should brush up on all things Patton. That movie is my all time favorite WWII film.
Although I think the technical achievements on display in many Spielberg movies are undeniably breathtaking, I don't find my soul stirred by any of his output saving perhaps Schindler's List which was dark and harrowing and really touched the heart of Spielberg's existential and spiritual trauma. I believe the main reason for the lack of soul stirring is the unlikableness of Spielberg's characters.
To the best of my recollection his characters are all more or less unlikable, from the Goonie brats, to Indiana Jones, to all the forgettable Jurassic morons, expedients, and scoundrels.
I trace the problem to Spielberg's racial and spiritual post holocaust trauma which prevents his work from portraying human goodness.
Schindler is a rare good character who is rendered almost likable but Spielberg is otherwise unwilling to allow goodness to imbue his characters. That is in keeping with jaded, worldly wise, post-holocaust, post-modernism which is fully earth bound, incapable of transcendence, and has moved beyond good and evil. If good and evil are referenced at all, they are just plot devices.
But when human goodness is factored out of the equation we get unlikable characters. In a Spielberg movie the good guys don't have to be especially good. They just need to be a little smarter and luckier than the bad/amoral guys/monsters. Indeed in progressive thinking like Spielberg's, it is almost irrelevant which side you pick as the good side since all notions of right and wrong are relative to viewpoint. This renders his movies memorable mainly for their triumphs of technical achievement which I suppose is still something.
Excellent critique of the film. But USS Juneau was a fast light cruiser, not a battleship. Battleships are always named for states. Cruisers are named for cities. Juneau was damaged in the Battle of Guadalcanal and sunk by a Japanese submarine while en route to Noumea for repairs. The great naval battles around Guadalcanal, several of which were decisively won by the Japanese, do not attract enough attention. The water between Guadalcanal and Tulagi is called "Iron-bottom Sound" for good reasons.
Wow -- this Mark Steyn guy is really good!
Saving Private Ryan really is based on a true story, just not the Fighting Sullivans. It's loosely based on the four brothers of the Niland family. Three of the four were at Normandy on D-Day. Fritz and Bob were paratroopers. Bob and Preston, a second lieutenant with the 4th Infantry Division were killed on D-Day while Ed was missing in action after being shot down over Burma. After D-Day the surviving brother Fritz was sent home to serve out the war in the United States. The missing airman turned out to have been captured by the Japanese and survived the war. Preston was killed on Utah Beach and Bob was killed in an heroic rear guard action near Neuville-au-Plain. All in all it is a much better story than the one cooked up for Saving Private Ryan.
Spielberg is always making someone else's movie. Raiders of the Lost Ark is his Saturday matinee serial, ET was his 1950's Sci-Fi B-movie, etc. Saving Private Ryan was his WWII movie. Spielberg is often called "too sentimental" I am not sure that Spielberg is genuinely sentimental but Saving Private Ryan should not be as sentimental as it is.
Spoiler alert! (If you haven't seen the movie in 20 years I'm not too worried about it.) There is a scene where the Jewish soldier murders two Germans coming out of a bunker on Omaha beach and proclaims it is revenge for murdering Jews in concentration camps. From what I have read the GI's who liberated the camps in May 1945 were shocked by what they found. This scene is a rip off of The Longest Day where Tommy Sands' character guns down two Germans coming out of the bunker. I think it is the real bunker on Omaha beach. After shooting the Germans he says to his buddy, "I wonder what Bitte, Bitte means?" which has the greater emotional impact of regrets to come. (Maybe Teen Age Crush could be a Steyn Song of the Week!)
The climactic battle end of the movie combines the battle plan from Goonies with Deus ex Machina into a chaotic mess. In the final scene where the elderly Ryan asked his wife if he's a good man, all I can think of is that you are really Matt Damon, so the answer is no.
I read somewhere that the two men gunned down were Osttruppen. Some surrendering Germans were gunned down and some may not have been "German." But why include such an incident?
" ...you are really Matt Damon, so the answer is no."
Awesomness! I laughed so hard I nearly coughed up my socks.
Mrs Sullivan went to work helping to sell war bonds. Her daughter joined the WACs.
I watched the movie at a small outdoor (no cars like in North America) cinema in Portugal. It was night time and raining lightly which gave a feeling of 'being there' to fighting scenes but I had to chuckle when Ted Danson of Cheers appeared briefly as a tough-guy soldier. I remember watching the Fighting Sullivans when I was youngster and it was very moving because it was true. Private Ryan was entertaining but not remotely realistic.
I remember liking the film when I saw it, but I agree that the underlying conceit is weak and the technical expertise didn't make up for that.
It's not a movie about WWII that I've ever rewatched as opposed to the more historical dramas like Tora! Tora! Tora! and The Longest Day. For that matter, I've watched Sam Fuller's The Big Red One many times. It's a lot less sentimental than Speilberg's and manages to do D-Day with very few shots, but they're memorable. The difference, I suspect, is that Fuller wasn't a Baby Boomer and was a veteran of WWII. (And certainly did not have a comparable budget.)
Speilberg really is obsessed with Nazis and WWII, but he can't overcome his sentimentality usually to do a good job with the material.
The Big Red One was autobiographical for Sam Fuller. Fuller was on the beach being shot at. This is the major difference between Spielberg and great directors like Fuller. Sam Fuller had a story to tell, Steven Spielberg tells other people's stories with the exception of riding his bike around Southern California suburbs.
This is an excellent article.
While any ex-soldier will note the errors in tactics, my own experience with photographers is that they focus on the photo not realism - they love to bunch you up - in pictures of troops!
I do have a complaint with the review, though. The comment 'maybe saving Private Ryan was the one decent thing we managed to pull out of this whole godawful mess' by the Sergeant, was in relation the patrol staying to assist the unit tasked with holding the bridge and that the outcome of holding the bridge until the relief arrived would be a valuable outcome of the patrol that initially was intended to save a solder.
I enjoyed the movie because it was drama not for a documentary.
Alex: I rarely part ways with Mark but he misses by a country mile the singular greatness of this film. We all knew that the central theme was fictional - well so what? I couldn't count how many war films I've seen over the years that never seem to quite capture the holy terror of combat. The D-Day landing footage alone is almost terrifying to watch. Few people other than the remaining landing survivors realized how many of our boys drowned because the landing crafts couldn't reach the beach due to typical FUBAR. Spielberg gets even this long forgotten detail right due to listening to some of the brave dudes who actually experienced it. Mark should remember that at the film's original release so many survivors offered heartfelt thanks that finally some one got it right. Even better for me was the footage of the small band of brothers desperately trying hold the bridge near the ending of the film full well knowing that many of them - badly outnumbered - were not walking away from this one. Facing two tiger and two panzer tanks with little firepower to stop them we hear the rumbling and screeching of metal on metal slowly approaching unseen and the amazing sound recording adds to the impending terror. The bloody combat that follows is as realistic as the invasion footage. The final scene at the grave site is a challenge for anyone to stay dry eyed. I admittedly failed the test. Politics aside - this is the definitive combat film.
The first time I watched this movie was on my newly-acquired HD telly (720, not the real thing), and I was amazed at the detail on an army helmet. The details got in the way of the yarn, and the liberal spin irritated me.
Matt Damon is forever Maaatt Daaamonnn from Team America, so any movie with him in it becomes unengaging. The suspension of disbelief is suspended.
Wow, seems like Mark and the commenters are pretty down on this movie. Me, I admire the way Speilberg seamlessly inserts Forrest Gump into the WWII footage.
I lost interest in the "realism" of this film when Hanks leads his unit across a field, surrounded by trees, diagonally. One sniper could have wiped them out from behind a tree. No respectable unit leader would risk his men in this fashion.
If Pvt. Ryan was really from Iowa, he could be a very distant relative. My great-great grandfather settled in Iowa in 1842 in Clayton County across from Wisconsin. He had 12 children. My great grandfather had 12 children. My grandfather had 6 children, one of whom was my uncle Paul who was also killed in WWII. Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa still have many of my first cousins living there, so I know there have to be twice removed and thrice removed there as well. One of them may be Paul Ryan who bears a remarkable resemblance to my father as a young man.
Mark is 100% Correct. His analysis is precisely why I never bothered to view this Hollywood-faked "ultra-drama". "Fake Drama" is still FAKE, if I am not mistaken.
How convenient it must be to view All Of History backwards through a telescope-like device that emphasizes the current LibTard PC trends and prejudices, and ignores the realities of the times that are purportedly being "portrayed" in these films.
[P.S. I have an M.A. in Film from a Top-10 program (70s). And that is exactly why I have not watched a modern "movie" in a theater since "Schindler's List". Perhaps I have missed some good movies, but I am certain that I have not wasted my life watching the unending parade of Libtard Moonbat "historical" motion pictures!]
[BTW: Virtually every presentation on Turner Classic Movies beats every "SENSATIONAL Theatrical Release", even if your 12yo kid would rather see the CGI-generated slush... And I have no connection at all with TCM, other than enjoying the presentations on that channel...]
I have to agree with Mark's review in most respects. I've watched this film a number of times and always seem to lose interest after the opening scene of the D-Day landing. I have to point out though that there is a truly authentic human moment in the film that always brings a tear to my eye. It is the moment at the end where the aged private Ryan asks his wife if he is a good man. Having met some WWII vets, I always got the sense of some level of survivor's guilt in the one's I've had a real chance to speak with. That scene in the film captures that very well in my opinion.
I'm a nurse. I've cared for a number of WW II vets. They've been my favorite patients. Not one has ever expressed any survivor's guilt. They've all had a great sense of humor and a down to earth understanding of the necessity to defend what's good in the world. One patient who helped to liberate Dachau told me the smell bothered him so much that he couldn't eat meat for months afterward. They all saw horrible things, but none of them suffered mental anguish.
Perhaps we've just spoken to different people. But to clarify, nobody ever came out and said "I have survivor's guilt" or made any kind of explicit expression like that. And yes, they have been able to carry on normal conversations about mundane topics and be cheerful. What I'm speaking of is more subtle than that and only manifests itself when they speak specifically about their war experiences. For instance, a reference to a friend who rode the troop train to a port of exit with them and later ended up getting himself killed or a particularly vivid memory. One example is the memory of the sound of mortar shells 65 years after the fact.
I currently have a patient who is 99. He landed on the beaches of Normandy and fought his way across France and Germany, helping to liberate Dachau. We look at his old letters from during the war and come across old photographs. He has mentioned people who got killed, but by now most everyone he knew then, whether they survived or not, is dead. In a philosophical moment he said that the real crime in war is that all of the healthiest men are sent to fight and die, what he called the 'defective men' the ones who weren't physically or psychologically fit to fight, stayed home and ended up running things when the good men were killed.
I've had patients who fought in the Korean war. One of them was distraught at never finding the family of his brother Marine who was killed in battle. I had a friend who works for the Veteran's project for the LOC find this man's surviving kin. They got in touch with my patient who got to tell them how his buddy was killed.
There is something deeply profound that binds men to each other when they've been in battle together, something only they understand.