Monday, July 27, 1998
'Saving Private Ryan' worth watching if you can stomach blood
FILM: Spielberg's new movie realistically depicts emotional, visual horrors of World War II
By Mike Prevatt
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The mission is simple: Dreamworks Pictures must brave the summer movie slaughterfest and save their Oscar hopeful "Saving Private Ryan" amid overwhelming publicity that has marked the Steven Spielberg movie as horrendously violent. With reports that the World War II epic missed an NC-17 rating just by virtue of Spielberg's name on the project, "Saving Private Ryan" seems to be the one movie that people are almost afraid to see.
It's too bad, because Spielberg's latest dramatic exploration into history is easily the most moving film of the summer. Based on a fictitious story that begins on D-day, the June 6, 1944, battle on Omaha Beach, "Saving Private Ryan" takes the human spirit to the battlefield, pummeling it with all sorts of moral dilemmas that come with such a mindless institution as war.
Tom Hanks plays Captain John Miller, the leader of a small squad headed for Europe. But once Hanks and his crew get behind enemy lines, they find themselves with a new mission: Seek out Private James Ryan (Matt Damon) and send him home. The government had ordered Ryan to return home to his mother, who was grieving over the recent loss of her other three sons.
As they pass one battle site to the other, the same questions of morality keep surfacing. The company constantly tries to understand why their lives have been put on the line for one soldier. Each new situation in "Saving Private Ryan" reflects this introspective search for reason in a chaotic environment, and does so with striking (and occasionally overly sentimental) emotion that sometimes doesn't even surface until the moment has passed.
Spielberg, whose '90s dramatic works have represented the anti-historical textbook because of their emphasis on human morality, captures the horror, heart and detail of World War II flawlessly. The battle scenes featured could easily be considered the best in film. Unflinching in his revealing re-enactment of D-day, he uses hand-held camerawork, massive amounts of blood and plenty of graphic violence to get as close to the realities of the battlefield as possible. The alarming realism is enough to make you abandon your popcorn.
This makes sense, aside from potentially nauseating implications, because this is no popcorn flick. Unlike the usually dazzling, heroism-amidst-digital-catastrophe summer fare, Spielberg aims to shock you with the truth and make you think about it. How ironic, coming from the master of the big summer blockbuster.
Hanks' Miller leads some of Hollywood's brightest young talent, portraying men of different, yet typical, backgrounds and personalities. There's the reluctant, rebellious soldier (Edward Burns, of "The Brothers McMullen"), the southern, bible-preaching sharpshooter (Barry Pepper), the melodramatic medic (Giovanni Ribisi) and the revenge-seeking Jew (Adam Goldberg).
Yet the two most vital members of Hanks' squad symbolize the ends of the psychological spectrum.
As Sergeant Horvath, Tom Sizemore ("The Relic") shines as Hanks' loyal and stoic right-hand man. The scene-stealing Jeremy Davies ("Spanking the Monkey"), plays Corporal Upham, the misplaced, timid soldier lost in this foreign environment but eager to find the right in every situation.
Upham, an untrained translator, is picked on by his fellow men because he is clumsy and deathly afraid. His character breaks down the notion of the fearless soldier and brings forth a new image: the image of a shaken man thrust into an ungodly situation just trying to survive. In his efforts, which are never short of spirit, Upham learns how horrible and irrational war really is but rarely reflects on the inhumanity of the other soldiers.
Hanks' Miller, on the other hand, remains a distant leader who expresses himself best through his silence. Spielberg's psychological realism comes through best when the aghast Miller watches the carnage of the battles in complete (and unsettling) silence. Yet Hanks is not without his heavy-hearted lines. Despite unaffected moments in which he finds it necessary to hide his emotion, he makes up for it in his talk with the unflinching Private Ryan, telling him to "earn this" sacrifice that Miller and his team must make for him.
In the end, "Saving Private Ryan" manages to balance the horror and the gruesomeness of war with cinematic and emotional beauty. Beyond the lasting impression of war in a nightmarish fashion, it is the quest for survival and the search for the human spirit that makes "Ryan" unforgettable.
Dreamworks
Tom Hanks plays Captain John Miller in "Saving Private Ryan," a story about a quest to retrieve a man from behind enemy lines during World War II.