“Saving Private Ryan” originated
from writer Robert Rodat seeing a monument to eight siblings killed in the
Civil War. He brought the idea to
producer Mark Gordon. The movie was a
huge critical and box office success.
Made for around $70 million, it made over $480 million and was the
highest grossing film of the year. The
Omaha Beach set and reenactment cost $12 million and used 1,500 extras
(including amputees) and 40 gallons of fake blood. The Ramelle set was built from scratch,
including the bridge and the river. It
was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won 5 (Cinematography, Sound, Sound
Editing, Film Editing, and Director).
Incredibly it lost Best Picture to “Shakespeare in Love” in the most
egregious miscarriage in Oscar history.
Almost as perplexing was Hanks’ loss to Roberto Bergnini. The movie is currently #71 on AFI’s list of
greatest movies of all time.
It opens with an old man visiting a
cemetery with his family in tow. There
are American and French flags on display and rows and rows of crosses and Stars
of David. The camera zooms in on the old
veteran’s face. Flashback time.
Members of Charlie Company, 2nd
Rangers head for Omaha Beach on D-Day.
They are on board a Higgins Boat.
When the ramp goes down, all hell breaks loose. Thus begins the most amazing combat scene in
war movie history. The variety of
viscerality is overwhelming. Men getting
hit by bullets below the water. Others
drown due to the weight of their equipment.
A flamethrower crew is incinerated.
A soldier picks up his severed arm.
Someone pulls a torso. Deaths are
random. Blood turns the water red. Bullets ping off beach obstacles. Tracers whiz by. A medic blocks a wounded soldier with
corpses.
The
sea wall is an only slightly safer refuge.
A doctor performs triage on the wounded.
A chaplain gives last rites. A
soldier prays. Bangalore torpedoes open
up a lane through the barbed wire. Capt.
Miller (Hanks) leads his men against a machine gun nest and then up to the
bluff where they take out a bunker and battle Germans in a trench system. Potential prisoners are killed. With a lull in the violence, the camera pans
over the beach debris. One of the bodies
is a “Ryan, S.”
Back in the Pentagon, a typist notices three
death letters to a Ryan family. When
Gen. Marshall is informed that the last surviving Ryan boy is alive in
Normandy, he reads a letter written by Lincoln to a Mrs. Bixby who had lost
five sons in the Civil War. Marshall:
“If the boy is alive we are going to send somebody to find him and we’re gonna
get him the Hell out of there.”
It’s D-Day plus 3 when Miller and his
men are given the “public relations mission” of finding PFC James Ryan. The paratrooper is somewhere behind enemy
lines. Miller takes six of his veterans
and adds a nerdy cartographer who speaks German named Upham (Jeremy
Davies). The eight leave on their wild
paratrooper chase in a foul mood. Why
are they risking their lives for one guy?
They are in for a series of episodes as they work their way to finding
Ryan. The last act is them trying to hold a bridge in a battered ghost town.
ACTING: A+
ACTION: A+ (8/10)
ACCURACY:
N/A
PLOT: B
REALISM: B
CINEMATOGRAPHY:
A+
SCORE: A
SCENE: Omaha Beach
QUOTE: Miller: “This Ryan better be worth it. He'd better go
home and cure some disease or invent a longer-lasting lightbulb or something.
'Cause the truth is, I wouldn't trade 10 Ryans for one Vecchio or one Caparzo.”
CRITIQUE:
The acting in “Saving
Private Ryan” is very good. Tom Hanks is his usual outstanding self, but the
supporting cast is strong and there are no weak performances. Even Vin Diesel
(thankfully not in the film long enough to do damage) ups his game and dies
well. Speaking of which, SPR has the highest quality of death scenes that I
have seen in a war movie. SPR is famous
for the ten day boot camp the actors were put through by Dale Dye in
preparation for their roles. Matt Damon (Ryan) was purposely left out so he
would be treated subconsciously as an outsider. For a movie that attempts to be
as close to reality as possible, the actors do not come off as like they are
playing army men. They gripe a lot and question the mission. They do not want
to accept the new guy (Upham) and never really bond with him. They respect
Capt. Miller, but only grudgingly follow him when he issues questionable
orders. This is realistic considering
some of the stupid decisions he makes. He’s supposed to be a great leader, but
if you think about his decisions, he is less than great. For instance,they are
given this special mission and yet he decides to take out a machine gun nest and
he allows his medic to make the charge.
“Saving Private Ryan” is
not remembered for its dialogue. In fact, in one of the most powerful scenes
(when Mrs. Ryan is notified about her sons’ deaths), there is not a spoken
word. The movie does have some nice dialogue. Much of it is aimed at non-war
movie buffs so some of it (the running FUBAR routine, for instance) can be
aggravating. Robert Rodat’s script was nominated for Best Original
Screenplay. Much of the dialogue is terse and the most famous line is simply:
“Earn this.” The monologues are well done, especially when Wade describes
pretending to be asleep when his mother would come home and when Miller finally
reveals his previous life.
SPR was lauded for
creating a new style war movie when it came out and many of the masses
swallowed this analysis. In reality, it merely puts a different spin on the
classic war movie template. It is after all a hero leading a small unit on a
mission. The unit is heterogeneous. There is a conflict within the group
between Reiben and Horvath that is resolved by external pressure. There is a
ritual recalling the peaceful past (listening to the song on the gramophone).
But the movie was not aimed at war movie fans, it was aimed at the general
public and it was huge hit. I don’t
think most viewers cared about the cliches. Just because something has been
seen in many war movies does not mean it shouldn’t be used again.
SPR combines two
standard war movie plot tropes. The first half is the patrol on a mission and
the second half is the last stand. Both segments incorporate the “who will
survive?” angle. Although not groundbreaking as far as those tried and true elements,
the way the screenwriter handles them is quite good. The objective is certainly
outside the box- a mission to rescue one soldier. The plot is very manipulative
of the audience and takes advantage the non-war movie lovers who would find
much of it fresh. It pulls all the emotional strings reaching a crescendo at
the end. It throws in a German character to link key scenes and contrive the
ending. As ridiculously implausible as this arc is, it is not embarrassing like
in “The Big Red One”.
Although incorrectly
credited with modernizing the war movie plot, SPR can be credited with taking
war movie combat to a new level of realism. It is popular these days to
downplay the greatness of the movie, but the opening scene is still the most
amazing combat scene ever filmed and has not been topped. That one scene will
be remembered as a seminal moment in war movie history. I also would like to
remind everyone that Dale Dye was the technical advisor so it was well vetted.
The cinematography of Janusz Kaminski richly deserved the
Oscar. He managed to get a newsreel feel
by desaturating the colors. Equally
impressive are the sound effects. The
sounds of battle have seldom been better. The highlight is when Miller
loses his hearing due to explosions and combat stress. The monstrous roar
of the Tiger tanks in the final battle is straight out of a horror movie. It
could be argued that SPR has the best sound and visual effects of any war
movie. The score by John Williams is fine and not bombastic.
HISTORICAL
ACCURACY: SPR does not claim to be based on a true
story, it does not even claim to be inspired by a true story. This is a bit surprising because it could
legitimately claim that inspiration by way of two sources. The 5 Sullivan Brothers all perished when the
U.S.S. Juneau went down off Guadalcanal. This led to the adoption of the Sole
Survivor Rule in which the Pentagon attempted to avoid the loss of entire
sibling sets. A stronger connection to
the film is to the Niland family.
Frederick Niland was a paratrooper in Normandy who was pulled out of
combat and returned home after two brothers were lost in D-Day and a third was
shot down over Burma (and survived Japanese imprisonment). In spite of the similarity to the Niland
story, it is obvious that Spielberg’s film is meant to be fictional. For that reason, it is more appropriate to
discuss how realistic it is rather than how accurate it is.
The Omaha Beach scene has been
justifiably lauded for its realism (including by veterans of the assault) and
still remains the most realistic reenactment of any combat in war movie
history. However, it is not perfect. The Americans landing on Dog Green sector
were actually transported on British landing craft, not Higgins Boats. The carnage rings true, but the time
compression makes the conquest of the bluff seem much too quick and easy. And by the way, bullets lose too much
momentum when they enter water to be able to kill men, as depicted in the film.
As to the mission, it seems unlikely
that a crack squad of Rangers would have been sent on this type of mission to
find one man. In reality, a chaplain
located Fritz Niland. The sniper duel is
reminiscent of a confrontation involving Marine sniper Carlos Hatchcock in the
Vietnam War. He put a bullet through the
enemy’s scope at about 100 yards. In the
film, Jackson estimates his shot at 450 yards which puts it out of the range of
possibility given gravity’s effect on a bullet’s trajectory. I’ve already dealt with the unrealistic
tactics in the radar site assault. As
far as allowing the prisoner to go, Miller certainly would not have faced
charges for the common sense alternative. In fact, soldiers at D-Day and the
following days were discouraged from taking prisoners.
As far as the last battle is
concerned, there are several problems.
Although there were such things as “Sticky Bombs”, they were a British
experiment and were not make-shift. I
found no evidence that they were described in the U.S. Army Field Manual. It is also highly unlikely that mortar shells
could be armed by hitting them on the base plate and then thrown to explode on
a target. As far as the tanks are
concerned, there were no Tiger tanks in that part of Normandy at that stage of
the war. Also, tactically the Germans
would probably have sent the infantry in first.
By the way, the tanks used in the film were Soviet T-34s mocked up to
look like Tigers. I have no problem with
that. What I do have a problem with is
why the tanks did not use their machine guns.
I suppose that game changer would have messed with the plot. Speaking of tanks, Miller would not have been
able to fire a machine gun into the tank’s viewer. One last thing: the P-51 that arrives to save the day had no
ability to fire a rocket or drop a bomb.
(Joining all the other fighter planes in war movie history that dropped
ordinance they did not have.)
CONCLUSION:
It is popular lately to take shots at “Saving Private Ryan” and I have
to admit that upon watching it for the tenth time and reading about some of the
mistakes, it is not perfect. However, it
is clearly a masterpiece as entertainment for the masses. People like me have to remind ourselves that
not everyone has seen a lot of war movies.
Tropes are not as obvious to average viewers. More specifically, most people are not
concerned with the use of a Higgins Boat in place of British LCA.
You can accuse Spielberg of manipulating the emotions of the audience,
but he is a master at this and he is at the top of his game here. When you watch some of his more recent
efforts like “War Horse”, you can appreciate the relative sublety of this film
and be thankful it’s earlier Spielberg.
