I am most comfortable reviewing the film less
on a cinematic level than a cultural one. The performances are
uniformly good. Tom Hanks conveys the awkward nature of an
ordinary man pressed into extraordinary service with skill and
introspection. He and Denzel Washington continue to vie for the
90s James Stewart everyman in American film.
The film's roundly lauded re-creation of D-Day
is every bit at jarring and innovative as reported. Spielberg
brilliantly changes the vantage point of the viewer, and the
speed and unearthly horror of mass battle is depicted in
frightening detail. He tracks the advance on the beach, then
moves to a hand-held camera, then to the view of a German gun
nest, then back to the beach, with such swiftness that you lose
your breath at times. The effect of the opening scene leaves you
lost for the next ten minutes.
When you do reorient, the film becomes a more
conventional war film/morality play. Spielberg, as usual, has his
characters talk too much for fear of losing the audience as to
what he deems important. Additionally, certain objects are given
significance, you know it, and with a mildly annoying
predictability, they reappear to play their parts.
Still, I recently read Stephen Ambrose's
"Citizen Soliders", a significant portion of which was
devoted to the D-Day landing and the events thereafter
("Ryan" covers the first week). The battle scenes that
ensue after the landing remain true to history. The ingenuity of
the GI's - which might otherwise strike a viewer as contrived -
is properly utilized by Spielberg. The crucial role of firepower,
the slap-dash organization of discombobulated soldiers, the
treatment of German prisoners, and the heroic level of unit
cohesion - all receive effective drmatization at the hands of the
director.
In the end, however, Ryan works as a
particularly American film, and as such, it transcends mere
niggling film criticism. Neither a rah rah polemic or a cynical
anti-war tract, the film speaks on a higher plane. The viewer
realizes the aim of this particular conflict, and that aim is
inarguably lofty. Within the aim, Spielberg devises a riskier
proposition - the danger to the many (a unit) to save Private
Ryan, who is the last survivor of four Ryan brothers (the three
others killed in action). The grisly reality of slaughter of many
for the saving of more, and the slaughter of more for the saving
one, is juxtaposed, creating the crisis for Hanks, the unit
leader, and the audience.
But, for me, Ryan works on a scale larger than
these juxtaposed conflicts. At a time when the nation is spoiled
- for better or worse - and headily impressed with its own meager
problems, Ryan transports the viewer to a time when the costs of
everyday life were great, and for higher purpose. In this manner,
Ryan beco
Compare, for example, two of last years' films.
As Good As It Gets was about a spoiled romance writer witha
condition wherein he could not refrain from gay-bashing his
neighbors. His heroism, we were informed, was in learning to love
while simultaneously not shitting on anyone in proximity. Titanic
gave us rats on a sinking ship, with Cameron lovingly bouncing
them off fantails. In the mean, Cameron regaled us with the
cowardice of the rats.
So, we are confronted with the stomach-churning
slaughter - both for the greater good and the individual saving -
and Spielberg makes us realize that we can discuss the correct
stances on such slaughter and aims forever, and it will always be
academic for us the viewer. Similarly, for the combatants, and
his characters, the moral arguments were academic. But there was
no real discussion. The orders were in place.
And that is where Ryan becomes culturally
valuable. I am heartened that at a time when oral history is
becoming less and less available, the country can watch in large
scale a historical montage of D-Day, and the sacrifice it
entailed. And that Spielberg, a craftsman, undertook the project.
