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I've also seen "Saving Private Ryan." It's the first
movie I've seen that obeys the real nature of war (not that I'd
know, just that this is what I've been told): you're afraid of
dying, and then you're ashamed of being afraid, and then somebody
does die and you're glad it wasn't you, and then you're ashamed
that you're glad, and then you go back to being afraid of dying,
except that this all happens in the blink of an eye. I have to
respect Spielberg for doing his job so well that this becomes the
first principle of the audience as well. (We all cringed like
hell when the soldier starts looking through the apples. We were
sure he was gonna die.) I think it's a valuable lesson, and not
one civilians are even remotely familiar with.
That said, I hate the movie. I hate Spielberg for trying to
explain stuff that didn't happen to him, and I hate his
scriptwriters, actors and crew for collaborating. There is a kind
of false gratitude in paying homage to dead men. We honor them,
but of course none of us would switch places with them for a
second. I hate the ad people who came up with the slogan "In
the last great war," because there are no great wars. I hate
myself for going to watch a recreation of other humans' long-past
suffering, reformated to be slightly more narratively satisfying,
and I particularly hate the people I saw it with, many of whom
actually fucking applauded afterwards.
I've been thinking about this since I saw the film yesterday, and
this is the conclusion I've come to: War exists on only two
levels, the state and the personal. Because states involve so
many individuals, there must sometimes be enormous personal
sacrifices for the sake of a state. Whether a state's cause is
just or deserving, or whether states are familiar with the
personal sacrifice they ask of their citizens when they go to war
is a topic for another time.
But on the personal level, I am given to understand that when you
are in war, there is nothing else except your own very intimate
desire to not be killed and it's the most horrible experience a
human being can have and not actually be dead at the end of it.
Therefore, when Tim O'Brien writes about his experiences in
Vietnam, I can listen to him vomit up stories of his own
cellular-level fear because those are his stories. When an artist
conveys his or her own understanding of that moment of "I
don't want to die," I can accept that and I can try to feel
a small scrap of what he or she felt. But the makers of Ryan are
group of people who've never been there, and they cannot give me
that understanding, and it sickens me that they would try.
The irony here is that I had to see this film to come to that
conclusion, because it was only by looking at probably the most
intensive effort ever made to recreate a war that I realized it
can't be done. Not with known actors, not with the understanding
beforehand that it's all fictional. A documentary might succeed,
I think, but then I have to ask: why would we want a documentary
about war? The killing and the death is terrible enough the first
time without repeating it.
Which brings me back to my earlier point that I am now convinced
the only stories of war that have value are the stories of
individuals, Homer telling the story of the Illiad, Picasso
painting the ruins of Guernica. We will, I suppose, always need
stories of war because of the human need for catharsis, but it
seems apparent to me that no technology in the world can equal
the force of one voice telling one story about not wanting to
die. And when a group of people tries to simultaneously endorse
or retell that story, the telling becomes a sickening form of
bragging. Those people would not wish for their survival en
masse, if they were on the beaches of Normandy, each would have
wanted his own survival and fuck the others. If they knew that
fear, it would have crippled them. Thus, that they were
sufficiently unmoved by fear to create special effects, do
retakes, lay in a soundtrack, corrupts the movie before it even
begins.
I'm sorry if the above is overlong, tedious and prone to ranting.
I have some hostility issues left over from wanting to
individually punch each and every member of the audience last
night. Also, I forgot perhaps the most important part: my
understanding of war, and what it is, comes from the writings of
veterans, exploring their experiences after enough years have
passed that they can stand to think about it for a few minutes at
a time. If I'd relied on movies to teach me about war, I doubt I
would have learned that war is about wanting to not die and being
afraid that you will.
Review Commentary:
10210
. KurtMondaugen - July 27, 1998 -
2:08 PM PDT
Kate:
It seems we're in some form of agreement regarding the combat
scenes in the film, though your comments are considerably more
heartfelt and eloquent than mine. I complained about the lack of
affect these scenes carried, after the intial few minutes of
unprepared shock, except as remarkable and meticulous examples of
carefully crafted (and expensive) large-scale filmmaking (though,
quite frankly, as intense and graphic as they're designed to be,
I tend to think they don't come close to conveying the actual
experience...closer, perhaps, than other films, but still...).
Unfortunately, they're also examples of just how phony the entire
"Ryan" project as whole seemed. Excellent posts.
10211
. CLLRDR - July 27, 1998 - 2:25 PM
PDT
Kate -- Dealing with things that "didn't happen to you"
is a good working definition of Art. That said, Spielberg, for
all his technical mastery, has suffered from a number of problems
on the intellectual level that in his recent work he has -
happily -- begun to clear up. The worst moments in
"SPR" are masterful compared to tha mountain of dreck
"The Color Purple" (referred to by many whites of my
acquaintance as "The Colored People" -- and for good
reason). A turning point, I feel is "Empire of the
Sun." Spielberg read it as a boys-own-adventure novel, plain
and simple. He had no idea that this apologia provita sua was
Ballard's way of explaining why he became the delightful weirdy
that he is today. In "SPR" as to some degree in the
conceptually simpler "Shindler's List," Spielberg is
asking himself what he's doing and why every step of the way. For
better or worse he's become an honest filmmaker. He's not the
same man he was when he started out. I first met him back in '78.
I was interviewing Milius about "Big Wednesday" over at
Milius' office on the Warner Bros. lot. Spielberg burst in,
unannounced, full of enthusiasm about some technical gizmo or
other he'd just happened upon. He had to tell someone about it
and Milius was closest by. Could charm the birds right out of the
trees, he could. I met him again right after
"Shindler." Totally different guy. I think he has a
promising career ahead of him.
10213
. katewrath - July 27, 1998 - 2:29 PM
PDT
Kurt: I think we are largely in agreement. Film is completely
inadequate for this purpose. My only dissenting point (and it's
one I've tried to suppress because it's hugely misanthropic and
uncharitable) is that there's no reason to discuss performances,
mise en scene, etc. when the real problem is that Spielberg,
Hanks et al lacked the foresight to see that their efforts at
veracity would only serve to degrade a horrible human experience
as it has probably never been degraded before. I include myself
in that "et al", by the way, because I watched
"The Glenn Miller Story" the night before I saw
"SPR" and I was angered at the fluffy 1952(?) treatment
of D-Day, and promised myself I would go the next day to see
"SPR" to see the war as it really was. And of course, I
realized too late that this decision was probably my finest
moment of blind stupidity in 26 years.
10215
. LadyChaos - July 27, 1998 - 2:33 PM
PDT
katewrath,
I don't understand your attitude at all. If SPR gave you a vivid
enough idea of what war was really like for you to say what you
are saying, then I would say that SPR was a successful work of
art.
10217
. katewrath - July 27, 1998 - 2:52 PM
PDT
CLLRDR: Forgive me for saying so, but I've found that pretty much
everyone who reviews films, writes about entertainment or
otherwise has a stake of some sort in Hollywood is apparently
blind to concept that film is not equal to every task.
I am not saying, btw, that art about things one hasn't
experienced is invalid; I'm saying war is a fucking sick thing to
pretend to experience. And to pretend badly only makes it that
much more repulsive. I do believe Spielberg did the best he
could, and I am pleased to see people remark that Miller's last
order to Ryan was "cruel", but it doesn't change the
fact that no matter how much money and talent you throw at it,
war cannot be accurately recreated on film, and I'm enraged to
see that the producers, critics and audiences are all willing to
ignore this.
(I hope I'm being clear here. I'm not just saying war is bad or
violence is painful. I'm saying that being alone with death is
the most basic human fear (one we largely do not have to face
these days) and that's what war is, hundreds of thousands of
times a day for every man on the field. This, more even than sex
or love or motherhood, is a sacred and scarring human experience,
and one I can't stand to see trivialized.)
10218
. CLLRDR - July 27, 1998 - 2:57 PM
PDT
Kate --Death is the mother's milk of filmmaking. Some of the very
first films ever made dealt with recreations of famous
executions. If "SPR" upsets you, how do you feel about
"I Know What You Did Last Summer," "Scream,"
"Scream2," "Deep Impact," Armageddon,"
etc.?
10220
. katewrath - July 27, 1998 - 3:31 PM
PDT
CLLRDR: I'm sorry, I'm not making myself clear, but I think, to
be frank, it's not something I explain any better than I have. I
recommend picking up a copy of "The Things They
Carried" and reading the first story. I would attempt to
explain to you how it feels to be in a war, certain you are going
to die in the next 5 seconds but wanting more than anything to
not die, yet having no choice but to make yourself walk forward,
not hide or run away, convinced you're about to get shot or blown
up, but a)I don't really know how it feels and b) in attempting,
I would be committing the same crime I've accused
"Ryan" of committing. And having spoken my piece, I
have no desire to keep shrieking at people that they don't
understand, that war is hell, because as I say, being inadequate
to the task is worse than not even attempting in the first place.
10221
. CLLRDR - July 27, 1998 - 3:43 PM
PDT
OK Kate, OK. But I still don't see why you're upset at Spielberg
for trying. It's impossible to reproduce the experience of war
with the exactitude you seem to demand. Do you think there are
hard and fast rules governing the representation certain
subjects? Your beginning to remind me of Claude Lanzman, who
declared the Holocaust to be a "holy" event incapable
of being represented in images. It was a neat trick, thereby
rendering his film "Shoah" the ultimate representation
of the Holocaust in that it wasn't a representation at all --
just a lot of shots of empty spaces a la Straub. Spielberg,
meanwhile, went right ahead and committed the unforgivable
"sin" of "Schindler's List." Would you send
him to the woodshed for that one too?
10222
. katewrath - July 27, 1998 - 3:45 PM
PDT
CD &DD: Your allusions to recent movies
made me realize something. You do realize I'm talking about the
non-fictional experience of waiting to be killed and not
fictional experiences or death itself, right? The part where fear
of being coward and shame at your own fear make you walk forward,
towards ever increasing chances of death, even though you want
desparately to run away? If you understand that this is what I'm
talking about and you still don't see what my problem is ...
well, at least I tried.
10223
. CLLRDR - July 27, 1998 - 3:49 PM
PDT
Kate -- I know that's exactly what you're talking about, and that
Spileberg, in your view, was found wanting. So?
10224
. katewrath - July 27, 1998 - 3:55 PM
PDT
Lady: I really am going to shut up about this I swear. No, Ryan
didn't give me this view point. Things I have read, paintings I
have seen before I walked into the theater gave me this view
point. All the movie did was demonstrate that it was a movie;
well-made, but still a movie. Yes I find that unforgivable. Yes
that makes me a stubborn, bone-headed bastard.
CD: I have fewer problems with Schindler's List because those
people were victims of a war crime, and the documenting of a war
crime is necessary because the victims will not be able to do it
themselves. It's the same encapsulated experience, but one we can
learn from (hey kids! Let's not ever commit genocide again!),
whereas war is nothing we can avoid in the future, nor would our
governments ever really really try. Still problematic, but less
so.
A war involves volunteers, or something very like it, and what
they unwittingly let themselves in for is an experience that
should not be trivialized or encapsulated into a viewing
experience so we can all say that we were really scared for a
while there, or we cried really hard. What I came away with when
I read stories by vets was a sick, bad feeling that they suffered
something I would not suffer for all the money in the world, and
nothing would ever change that.
10225
. CalGal - July 27, 1998 - 4:22 PM
PDT
Kate,
I'm with Cellar and Lady on this, although I completely
understand that you had a visceral reaction that ain't to be
messed with.
I dispute your distinction between a war crime and war. They're
both the same.
"The part where fear of being coward and shame at your own
fear make you walk forward, towards ever increasing chances of
death, even though you want desparately to run away? "
The first time I grasped this, really, was when I saw Platoon.
Because even in *watching* the movie I desperately didn't want to
be there and see what happened; had this incredible urge to
escape, get me the FUCK out of here NOW and realizing how
utterly, incredibly shit scary it would be to have that feeling
about a fucking situation where your death was not only possible
but very *likely* and not being able to leave. For the first
time, I really *got* it, and I've never forgotten it.
As I was watching the opening of SPR I had that same reaction
again. You can't stay on the boat, no. You've got to go ahead and
not backwards and you are very likely going to die. Again,
intense, skincrawling, visceral panic reaction.
Movies about war have helped me understand, as much as it
possible for me to do so, what war is like. I've read a great
deal about war experiences, seen artwork--didn't translate. For
me, I need the actualization that Spielberg and others have
provided.
I think any reaction to art is directly related to how people
process experience. So while I understand and accept your
reaction, I think that restricting the depictions of war in art
form--or, merely, to people who have been there--would cause a
lot of people to miss out on understanding what war is like
because they don't relate to the medium used.
10227
. SharonSchroeder - July 27, 1998 -
4:31 PM PDT
I feel that Speilberg is honoring veterans by attempting to show
what war is really like. He didn't do it to downgrade those who
fought but to show those who didn't what they have to be thankful
for and who they should be thanking.
10228
. KurtMondaugen - July 27, 1998 -
4:39 PM PDT
Sharon:
To be honest, and I said as much earlier, when looking over the
film's merits (or lack thereof) I personally don't think
Spielberg's true purpose with the opening sequence was expressly
to honor veterans, though that may very well have been a part of
his intention. From what I could see, the elaborate combat
footage (as well as the mawkish framing device) were a convenient
method for convincing an audience into elevating a weak, mauldlin
film to a level of import it didn't otherwise deserve. When
you're the most powerful man in Hollywood making a film on a
weighty topic (in this case simply 'war' rather than the didactic
ethical rhetoric), this sort of showmanship and manipulation is
more of an obligation than an indulgence. I think that this,
partly, could have something to do with Kate's negative reaction,
though I couldn't say for sure.
10229
. CalGal - July 27, 1998 - 4:48 PM
PDT
Kurt,
Although you may be right that Kate's reaction was due to the
combination of realism and what she perceived as a badly made
film (although that's not what her followup posts say), you sell
Spielberg short.
While you may feel that it's a weak, maudlin film, it's highly
unlikely that he went "hmm....I've got a lousy film here,
how can I hide that?"
Spielberg's faults have been the same since the beginning of his
career. Pompous, overstated, fine. But not insincere.
I agree with Cellar that he's made a significant improvement in
his Important Films since The Color Purple (although he fell back
with Amistad).
10230
. KurtMondaugen - July 27, 1998 - 4:54 PM PDT
I agree with both you and cellar on Spielberg's improvement,
though considering some of his efforts, that's mighty faint
praise. Oh, and my suspicions regarding Spielberg's motives
aren't really as sinister as they may have sounded (I just think
he's at present a mediocre filmmaker who just might make a very
fine film someday, and has hinted at such rather arbitrarily),
but I do think that line of thinking (the "tap, tap"
theory) plays a large and obvious part in any of Spielberg's
"No Happy-Meal" pictures.
10231. SharonSchroeder - July 27, 1998 -
4:57 PM PDT
Well, as one who knows nothing about films, I like Spielberg and
have enjoyed all of his work.
10252
. katewrath - July 28, 1998 - 10:11
AM PDT
I apologise for being so shockingly imprecise in describing my
problems with SPR; visceral reactions are not easy to get an
immediate handle on. As time passes, however, it occurs to me
that the litmus test for whether Spielberg's film was sucessful
or not is that if it had truly done its job, we wouldn't be able
to say things like "I liked it," or "I thought it
was good." ("Breaking the Waves" is the one film I
can think of that makes me react like that. There's probably
others, but they escape me at the moment, probably because I
actively avoid thinking about them.)
And because I've been incoherent, I can't really be irritated
with people who think I'm saying death is not an appropriate
subject for art or that only those who experience a thing first
hand can make it into art. As to the latter, I think Kurt comes
closest in understanding that my problem with Spielberg, Hanks et
al is that if they truly respected the experience of being at
war, they would have done better, would have sucessfully
transmitted the scars of the experience to the audience. That
they didn't, in light of their talent and resources, suggests
that it can't be done, either not via film or not via a group of
people working together or not by Hollywood or some combination
of these.
"So?"
So nobody else is saying this. No critics, nobody in this thread
(that I could find when I first posted), nobody in the audience I
saw the film with, nobody in the media writing the numerous
articles about Spielberg's effort has even remotely attempted to
suggest that Spielberg has failed because there's no way to
succeed at what he's attempted. We've all bought into the idea
that it can be done, and Spielberg has done it, possibly because
we like to think no aspect of human experience is so huge,
mysterious or incoherent that it can't be condensed into a
reasonable, 3 hour long facimile.
10258
. katewrath - July 28, 1998 - 12:21
PM PDT
Rask: I am aware that possibly the reason no one agrees with me
is that I'm wrong.
Elliot: Thank you. I've already admitted I'm unequal to the task
of expressing my opinion on this matter and apologised, but it's
always nice to get a second opinion.
I hope both of you will at least agree that it is better to
describe my strong misgivings about the film and the public
reaction to it, than to assume that because I am in the extreme
minority and not able to give a complete account of myself I
should keep my thoughts to myself.
I have a borderline pathological obsession with accuracy,
eloquence and clarity, something (the obsession, not necessarily
the accuracy, etc.) that should be apparent from my posts to the
Fray prior to those of the last two days. I hope it is in some
small way to my credit that although it kills me to post opinions
that do not meet up to my own standards, I did it anyway because
I felt too strongly to bite my tongue.
10259
. CLLRDR - July 28, 1998 - 12:27 PM
PDT
Kate -- I think the basic problem is that you're demanding of
film a sense of exactitude (both moral and aesthetic) that is
simply antithetical to the nature of the medium.
10260
. Raskolnikov - July 28, 1998 - 12:27
PM PDT
Kate:"I am aware that possibly the reason no one agrees with
me is that I'm wrong. "
That wasn't my point. You seemed to be expressing surprise that
no one else was pointing out that presenting a realistic battle
is impossible. I was saying that this is because they disagree
with your assessment of SPR.
Whether you are right or wrong is a completely separate issue,
and one where I would never use majority opinion as evidence one
way or the other.
10266
. katewrath - July 28, 1998 - 1:15 PM
PDT
CLLRDR: Jesus, if you understood me all along, then what the hell
are we disagreeing about? That's it exactly: I demand a kind of
... maybe honesty?(1)... from film that, it would seem, the
medium cannot deliver. (As I've said about 50 times, I only
demand it in this case because I think there is something (again,
what? I don't know) extraordinary about volunteering to live with
the fear of immediate death for years at a time that demands an
extraordinary degree of, let's just say honesty.) The corolary to
this, in my opinion, is that just as I expect more of a
director(2), I expect more of us, and I'm saddened, frustrated,
angered that this film has triggered in us an attitude about war
that ignores its extraordinariness.
Footnotes:
- The closest I think the movie comes to this is in Hanks'
telling Ryan to 'earn this'; Hanks also wins a small pardon in my
eyes because he has announced at length that he is euphorically
happy to have never been in conflict, and would never want to be.
He was also apparently willing to go through the entire week of
bootcamp before filming began while the other actors started to
whine.
- Movie qua movie aside, there's a blurb in this week's
"Newsweek" outlining the many cast gifts bestowed by
Spielberg on his actors, including ammo cases of cigars and
custom-made silver dogtags from Tiffany's. God bless Hollywood.
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