'Saving Private Ryan' stuns us with realities of war
By Rayya Makarim
JAKARTA (JP): Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots/ But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind/Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots/of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. (Excerpt from Wilfred Owen's poem Dulce et Decorum Est).
Most films about war fall into one of two categories: heroic tales of glory and valor, or biopics. Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan is neither. Instead of confining itself to a handful of themes that movies in this genre normally do, Spielberg's latest work illustrates war to be a brutal, unglamorous and murderous business.
The story line of Private Ryan is not particularly complex. We learn that three of the four Ryan brothers died in battle, and the mother receives all three telegrams on the same day. The U.S Army chief of staff, George C. Marshall (Harve Presnell), in his Washington office attempts to boost morale at home and so decides to send a group of men on a mission to rescue the last Ryan boy.
The most amazing aspect of this film is the method in which Spielberg condemns war, setting his work apart from the Yankee- Doodle-Dandy heroics of Hollywood. The director is not content just recording the graphic and gory details of the battleground; he is determined to draw us into the scene as one of the soldiers, as part of the war.
Forming the prologue to the main story, the opening battle sequence takes us to the June 6, 1944 landing at Omaha Beach. Spielberg spares us nothing of the horrors of battle, while Janusz Kaminski's camerawork makes no sense of the action. While bodies are ripped apart by bullets, limbs blown off, intestines spewed out of half dead bodies, the camera follows the action with a soldier's-eye view of the D-Day invasion. It jiggles, it falls, it is sprayed with blood, it bobs in and out of the water, and it hides for protection. The handheld camera, the speeding up of images, and the different types of film stock help convey the chaos and confusion of combat.
The exhaustingly intense assault on the senses during battle sequences makes us grateful for some of the calmer scenes. Shots of green leaves and the gentle fall of rain, even for a few seconds, is soothing. Quiet, character-building moments that flesh out the soldiers also allow the audience to take a breather from the grand-scale massacres.
Capt. John Miller (Tom Hanks), a survivor of the Omaha Beach battle, leads the Ryan expedition. Hanks is a sound choice as Capt. Miller, an English teacher, kind and patient. The war has changed him so much, he wonders if his wife would recognize him. His team consists of six men who have served with him throughout the war. Edward Burns as Reiben who offers his usual cool, detached cynicism, remains uncertain about how valid the mission is. By the slight shift of his eye you can recognize his disapproval. A wonderful performance is given by Jeremy Davies who plays Upham, a translator who has never seen active combat before. His combination of naivete, fear and nervousness plays well with the audience. He is our entry to reality, a figure you can completely identify with. Even when some of his decisions are the wrong ones, we forgive him.
Unlike most films in this genre where war serves as a backdrop to more private character conflicts, this film's central focus of attention is indeed the war. Three-quarters into the movie, the team finally finds Ryan (Matt Damon) who, to their annoyance, refuses to be saved. This is an interesting choice of characterization. Ryan radiates a different energy from Miller's men who have already lost two men while carrying out their mission. As a paratrooper who landed on the mainland, Ryan did not experience the horror of Omaha Beach, and although he has seen action, he has not gazed into the eyes of hell.
The opening and closing scene show an old Ryan visiting a WW II grave site in present-day France. This and the film's title may give the impression that Saving Private Ryan is about bringing James Francis Ryan safely home. Ironically, everyone in the team slowly realizes that there is a greater mission. They decide to join Ryan and do what they came to France to do, and that is to fight a war.
War as a metaphor for the threatening chaos of human existence, and man's ability to survive does not apply here as it did in Spielberg's Oscar winning Schindler's List. Schindler personified goodness, and Amon Goeth, evil. The Germans in Private Ryan are just a faceless mass. The landing forces and the soldiers defending Omaha Beach never meet face to face. The battling parties just keep on shooting until one side is demolished. It's an absurd idea, but there are no human villains in this movie. The enemy is the relentless, destructive shadow of war itself.
Spielberg has again managed to introduce something new to an old genre. After watching Saving Private Ryan, one will understand more fully Owen's ending to one of his poems: My friend, you would not tell with such high zest/To children ardent for some desperate glory,/The old lie: Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori (It is honorable / To die for your own country).