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REALITIES OF WAR
How has Saving Private Ryan changed the Hollywood war movie? August 11, 1998 |
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Questions asked
in this forum:
Will the movie change the public's attitude towards military service? Why was public reaction to the movie so strong? What other war movies do you like or dislike? How do American and foreign films compare? 
The Online NewsHour asks: Why do you think the reaction towards Saving Private Ryan was so strong?
John Chambers responds:
Among the reasons why this film has produced such a strong reaction perhaps the most powerful are the brilliance of Spielberg's directorship and the fact that these are American GIs (not faceless enemy soldiers) we see being blown apart, shot, drowned, or othrewise writhing in death's agony. Even though Spielberg skips the traditional war film's prologue introducing the soldiers through their basic training before producing the combat scenes, he quickly establishes the young men as American citizen-soldiers and people with whom American audiences can identify and emphasize.There is no doubt about the emotional impact Spielberg has created, particularly in the first half-hour depicting the landing on Omaha Beach. The detail is extraordinarily accurate: the uniforms, weapons, and equipment on both sides -- even the Germans' "element C" the steel gate-like structures planted in the surf to block landing craft. (The only factual error I saw was Tom Hanks, having his captain's insignia on the front of his helmet in battle. Because officers would be the first target of enemy snipers or riflemen, they usually expunged their insignia somehow before going into battle -- for example, removing it or covering it with a patch or some dirt.)
Spielberg overwhelms most of our senses to produce a sensation of being in the battle with danger and death all around us. The sound of the fighting is deafening, so loud that we can feel the concussions of the shell explosions, The overriding colors are slate gray, death-like from the overcast skies, and red from the blood that is everywhere. We see Americans praying, puking, dying. Blood spurts from their wounds; it fills the tide and the medics' hands. The arrangement of some of the camera frames is readily familiar -- from the grainy Capra still photographs actually shot on the D-Day beach. Completing the emotional impact of killing, chaos, and confusion is the quick and jerky camera movement. All the elements combine to batter and overwhelm our senses -- to make us actually "feel" the confusion, revulsion, nausea, and the horror of such deadly combat. This is the most realistic and gut-ripping battle scene that I have ever seen.
Combat veterans and those who know them are often having extremely strong reactions to this film. The scenes are so emotionally powerful, so real and raw, so well able to capture the horrible gore and randomness of death on the battlefield, that many such viewers have broken down or at least been terribly moved. Some veterans see the film as a catharsis; some say that it allows other Americans to see what they experienced and could not talk about. The sacrifices of American GIs and the need for postwar society to recognize and live up to those sacrifices is certainly a major messages of this film.
Paul Fussell responds:
Because the events depicted in the first half-hour of the film are largely unknown to most Americans. The infantry constituted a very tiny percentage of Americans who went to war and ran into opposition of the kind the film depicts It is not to be forgotten that Americans have never been bombed, and therefore, have no experience of what happens in a real war, fought on their own property.
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