Mckyoneal does Saving Private Ryan

[mckyoneal]

Politics. The Academy Awards bursts at the seams with politics despite the fact that the man-trophy they dish out doesn’t have any clothes. The controversy that surrounded Dances With Wolves beating out Goodfellas, the fact that comic performances never seem to earn any prestige, or the fact everybody cried out, “WTF?!?” after Driving Miss Daisy won best picture. It’s an ongoing debate that brings out the Harry Knowles in all of us. You know, the kind of person who’s inarticulate, biased, and oh so immovable in their beliefs. It’s also why I still hold a grudge against Edward Zwick and company.

When Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan in 1998 for best picture, I cried foul. Hell, I probably would have cried had I been up late enough to even watch the Oscars. (I believe I was ten years old at the time.) Saving Private Ryan was such a fantastic movie; I felt it deserved nothing less than a Nobel Prize delivered by Jesus himself. But after a decade, with or without the award, Saving Private Ryan remains just as good as the first time I saw it. No matter how many viewings, I’m still horrified by the war violence. Spielberg has got my head glued to the screen from beginning to end. I don’t even mind that the characters are basically stereotypes; religious southerner, tough guy, Jewish guy, and so on. That doesn’t hold back actors’ performances either. Top notch from start to finish.

When it first came out, the talk of the town was the graphic war scenes from the infamous D-Day invasion. It even made it to the lunch table discussion, and we were only in the 5th grade. It came down to “I hear that one guy holds a head in his hands,” or “This one guy runs around with an his own arm after it gets shot off.” It sounded intense. Everyone else thought so too. My parents shied away from it, afraid that it would be too much for their senses. But they were missing out. There was so much more beyond the obvious message of “War is Hell.”

Over the course of human history, collectively, there have been 179 years of peace. And these are specific days added up over time. People might say that war movies are redundant, but with seemingly endless fighting, the debates brought up in this movie will always be relevant and universal. And no other war movie has such a fantastic cast and crew behind it. The camerawork stands out with especially because in my eyes the perfect kind of chaos camera. I feel movies these days have gone overboard with shaky camera movement and fast editing with cuts every half-second. Saving Private Ryan manages to maintain the “you are there” feeling without giving you a headache. And with the popular Bourne movies and Cloverfield employing camera crews with terrets and late stage Parkinson’s disease, it’s nice to come back to a movie that doesn’t overwhelm you.

The only thing I’d really change about the movie would have to be the soundtrack. There’s nothing wrong with it per say, but the main instruments behind it are brass. Trumpets blare, and the military style drumbeats just keep on coming, scene after scene. Sure, this flows seamlessly with a war movie, but I’m a sucker for the string section in my grandiose soundtracks. Throw in a bagpipe from Braveheart or the monumental closing song from Gladiator and I’m sold.

I’d usually be more humorous in my reviews but SPR deserves more respect than a sarcastic quip (forgive my Braveheart gag) but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it. You can still be entertained by this movie no doubt. You’ll laugh sometimes, you might even find yourself enjoying the thrill of the last battle scene. That’s ok. And it’s another reason why it’s quite possibly one of the greatest movies of our time. It’s not only a great film, but it’s an entertaining movie. It masters all the film techniques (camerawork, sound, editing etc.) that the critics love to talk about, but it always keeps the audience wanting more. I can’t really say I enjoyed There Will Be Blood. Sure it was a great film, but I wasn’t entertained. That could also be said for No Country for Old Men. SPR keeps you coming back time and time again.

Just last week, I was in the gym running the treadmill and I saw SPR was on TV. Soon, I noticed everyone around me was watching it too. People took off their headphones, and some even stopped in the middle of their workout just to watch. Ten years down the road, and it was still running strong. I can bet that it will stand the test of time. It won’t burn out like Titanic or be remembered in infamy like Shakespeare in Love. It might be still too early to say, but soon enough people will talk about it like Rocky or The Godfather: Classic.

[wdm0744]

Nice review. Well-written and well - researched.

I agree with you. SPR has the excitement that you want from a war film and yet delivers the gravity and consequence that its subject matter should.

I too did not really care for Williams' music in the film, and I don't think we are the only ones. I read once that people generally found the music from SPR's trailer (lifted from "The American President") to be much more effective. I agree. Wouldn't it have been great if SPR had been scored by someone like Michael Giacchino (Medal of Honor games, LOST, Mission Impossible 3)? Nothing against Williams, it's just that I think this movie would have been even more powerful had it been more effectively scored.

[mckyoneal]

I just watched the trailer, and I have to say that it really is more effective. There's something about the way the music pulls at your heartstrings so much more effectively instead of the official and calculated feel of the bugle. I also really liked how they didn't give away the entire movie like they're doing now. It gives you the general outline, but still very bare bones. Enticing and effective.

[sarahbot]

I'm a big ole Shakespeare nerd, so I've got to stick up for Shakespeare in Love here. For one thing, it's got a terrible title. Sure, it draws audiences in, but part of what makes the movie so genius is its use of subplots, humour - tell me this isn't a comedy! - and some of the best minor characters around. Rupert Everett as Marlowe deserves a movie to himself, Geoffrey Rush is hilarious, and Affleck turns in one of those roles he does every 2-3 years that makes me remember that I like him in spite of myself. Tom Wilkinson, Imelda Staunton, Judi Dench, Mr. Weasley . . . the list goes on. It's not just the "Gwyneth Paltrow emoting" movie which I think most people remember it as.

As for Saving Private Ryan itself, it's a great movie, no doubt, and Spielberg's work is not to be overlooked (which the Academy didn't). In my opinion this is the last great film he did until Munich. But I want to point out a HUGE plothole most people don't notice.
The first scene is not the scene on the beach. SPR is actually a frame story, and the first scene is a veteran in a cemetery, who tells us the story. It is not until the end that we discover that the old man is in fact the eponymous Private Ryan. This is a fantastic narrative device.
Until you realize that there's no way, no how, that he could have told the story. He wasn't there. Ryan wasn't at D-Day.

[mckyoneal]

I hate to get nitpicky, but the veteran in the first scene doesn't tell the story. Sure, you could make the argument that the thoughts of D-Day are coming from him, and yes the film techniques used try to convey that these are his thoughts as the camera zooms in on his troubled face. HOWEVER, that's all implied, and not hard evidence. The movie never explicitly says, "The veteran is telling the story", or at least remembering it. In fact, at the end of the movie when we come back to the veteran, we're just where we left him. Little or no time has passed whatsoever, which begs to question how he could even tell that detailed of a story in five minutes or so. I know it's really anal to debate about it, AND I believe the argument is besides the point. If a movie can get you into a story enough, where you care about the characters and events, then who cares about continuity?

For example, there's a scene in Jaws when two fisherman are trying to catch Jaws on a pier. It's in the dead of night, but then we cut to Roy Scheider who's reading a book about sharks IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. An obvious chronological error, but the book really gets you freaked out about the Jaws potentially eating the fisherman. As long as there's enough emotion behind a supposed film error, first you probably won't even notice it, and secondly even if you do, you're probably too rapped up in the scene to care. Just look at the scene in Jurassic Park where Dr. Grant and Lex are hanging off the side of the cement cliff with the T-Rex on the other side. There's an unbelievably huge error, but no one seemed to notice because they're too terrified. So honestly, who cares if he's telling the story or not? It's gripping enough for you to forget who the narrator is.

But anyway, I'm beating a dead horse. I'm sorry if I made Shakespeare in Love out to be a bad movie. My mom loves it to death, and my dad has been caught saying "I don't know, tis a mystery" more times than I can remember. And yes, Spielberg did receive best director that year so I shouldn't be complaining. I just feel that SPR didn't quite get it's due that year. And props to the infamous rat boy who spied on Viola and Shakespeare's love affair and "saw her jublees."