Too much is being made of the opening battle of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, sure, the first time you see the film, it is the most intense realistic battle scene portrayed on film, but by the end of the film, there is another that... for me at least, was far more impactful. Not only that, but ultimately for me, it's the characters and their experiences that should be examined, not a single battle, no matter how grand it may be. But first I'm going to do as I always do and set you up with my state of mind upon entering the theater today.
Nothing happened this morning. But my mind has been on SAVING PRIVATE RYAN for months. When I read Rodat's first draft, I knew this was a perfect Spielberg film, the sort of thing he does best. The script had all the trademark emotional manipulations, the heroism and... well it had an agenda to my eyes. This was a script that was a blueprint for a film to get Spielberg right on track with his audience. Now I happened to have loved AMISTAD, but most didn't. It seemed to be a film without an audience, but this one. I knew SAVING PRIVATE RYAN was made to hit all those Spielberg lovers right between the eyes with a rusty railroad spike. It was written with a finely tuned eye for the dramatics and the horrors of war. It was an ode to the common American soldier of World War II.
That was the script. It was a bit on the corny side, but then months later I read the Darabont re-write which honed the film into a tougher flick. This was a film I hadn't seen Spielberg direct, it had a mean side. No longer was everything so black and white, there were grey tones. We don't usually see much grey in Spielberg films, it's always blocked out by one of his stunning filters. But this script told me I was in for something... possibly extraordinary if Spielberg had the nerve.
Months drifted by and I was shocked to find pictures in my email box one day sent in by Tom Joad, they were from FANGORIA and what they showed were those brutally maimed bodies I put up a few months back. Spielberg hadn't allowed gore... realistic gore since the leg sunk into the water in JAWS, or perhaps the Quint death scene. What I was facing was an amazing amount of change in Spielberg, and I knew he had set a trap for his audience.
The last couple of months have come with a smattering of words about the film. Whispers of greatness. When DREAMWORKS invited me up to DALLAS for that big "Here are the products of DREAMWORKS SKG" the head of Dreamworks' publicity a Teresa Press, said she had seen the film with Steven about a week prior and she was still haunted by images, that this was a film of such horror that she couldn't imagine anyone ever willingly picking up a gun and going to war. Now usually I take what publicity people say, combine it with paper and wipe my ass with it, but in this case, there was something in her eyes that said, "WHAT I AM SAYING IS THE GOD'S HONEST TRUTH." There were reflections of fear, remorse and the echo of an experience. She was speaking the truth, I knew it.
More time passed and a handful of reviews came in. None of the regular spies saw it, but it was a uniformed pattern of shock and horror. Everyone lingering on the gore, on the grossness of it all. These I figured were not fans of Tom Savini. These were people that don't see the full range of film, I thought. Then the first big reviews came in, and they were talking about life changing moments, and how this film was one of them. About seeing things, seeing war as something to stay away from. That nuclear bombs aren't the worst things man has created. That mano a mano, that sniper fire, artillery, the charging of beaches, that they are all equally horrific. Choose your favorite form of death, slow and quiet, quick and fast, slow and gurggling agony, quiet disbelief.... Which would you choose, the reviews were shocked.
That led me up to the trip to Washington D.C. and the SMITHSONIAN. In order to go speak at the SMITHSONIAN I was sacrificing seeing the film for two days longer than need be. That's why you haven't seen a review, I've been up there. When I addressed the audience I went on for about two minutes about how I wished I was standing in line with my friends, father and the line people 1200 miles away, moments away from SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. How it kills a spoiled bastard like me to not see this sort of film first. The audience laughed, but inside I was dying. This was an experience I can't stand. Knowing that a great movie is able to be seen, but for something to keep you from it. Our friends in Europe and abroad know this all too well. Half the time they wait months, listening and reading on Newsgroups and sites like mine that in a land far far away there exists a film of such utterly unbelievable craftsmanship that people or forking money over left and right to see it.
So, instead I occupied myself by getting ready for the film. I visited Arlington Cemetary, I allowed the ghosts of the dead to sweep me up. There is something about staring at acres of the dead and knowing all of these were harvested to keep this concept of the United States of America intact. All those stones, each one representing a man, and each one representing an unknown story. And I got this feeling that perhaps we didn't really deserve the sacrifices these men made. I mean on this same day, the big news was the outlawing of Internet Gambling and the revelations of a Secret Service Man about the possible whereabouts of the President's penis at a certain hour and a certain time. These are the issues of the day, issues we're capable of raising and arguing because of the events that these people gave their lives to resolve.
My cab drove by the Iwo Jima memorial, what an image. I walked by the Vietnam memorial where thousands were caressing the names they once knew and the faces they carry behind the mirrors of their eyes. Then there is the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and on and on and on. History, remnants of the past, here to remind us of what came before. Then I toured the Smithsonian, and there... there was history kept. The propaganda posters, the documenting of our own horrors and triumphs. The gallery of war, where we see the uniforms of the past, the gear and the weapons. And ya kinda have to wonder if those weapons did anything, what their impressions on the waves of time were. Did they halt an advance? Or were they left in a foxhole beside a man who never fired a round? What is the history, what did these objects see?
That night I did my bit at the SMITHSONIAN, I'm told it was very very good, I blushed alot. Afterwards we went to a bar were I continued talking, and then I sat in a car with a man and discussed the way of things in Washington. About dirty tricks and vast political chess games. About out of touch men, and men with vision arguing the future of things. The only place where less ground is covered than in a war, is in Congress. Then as soon as I hit my room, I had to call and hear the voices of Dad, Robogeek, Quint, RoRo and Johnny Wad. I had to hear them, to listen to the timbre of their voices, to see if the movie had marred them in anyway. It had.
The next day I went to the airport to come home. With three hours to kill I began buying newspapers and magazines, anything and everything with reviews. Everyone was loving the film. A single unified hail of excellence. I was shaking, I started praying that my plane wouldn't crash, that I would see this film.
When I arrived in Austin, I immediately got a paper and saw that there was one showing left in town, so Dad and I took off to attend. It was sold out. So we putted home in the pathetic vehicle we have. I worked on the site till I fell asleep. Trying to keep my mind off of the film, but in email I was getting amazing stories from people.
People of all ages writing to me about how they always looked upon their grandfathers as feeble sick men that lived in the past, and now these people understood that they were not feeble, they were noble. They survived not a flood, not a sudden earthquake. But they lived through seeing the ones they loved and laughed with ripped apart by unseen hunks of metal. They had blood and mud and sinew on their faces. They could look at a butcher shop and see echoes of men. They had seen things that they shouldn't have, they did things that men shouldn't have to do, and they did all this because some people forgot what it was like. Because those instigators of war didn't know what war was, they saw it as counting beans. These letters were very sober. One from a 76 year old lady was about her husband's quiet moments, of his going into the basement with his momentos and coming out with a far away look. Of brushing off questions. Good men never talk of killing, because well one should never beat one's chest over the extinguishing of a human. The letters made me cry.
So it was where my mind was when I awoke this morning. I wasn't carrying memories of films, of charging hills or of pushing a flag upright. I was thinking about seeing things that noone should live to see.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
Before the film started the manager came out and apoligized for the stupidity of the Austin American Statesman critic (who gave the film 2 stars), he said, "Contrary to what Chris Garcia thinks, a score is supposed to provoke an emotional response." He then continued with, "Nothing you have read or seen will prepare you for the film you are about to witness." A giggle was kept inside of me, because... well I've read the script, I've read hundreds of reviews, I'm ready for the movie.
NOTHING YOU HAVE READ OR SEEN WILL PREPARE YOU FOR THE FILM YOU ARE ABOUT TO WITNESS.
I wasn't prepared. This is an out of body experience. The film takes ahold of you and shakes you. It picked me up out of my seat and said to me, "PAY ATTENTION!" As much as I should have distanced myself, I let those hands grab and tug my lapels. I allowed my eyes to be pulled past the fabric of the screen. To afcionados of gore, this film offers nothing as say spectacular as the head being blown apart in DAWN OF THE DEAD or as visceral as zombies sinking their teeth into human flesh and ripping out a plug of meat, BUT... Then that's not real. The violence and the horror of this film can not elicit a clap or a cheer. It's not for gore fans, because this is something different. Because of the handheld randomness of the camera in the initial scenes, you never get the sense that it is planned.
When Romero shows a man leveling a shotgun, a zombie stumbling at you, the man correct his sites to the head, the pull of the trigger then the head exploding., well, that's logical. But here you'll have the camera looking in one direction BAM dead body parts, then you turn and see a whole pan of death, then you stare at the ground, not wanting to see anymore only to see the deaths of the ones who's footsteps you are following. It's random, it never feels calculated to me. And as I was witnessing this... I felt a weird sense of guilt, probably because I know I would have lept over the side (probably shot as my ass is so big) and hide behind the boat praying that some other bastard would secure the damn beach. When looking death in the eye, I would like to think I would stare back, but most likely I would hear that Monty Python quote of "RUNAWAY!!!" As a result of this inner cowardice I sympathize completely with a character by the name of Cpl Upham. His lily-liverness is repugnant, you feel like ripping him off the screen and kicking the shit out of him, but I couldn't bring myself to cast a stone, because I do not know what I would or could do in a like situation. What would I do? What would Dad do? Could I somehow shut all my humanity off and charge firing at humans that were doing the like? Would I try to 'play dead'? Would I level out my gun and blow them away? I've hunted. I can handle a weapon, I'm a damn good shot. I've killed cousins of Bambi before, and love the taste of venison, but is there an issue besides hunger that I would kill for? I believe so. Self preservation, the lives of friends, and the lives of others. This film asks you these questions. Would you give it all up? Could you find a temporary killer in you? But then the film reminds us that this is all in the past, events that have come and gone. That we are all the inheritors of their sacrifices. That perhaps each of us is a Private Ryan, with the challenge of "EARN IT" upon our shoulders.
And that is what I'm pondering now, have I "Earned It". I think it'll take me a while to answer that question or statement. Hopefully when I'm gone I can say I did, perhaps I'm on my way. But I do know the film raised issues and questions that I feel the need to seek answers for.
Hallenbeck just sent in his review, it's an objective review. He looked at the film and saw pieces, albeit very good pieces. He attempts to 'rank' the great war films, for me there are so many great war films that ranking them seems unimportant and immaterial. Films that make you question reality and the need for man made death to solve political and idealogical issues are not films to be put in order. Chris Garcia here in town saw pieces and didn't see them as being what he wanted to see. One kid thought the violence was unrealistic. For me, I went to war for two hours and forty minutes today.... seemed realer than I care to witness outside a theater.
I come away hoping that those that can call for men to fight, never have need to call. That people see this film and other films like it (Das Boot, Edge Of Darkness, They Were Expendable, Steel Helmet, The Big Red One, All Quiet on the Western Front, Fires on the Plains, etc etc...) and look long and hard. Making one's enemy a faceless amoral heathen, a prince of darkness... well that's an easy way out. In films like these, there is often the question of whether or not there is a difference between yourself and the man you are shooting. Each is equally convinced they are the morally upright. Many of the German soldiers were people with jobs and lives prior to the war, same as our men. When you realize that the enemy is a poor bastard stuck out in front of a gun barrel because he was fed a line a crap... well the trigger is a bit harder to pull. I've never been able to see differences, I've taken out the difference chip. It's an unnecessary and illogical chip to have in one's brain.
Personally my favorite anti-war piece is an old MGM cartoon called PEACE ON EARTH. It's about how men made each other extinct by hating each other for one side eating vegetables and the other side meat. It is an absurd issue, but so is needing a little "breathing room". The film is told by animals that have inherited the earth, they live in the remnants of war. The helmets are houses, the backpacks are storehouses, empty cartridges are containers for liquid, and ultimately they understand life and hold it more closely guarded than we men. The image that gets me is when one gas masked fella is shot dead, he falls into some mud, face first. Because he was shot through the lung there are bubbles coming up around the man, the bubbles are of red mud.
So where in Spielberg's career does this film stand? Well, for me it stands as the film that just opened. I'll see the film a few more times, I'll ponder the issues it raised in me. The characters are with me, I know each of them. In fact I could name people in my life and match them with the characters in this film. My little squad of friends are very much the same age and the same characters. I'm just glad that we live in a different plot line.
