Generic [SPOILER ALERT!!!]
I love the Oscars, and usually defend them. I so want them to represent the truly great films for the year, particularly Best Picture. However, the swings and misses, especially over time, cast a horrible pall over the selection committee. The biggest mistake has to be 1999, when a cute little romcom about William Shakespeare falling in love beat what currently sits atop the list of great War Movies. Saving Private Ryan is the definitive war film about World War II, and a movie you think about days, weeks, months, or in my case, years after you watch it.
After a brief intro, Saving Private Ryan transports you to the D Day invasion by Allied Forces onto the Beaches of Normandy, where Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) and his battalion heroically seize the French land they land on. Who is Private Ryan (Matt Damon)? He’s the last surviving brother of 4 brothers who all died in combat. Due to the Captain’s heroics on the battlefield, Miller is selected to bring a group to find Private Ryan and take him home. The team, which includes Sergeant Horvath (Tom Sizemore), Medic Wade (Giovanni Ribisi), Privates Reiben (Edward Burns), Jackson (Barry Pepper), Mellish (Adam Goldberg) and Caparzo (Vin Diesel), and Corporal Uppham (Jeremy Davies, the audience surrogate), then goes scouring the French countryside in search of Private Ryan, hoping he’s alive, and they don’t have to combat more German forces along the way.
I’ve been derided by friends by not liking movies they have, and been told I’m a movie hater, as if I hate watch movies because I am a masochist. However, I try to tell everyone, movie critics are perpetually in search of the perfect moments that are so good they give you a high other people feel from a hug from a family member, a kiss from your love, or alcohol. Perfect moments in movies are so rare, like love, that when you are in one, you know and feel it, and when you get a moment away from it, your breath gets taken away when you start thinking and feeling what you just watched. The D-Day Invasion is as perfect a movie moment as exists in the history of Cinema. Steven Spielberg, instead of shooting the film from afar, opted for a handheld camera, to give the audience just a taste of what war is like. We follow Captain Miller, as he navigates all the death around him, like a soldier innerdless pleading for his mother (I’m tearing up just writing about it), or crimson waters threatening to drown. And after a brief soundless reflection, there’s Captain Miller, bravely following Eisenhower’s plan and trying to take down the German artillery. As all the novice soldiers panic, Spielberg shows us how brave and smart Miller is navigating the literal minefield of obstacles in his way to victory. Members of Miller’s team later in the movie also get great moments, both big (Private Jackson taking out an impact crater) and little (Sergeant Horvath gathering soil to take home).
The rest of the movie doesn’t reach the heavenly perfection of the first half hour, but Saving Private Ryan still has plenty of tricks up its sleeve. Screenwriter Robert Rodat then presents this team with endless series of moral quandaries in their attempt to find and save Private Ryan. The situations are unbelievably grey: placing the mission vs. saving a little girl from a war torn hellscape, going around instead of stopping a machine gunner, and potentially extracting someone from their battalion and leaving them with fewer troops to defend a stronghold. These situations point to the poisonous effects of what war does to an otherwise decent person. There’s no right answer here, and each choice made potentially has awful consequences. Each solider then has to live with those consequences, especially Captain Miller, who usually has final say. As heroic as these men may be, the war hangs over them and will leave lasting scars that will probably never mend: heavy, but necessary, stuff.
Spielberg’s acting team very much resembles his search party. Matt Damon doesn’t have much to do, but when he show’s up, he injects some life into the story and replaces Uppham as the audience surrogate ably. People like Ed Burns, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi and Vin Diesel weren’t exactly names at the time, but they all rose to the occasion and deliver (especially the first 3) really interesting characters for the audience to root for. Jeremy Davies perfectly plays the nice guy thrown into a sadistic cesspool of humanity. He’s horrified and petrified by fear and crisis of conscience throughout the movie; his arc from naive to grizzled is one of the most emotionally powerful arcs of the film, because the audience can see themselves in Davies. Tom Sizemore, like his character, is a really great second fiddle. Sizemore has a history of substance abuse sadly, but none of that is evident in his portrayal of Sergeant Horvath, who is mildly sarcastic but displays a bravery and loyalty every great soldier aspires to. And holding it all together, like he does almost always, is Tom Hanks. A novice actor would play Captain Miller jaded and angry at the system, maybe over act the pain on the soul. Hanks wonderfully underplays everything, giving Miller the perfect persona of a leader: a man who consistently contemplates on and motivates his men, in hopes that he can help win the war for his country and return home. His big Oscar speech after a horrific loss in battle and threats of desertion by his subordinates is the stuff of legend, that only a great actor could deliver.
You know your war movie is special when it is used like an adjective. “Platoon is the Saving Private Ryan of the Vietnam War.” Adjective status means your movie is important, and represents greatness. Kudos to Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and everyone involved in this production for bringing your A game, so one day some amateur critic in Chicago could call your movie the biggest Oscar travesty of all time.