Savoring "Private Ryan" by Homer Yen (c) 1998
I feel very lucky to be living in an age where society's greatest war is that on drugs and on AIDS. I can only nod my head in grateful silence when I think about those who have given their lives for the security of their children, for the subsequent betterment of society and for a life free of tyranny. And although these ends are noble and are worth dying for, war has a strange way of eroding away the soul of a man and replacing it with anger and emptiness.
"Saving Private Ryan" is a raw and powerful film that takes us right into the bowels of WWII when allied forces staged their daring invasion upon Omaha Beach, which we now know as D-day. The film immediately projects a mixture of raw tension and helplessness. Like an animal desperately trying to escape from a trap, thousands of men await in their troop transports as they get ready to storm the beach. Meanwhile, the enemies have readied all of their artillery on them, waiting to indiscriminately kill anything that moves. Director Steven Speilberg takes this masterfully shot battle scene one step further by allowing us to see through the eyes of a soldier struggling to make it ashore as his comrades fall prey to bullets, grenades and explosions while the color of the ocean grows more red from the blood of the other soldiers.
Countless lives were lost on D-day. And throughout WWII, many more sons lost their lives fighting for their country. These kinds of losses are insufferable for the parents of children killed in action and especially for a widow named Ryan. During the course of a month, 3 of her 4 brave sons are killed. One is possibly still alive. He is Private James Ryan (Matt Damon), a paratrooper that disappeared behind enemy lines after a botched drop. The War Dept. assures the mom that they will do whatever they can to save him and to return him to her.
This assignments falls on the shoulders of Capt. John Miller (Tom Hanks), who survived the invasion but is astounded to find out that he has been selected to lead this trivial search and rescue mission. The group that he leads, in essence, is a microcosm of the ideas of war. Three of them stood out for me. There is Miller himself, whose background doesn't lend itself to Captaincy, and the harsh reality of war makes him worried that his wife will never again recognize him. There is Pvt. Reiben (Edward Burns) who questions the practicality of the mission. And there is the meek Cpl. Upham who is an excellent translator but has never fired a rifle or seen the brutality of war up close. But as they trek across the countryside in search of Ryan ("he better be worth it," says one of them) and face snipers and machine gun nests, they begin to learn more about one another. Their time spent traveling across the scenic French landscape allows them weigh the importance of saving Private Ryan and allows them to finally internalize the significance of the mission. For these men, it is a way for them to inject some of the humanity that has been stripped away through war, blood, vomit and death.
This is not only a superior war film, but at it's moralistic center, it is a dramatic story about a group of men in search of a form of redemption that is as hard to find as Ryan himself. There are some disturbing scenes of carnage such as bodies exploding, people whose limbs have been shot off, or even the intestines of a still-alive soldier. But all of it is appropriate given the backdrop of WWII and the fierce battles that took place.
Indeed, during this time when men are reduced to animals that indiscriminately kill to stay alive, when men undergo a startling transformation from farm boys to killing machines, when men must band together to overcome their greatest fears and most sorrowful of regrets, finding and saving Private Ryan may be the one decent thing that they can do - it may be the one positive thing that they can take away from this war. As each of the men who are assigned on this odd mission begin to connect with it's moral importance, they realize that saving Private Ryan means that in some way they can also save themselves.
Grade: A
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