I didn’t intend for my Spielberg study to be spread out throughout the year like this, and maybe it would have been more valuable if I were watching this with Duel and Sugarland a little more fresh on my mind, but whatever.
This is another Spielberg movie that I have viewed many times and have plenty of conscious admiration for. But I think it’s well inferior to Schindler’s List because the story feels more Hollywood. I remember being literally embarrassed for myself after seeing the famous D-Day sequence because I was like “I didn’t know it was THAT bad, how did I not know it was THAT bad”. I also remember seeing it in a theater with a good sound system, and knowing that sound technology had recently improved to an extent that’s really noticeable in this movie. I might have some more unexpected realizations in the middle couple of hours.
As it begins with a very John-Williams-war-honor bit of music, I wonder if I’ll notice any good music that I’d forgotten about.
Intro/bookend scene in present day (this came out 54 years after D-day so yeah some contemporaneous old-timers had been WW2 soldiers) shows an old man, trailed by younger family, heading to a war memorial gravesite, all weepy. Feels kind of theatrical. I go to a lot of theater. Closeup of the man’s eyes cuts to D-day, Omaha Beach. Here we go.
Our first shot of Tom Hanks shows his jittery hands, which comes up a bunch later I remember. They are on a boat of infantry, one of several boats lurching their pukey way toward the war. The door opens. Mayhem. Bullets perforate almost everyone we see. Some flee into the water and still get shot. Someone drowns maybe. Vivid sound. TH assisting someone out of the water until he gets shot dead.
No one has ever told me about what those metal things are on the beach, what are those for, those things that look like giant jacks.
Explosions, one shot of an explosion, some bloody bodies flying across the camera, the shot continues to bring us to TH looking shell-shocked, impressive shot before some various edits show people on fire and someone recently legless. TH puts his helmet on even though it’s full of soldier blood. His face of shock at what he’s seeing is also our faces for the same reason. Dying soldier cries for his mama. These things keep happening unrelentingly. TH drags a bloody carcass of half a soldier for a bit until he realizes that is not a good use of his energy.
I don’t remember if I’ve seen this much low-frame-rate cinematography from Spielberg before now, but there is a bunch of it.
A long-ish take of TH and some other soldiers having made it to cover behind a sandy slope, TH keeps talking to a radio guy telling him to relay a message, then talks to other soldiers, then the radio guy, than the soldiers, then the radio guy, whose face, still the same shot, is now a big hole. So many people keep getting shot all around them.
Guy bawling like a baby with so many wounds, it’s almost cruel how much anguish we’re seeing. A guy has a bullet deflected off his helmet, he takes it off to admire his luck only to get shot without the helmet on.
Finally a moment of hope when TH improvises a mirror on a bayonet to get some useful intel and quarterback an attack on the bunker Germans. It’s really satisfying to see them advance after what they’ve been through. They take out the bunker with a grenade and then they flamethrower them and someone says “don’t shoot let them burn” and we’re like, cool.
But then a couple of surrendering Germans are murdered for fun by some Americans and it’s like, not cool maybe. But it’s still so nice that the good guys took the beach.
Bloody waves washing over beach bodies, one of them we see was named Ryan. Then this kinda corny scene where 1940s secretary pool is typing up the “sorry your son died” letters. One observant typist notices that the name “Ryan” sure sounds familiar, and shows her boss what she discovered, and her boss shows his boss. Wordless sequence with very respectful music. Then a scene with Bryan Cranston as a bigger boss, and dialogue explains the basic premise of the movie that three Ryan brothers died and a fourth is unaccounted for.
Another dialogue-free sequence shows the mother getting the news, it’s really staged-seeming. Then another very corny scene where BC talks to the biggest of all bosses, played by the father-in-law from Fargo who did you know is also the male lead in The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and by golly that man has a tender soul and has memorized a Lincoln grief letter. It is Spielberg-y Hollywoodity. But effectively expository.
0:38:50 — This shot with TH explaining the mission to Save Private Ryan, it’s kind of interesting because we hear the dialogue for quite a while before we see the actors, because this tracking shot really just wants to show lots of soldiers moving around with a cool drift of smoke. Then we’re introduced to Upham, the translator who is a nerd, and they are pretty effective at demonstrating Upham’s awkwardness. It could have seemed more like a TV pilot, but it also could have seemed less like one.
Then the main squad that the rest of the movie centers on is walking and talking and it’s, again, theater-y. We note their varied personalities. The intended audience for this scene is someone who doesn’t know the origin of the word “fubar”. Edward Burns is a naysayer. Adam Goldberg is Jewish. Barry Pepper is very proud of his sniping abilities. Vin Diesel is so tough that crossfire doesn’t distract him from finding a decent apple in the mud. Tom Sizemore is a wifebeater. Not in this movie, but in real life, we all know now.
Anyway they came to this town where there’s Paul Giamatti and it’s rainy and there is a panicked French family and a sniper snipes Vin Diesel, and the shots of VD on the ground are very modern looking with focus and color intensity; they cut to a close shot of the hidden sniper in a strange way, then we see the sniper get sniped by BP, but VD is dead, I didn’t remember VD dying so early but they make it clear that it’s because he wanted to help the panicky family.
A lot of handheld shots here, those seem more noob-directory now than they probably did in 1998.
1:00:55 — After another harrowing encounter, it’s the next day and The Gang has tracked down Private Ryan, played by Nathon Fillion. But like we all suspected because it’s too early in the movie. They had the wrong guy and made him sad about his brothers being dead before they figured it out. Not really played for laughs but a little funny. Funnier that it’s Nathan Fillion who is funny in other things we know now.
But also I think we are in a chunk of the movie that’s light on action, even after that sniper scare which was just okay. But The Gang is now holed up in a church getting nostalgic and philosophical. Also Gionvani Ribisi is doing some writing, so that’s his personality trait, now they all have one. Oh shit, a super touching short monologue from GR about how he pretended to be asleep when his mom wanted to talk to him, I’m very sad now.
1:13:40 — Cool shot of them walking at night with a lot of lightning and splodiness in the distance.
They arrive at a triage area and do some more investigating to figure out where the real Private Ryan is, and they didn’t make that part of the story particularly interesting, the mystery-solving of where-is-Ryan, it’s just a vehicle for the contemplative concept of “should we go to all this trouble to bring one soldier home”.
Next on the journey The Gang thinks they’ve stumbled upon a German position, I think, but I didn’t exactly figure out what they learned, it seemed like the point was that TH wanted to do a side mission, maybe irresponsibly. Grenades and gunfire happen and then GR is shot and it’s bloody and he’s suffering. He’s the medic, so they ask him what to do and he’s just like, give me morphine. He dies whimpering “mama”. Absolutely brutal deaths in this movie.
This whole thing pisses off The Gang and they find one surviving German, and this is the guy that is going to turn up again later. But it looks like they’re going to vengefully kill the German. Upham wants to spare him. TH goes off and secretly cries. German whimpers and begs for mercy and says some stuff in English like “Betty Grable nice gams” and they let him go.
Tensions mount and EB starts to desert and TS starts to maybe kill EB so TH does a monologue about how he’s a schoolteacher because they’ve all been wondering, and that diffuses it. John Williams music has been polite military brass throughout.
1:45:14 — Continuing their stroll through a meadow, a single shot begins with The Gang hiding from a passing tank, then the tank getting blown up by someone else, Germans in the tank shooting but also dying, then that again, then we see who shot the tank, it’s some other American soldiers on the other side of the road and one of them is Matt Damon, quite an elaborate shot, cool way to introduce the title character.
Very quickly the two gangs are in a nearby bombed out town and breaking the news to Ryan. Ryan is all “no way I’m a soldier I’m not abandoning my squad” so the characters and the audience all solemnly contemplate what the right move here is. Why does this seem so marketing-department-y?
Turns out they all decide to team up and try to defend a bridge over a river where a convoy of Germans is expected to roll through. Another impressively choreographed single shot shows the elaborate bombed-out-town set as they strategize.
Once their preparations are done and they’ve thoroughly explained sticky bombs to the audience, inadvertently greatly informing many future video games, they have time to sit and wait. It’s all chummy guy-talk. Upham contributes by translating the Edith Piaf song they’re hearing on a loudspeaker for some reason. Ryan tells TH a funny memory of his three brothers, it’s admirably non-sappy. Matt Damon laughs a lot telling this story, and I’m reminded of how hard I laughed at jokes the day after my best friend died when I was 13, I get it.
2:07:10 — I tell you what, here is where technical advances in sound are super dramatically effective because they start to hear the rumbling of the tanks, and over the next several minutes, they get slowly slowly SLOWLY louder and I’m just saying that the precision of this sound on a good sound system makes a huge difference. Agonizing build-up of suspense here. Watching a gap between buildings where a ton of tanks are about to appear.
This is the climactic battle of the movie, and it could have seemed like stuff we’ve seen before but it doesn’t. We are super invested and The Gang seems like they are in serious danger.
The focus is on Upham a lot, it’s been effectively established that he is not comfortable in combat, he’s being an ammo runner and is seemingly overly timid about that and it might be trouble for him. EB pulls Ryan out of some extra-danger, completing an arc about his character that feels like it was pushed for by someone not as creative as me. Did you know that I once wrote a catchy song making light of 9/11? If you haven’t heard it, you never will.
BP had been up in a bell tower relaying signals in an unintentionally sexy way, but then he got to sniping and that was going well, but he was too obvious so a tank blew up the bell tower and now BP is a dead sniper.
Upham is deteriorating emotionally. Someone needs ammo but he’s weepy and slow about it. Admittedly he is in a scary-ass spot. We move on to the beginning of a sequence that is harrowing and unforgettable. Some Germans sneak past Upham up the stairs where AG and someone else were waiting for Upham’s ammo. They shoot some of the Germans but the rest start tussling with The Gang, and one of them is the whimpering German they let go earlier, the one who had probably killed GR. Whimpering German and AG are going at it super hard melee-style and GDI GDI I hate this, AG pulls out a knife, but Whimpering German overpowers him and slowly stabs AG to death in very close shots, and the whole time Upham was around the corner crying and not helping.
TS gets hit with some bullets and looks hopping mad about it, he definitely made a choice about how to act shot, but he is a cancelled actor now. Meanwhile, Whimpering German goes downstairs, having just knife-murdered AG, and walks past Upham because Upham is clearly not a threat, he’s just bawling away on the stairs.
The gang is now doing a thing where they whack mortar shell things and then throw them, it is effective and there are some neat stunts with bodies flying from the explosions, but then more tanks and Germans show up and it is looking bad, they’re retreating and we are worried. Upham is shown hiding some more and really just not helping. TS is still at it, and it seems like he just keeps getting shot and is perpetually irritated by it, like it’s distracting him from soldiering.
2:31:40 — TH is having another shell-shocked moment like in the beginning, watching everything be as bad as it can be. Spielberg uses the low frame rate to help us feel that shell-shocked-ness. But he stumbles toward the blow-the-bridge-up button to do that, but gets shot really easily by, I think, Whimpering German, or definitely one of his pals. He falls and looks weak and just shoots a pistol at a tank that’s advancing at him. And the tank blows up! That’s because a heroic American plane hit it and now lots of Allied planes are saving the day.
Upham had been cowering near Whimpering German and his pals, but now that the cavalry has arrived, he pops up with a rifle and makes them surrender. Whimpering German tries to curry favor with him by saying “Upham”, but Upham shoots him.
TH is going to die, so he says “Earn this. Earn it” to Ryan as his last words. A little corny. Am I a total bastard complaining about corny attempts at heartfelt WWII movie moments? Is it Spielberg’s job to make me less of a bastard? We contemplate these things as a final shot of Matt Damon matches to the shot of the old man in the cemetery, who maybe they hoped we’d think was going to turn out to be Old Tom Hanks but he’s definitely Old Matt Damon. A by the book final scene of Old Matt Damon contemplatively saluting Captain Miller’s grave as very muted brass music plays us out.
I maybe had a mocking tone for many of these notes, because story moments that seem contrived bring that out of me. When people remember this movie, they mostly remember the D-Day sequence. It is a masterful sequence, the movie’s greatest accomplishment for sure, but whenever I’m watching this movie I am excited to get to the final battle scene because of how well-done it is. That scene where Whimpering German kills Adam Goldberg while Upham just hides nearby completely destroys me. This movie has so many impressive single-shot accomplishments that would normally be more memorable if we didn’t spend this whole movie haunted by the D-Day sequence. It also has a lot of things that seem placed there deliberately to fill out prescribed dramatic cadences. It seems like the writer wanted to tell his old theater professor “look, I remembered what you taught me”. The music is really unobtrusive when you think about it. Probably didn’t need John Williams. This is a huge directing accomplishment with a story that feels like it didn’t take long to come up with, even if perfectly worthy of thinking about.
