Saving Private Ryan

I wrote at length about the shock we all felt when the Best Picture Oscar was awarded to La La Landonly to be taken away a minute later over a snafu involving the envelopes. It’s not an exaggeration to state that I, along with thousands of other movie lovers, wish the same thing had happened in the spring of 1999 when Harrison Ford opened up the Best Picture envelope and read that Shakespeare in Love had won instead of Saving Private Ryan. Even he seemed surprised and a little bemused by this upset. It seems that Harvey Weinstein managed to lobby enough support away from Steven Spielberg’s WWII epic to get the win. It was an accomplishment that would eventually get the rules for voting and promoting changed in an attempt to curtail that from ever happening again. Spielberg, who had just received his directing Oscar, can be seen crestfallen and in disbelief, frustrated that his masterpiece was stopped just short of the finish line. 

In the nearly thirty years since the day, opinions haven’t shifted that much. People still look at that win as a tainted one and believe Saving Private Ryan was robbed. The fall of Harvey Weinstein and the Weinstein Company only makes that loss all the more bitter. While Saving Private Ryan is still lauded as one of the greatest WWII films of all time, Shakespeare in Love is largely forgotten beyond its notoriety at the Oscars.

The central conceit of Saving Private Ryan is that a mother of four sons, all of whom are serving in the war, is slated to receive three letters of death at the same time. Her fourth, and final son, Private James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon), is currently somewhere in Europe, though his exact whereabouts are unknown. The US Government, showing empathy for this mother’s sacrifice, has authorized a small troop of men, led by Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks), to find Ryan and send him back home. 

Miller gets this assignment shortly after the D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach, where many hundreds of men were killed or seriously wounded. He assembles a team which includes Reiben (Edward Burns), Horvath (Tom Sizemore), interpreter Upham (Jeremy Davies), Caparzo (Vin Diesel), Mellish (Adam Goldberg), combat medic Wade (Giovanni Ribisi), and elite sniper Jackson (Barry Pepper). The team heads across the countryside in the general area Ryan was known to last be, losing some of their team along the way. Eventually, they find Ryan as part of a team defending a strategic bridge from enemy soldiers. While Ryan is appreciative of the offer of a free ticket home, his loyalties to his fellow men and to the mission won’t allow him to abandon them, even at the loss of his own life. He insists on staying and defending his post until reinforcements arrive. 

Aside from the brief bookend scenes, this film begins and ends on extremely bloody battles. The opening segment, representing the invasion at Omaha Beach, is perhaps the most brutal battle sequence ever put on film up to that time. Spielberg wants you to feel like you are right there with the soldiers, experiencing the trauma, the shock of all the gore and brutality, and the sheer endless pummeling of the weapons being fired from all sides, confusing and brutal. It hits home the sheer bravery of these men, marching into a massacre and coming out the victors. Once the shooting comes to an end, the carnage left behind is utterly sickening. We are meant to feel the old cliché that war is hell.

To further cement this feeling is the total lack of a score during the invasion. We are hearing nothing but what the soldiers there would have heard, giving us a total immersive experience; the only way to make this more realistic would be to have this in a 4DX screening with rumbling seats, smells of the ocean, and water effects. Janusz Kamiński, Spielberg’s go-to cinematographer, is using handheld cameras to great effect here, really capturing the cacophony and the mad insanity of the battle.

This opening scene is so impressive that the rest of the film cannot possibly live up to it. That is not to say that the rest of the film is a disappointment because it is not. But it never quite lives up to this opening invasion. Even the spectacular finale, as good as it is, doesn’t have the same level of visceral brutality as this opening. I have known people who fought in WWII that couldn’t sit through this invasion sequence; the trauma of that war is still strong enough that this film caused a renewal of latent PTSD. Others have stated that it gave them a renewed appreciation for family members who fought in that war, many of whom returned unable to speak of their experiences. 

Still others have cited this film as having inspired them in their own depictions of the war and for having sparked a renewed interest in World War II history. Not long afterwards, there would be other movies tackling other aspects of the war, including a duology of films by Clint Eastwood looking at the war in the Pacific from both sides. Even video games got in on the market with a Call of Duty game focused on WWII, complete with a campaign tied to D-Day. 

This film has been credited with introducing the world to a young actor going by the name Vin Diesel. That’s not quite correct as he had written and directed himself in the film Strays the previous year and had been making bit appearances since the beginning of the decade. But Saving Private Ryanintroduced him to a much larger audience, jump-starting his career and making all those Riddick and Fast and the Furious films possible. Some will say that is not a good thing, of course, but those films are popular and have given plenty of talented people work for several decades now. Spielberg cast him personally after seeing him in the short film Multi-Facial, giving him his big break. 

Tom Hanks lends his everyman persona to the cast as the captain tasked with finding Private Ryan. His mentality is that it doesn’t matter who this private is, only that if finding him earns himself the right to return home to his wife, then he will do whatever it takes to accomplish that mission. For much of the film, his backstory remains a mystery, even to his men. They have a betting pool on it, one that he is privy to and jokes about cashing in on it when the amount gets high enough. When he finally does open up, it is to alleviate the tension in a situation before it turns deadly and proves that leadership and courage can come from some of the most humble of backgrounds. 

Much has been made about the obvious plot points of this film, how nothing that happens comes as a real surprise. I won’t argue the point here because there really isn’t one to argue. The plot of this film is pretty standard. Men are sent to find a soldier and send him home. They find him, and he is eventually sent home. It’s pretty straightforward. But then most films can be distilled down that way. The point isn’t the bare bones plot; it is how it gets there and what it makes us think and feel. Every time one of Miller’s men is killed during the course of this mission, we feel it deeply. There are no superfluous deaths of the main cast during the course of finding Ryan. The price to do so is high, too, with many family members losing their sons just to bring home one soldier. Miller himself challenges Ryan with the words “Earn this,” a command that the young man isn’t certain he has done in the years since. 

The bookend scenes are an older Ryan, alongside his family, visiting Arlington Cemetery and the grave of Captain Miller. His tearful question to his wife, “Am I a good man?” reflects his doubts over whether his life was worth all those who lost theirs for his. I have yet to see this film with an audience and not heard the distinct sounds of crying as he asks that question because we are all feeling the same thing. Many lives for the one, and was it worth it? How can anyone be in that position and feel that it was?

Saving Private Ryan is one of those films that people simply needed to see. It is brutal, violent, and accurately depicts what so many WWII survivors couldn’t articulate upon returning home. It’s also a better film than the one that secured the Oscar win that night in 1999. Time has been far more kind to it than to Shakespeare in Love, and critical reevaluations of both films hold that up. This film will stick with you long after the credits roll and the tears begin to dry. 

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Steven Spielberg, Ian Bryce, Mark Gordon, and Gary Levinsohn

Best Director: Steven Spielberg (won)

Best Actor: Tom Hanks

Best Writing (Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen): Robert Rodat

Best Music (Original Dramatic Score): John Williams

Best Sound Effects Editing: Gary Rydstrom (won)

Best Sound: Gary Rydstrom, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson, and Ron Judkins (won)

Best Art Direction: Tom Sanders and Lisa Dean Kavanaugh

Best Cinematography: Janusz Kamiński (won)

Best Makeup: Lois Burwell, Conor O’Sullivan, and Daniel C. Striepeke

Best Film Editing: Michael Kahn (won)

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Release Date: July 24, 1998

Running Time: 170 minutes

Rated R

Starring: Tom Hanks, Edward Burns, Matt Damon, and Tom Sizemore

Directed by: Steven Spielberg