With
the help of cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, writer Robert Rodat, composer John
Williams, and well chosen actors from Tom Hanks to Matt Damon, Steven Spielberg
has come up with a winner. It was Spielberg, we now remember, who helped invent
the genre: summer blockbuster. Given some of the stuff that Hollywood has dished
out during this season in recent years, one might have thought this was one of
Spielberg's more regretable contributions to the industry. I've often wondered
why the movie producers seem to assume that this is a season for dumbing down.
Surely not all of us have gone brain dead from too much fun in the sun.
With Saving Private Ryan,
Spielberg rescues not only the summer season, he reinvents the "war movie," turning
it into a parable, which like the biblical originals, has the power to shatter
conventional wisdom and send us off in search of deeper truths. By now
you're probably familiar with the outlines of Rodat's plot which revolves around
the attempt to rescue Private Ryan. His three brothers have been killed in combat;
the rescue effort, led by Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) is part public relations
gambit, and part an act of misguided sentiment on the part of General George C.
Marshall. Hanks and his fellow rescuers are well aware of the potential
folly of their mission: putting the lives of their entire unit at risk to rescue
one man. And through their eyes we see, not only their personal dilemma, but the
madness of warfare itself. Clearly the opening scene depicting the landing at
Omaha beach contains some of best film footage ever-made, of any subject.
The closing battle scene also ranks right up there. In between there are some
smaller vignettes that will earn Kaminski an academy award nomination for sure,
even if Saving Private Ryan does not sweep the field in 1999 as did Titanic in
1998.
What
makes me compare this film to a New Testament parable? It tells a deceptively
simple story, subject to a variety of interpretations, all of them touching upon
the fundamential question of life's meaning and purpose. As the parables of Jesus
took the circumstances and local conditions of his time and place as a backdrop,
so does Saving Private Ryan, though the true screen against which this film is
projected is not World War II, but rather the post-cold war world of the closing
moments of this century of warfare. Depite the flag waving and the sentiments
projected by the World War II veteran and his family whose memories constitute
a visual frame in which this movie is set, this film has an attitude, and it is
distinctly post-modern. Missing here is the clear line of demarkation between
good and evil, between heroism and cowardice, between right and wrong. In Saving
Private Ryan, it is the American troops who are guilty of war crimes, gunning
down the surrendering Germans, who, with one exception, are a faceless enemy.
The most effective killer among Captain Miller's men is sharpshooter Jackson (Barry
Pepper), a Bible believing southerner who quotes from the Psalms as he picks off
the enemy one-by-one. The young linguist, Corporal Upham (Jeremy Davies) intervenes
to save one German captive, only to see the object of his mercy return to kill
at least two of his comrades. What rules upon these killing fields, and in this
European countryside, and the smoldering cities, is not a God of mercy, but the
chaos, unrestrained violence, random suffering and death that is an inevitable
part of warfare. This is a world where Chance is the King of Kings. And Spielberg
is his prophet.
If there
is any hope of redemption -- Spielberg holds out at least a hope that there is,
even in the flawed mission that Captain Miller and his men finally do embrace
-- it is a redemption that flows out of the very heart of Chaos. Which may
be the best hope that those of us who inhabit a thoroughly deconstructed world
will ever know. Five flames.
Charles Henderson
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Rev. Charles P. Henderson is a Presbyterian minister Publisher of CrossCurrents
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Telephone: 212-864-5436