Saving Private Ryan is a film that came out in 1998, and is the story of a group of soldiers, in world war 2, that are sent to find another soldier to tell him of his brother’s deaths and to bring him back home to his mother. This is the next film I watched in the study of the evolution of war films throughout history. This is the first film that was truly about war that I watched since All Quiet on the Western Front, because all of the other films that I watched were war films but had other aspects to them, this film is just about war.
This is the first film that has scenes that don’t take place within the timeline of the film, it instead began with one of the soldiers visiting the grave of his lost friends. Which showed just how long-lasting the effects of war are. I felt that these scenes didn’t really add to the film at all, the point was driven home well enough without them, and they just felt pointless, although quite harrowing.
This is also the first film in a while that I watched for this series that focused on World War 2, which was probably because it is a relatively uncontroversial war to focus on. So I actually wasn’t really expecting it to be much different from the earliest war films, and it wasn’t but this was actually the most brutally realistic film I’ve watched for this series! The opening scene is so disturbing and the amount of death and despair, and really just how honorless this way of fighting is. The soldiers were killing Germans who were surrendering without blinking an eye, and the Germans were killing hundreds of people on the beach with the same lack of scrupals.
The film took a lot from previous war films like All Quiet on the Western Front and Wings, purely from how it was made. The action scenes were very similar, those these were much more brutal and realistic because of the use of handheld cameras. But the film also took inspiration from Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket because of the disregard for human life that the soldiers feel, though never to quite the extent of the other two films, as you were still rooting for them. It was a film that really could have taken place during any war, but just happened to be World War 2 because it was the least controversial.
The film was also the first film that focused on a captain in the war, instead of just a soldier, which worked really well, as he had to mentally deal with sending his men to die. I really liked this and I found it surprising that this is the only film that has done this so far. It demonstrated the toxic effect of war on a new level, as to how a captain deals with the death of a soldier because of one of his orders.
I don’t know how inspiring the film was to other war films, I haven’t seen enough modern ones but it is a classic film, much like the others I’ve watched. I did see some similarities in the war scenes between this and Hacksaw Ridge, as both were quite violent and disturbing, but this never got the same level of tension and emotion as that film does.
This film almost brought me to tears multiple times, it is so emotionally draining and brutal and it never felt manipulative or fake, always real, raw emotion. This also had some really tense scenes, which may have been because of the camera-work, which really made me feel like I was in the situation with the men. The film was really a lot like All Quiet on the Western Front, though never as joyless, and has a partially happy ending. I really enjoyed it, and it was a very effective film that deserves a lot of the praise it recieves.
Finn Kane Reviews 