By Emi Gruender
Welcome back to another issue of the series I lovingly call “Dad’s Daily DVD!” Last issue, we watched the outstanding romantic comedy There’s Something About Mary, which earned a score of 8/10. This issue, we’re taking a darker turn toward historical fiction with the award-winning movie, Saving Private Ryan.
If you’re not familiar with this heartbreaking film, the plot follows one Captain John Miller as he navigates the harrowing and deeply traumatic experience that was D-Day and WW2 in general. According to Google, a high-ranking general learns of a mother’s extraordinary loss of three of her four sons due to the war, and in a display of compassion, decides to send a mission to bring the last remaining Private Ryan home. Following the command, Captain Miller assembles an eight-man crew and they brave the horrifying battlefields of France in an almost suicidal attempt to save one man, who may be already dead to begin with.
This movie is most certainly not for kids, and deals with explicit gore and foul language. Read at your own discretion.
★★★★★★★★★☆ — 9/10, Nothing’s Fair in Love and War
I have never understood the feeling of true revulsion and horror until this movie. No matter how many horror movies I watch, no matter what twisted plots their directors can concoct, this movie was all the more rattling because all of the horror of the war was true. From the first shots of the chaotic battlefield on the shores, the audience is pulled right into the chaos just like the soldiers. Immediately, we see the soldiers being gunned down violently and brutally, causing them to abort the ship. Many of them, as a result of their heavy armor, sink to the bottom of the shallows and either are shot while in the water or drown. Those who survive face worse challenges on the beach— the sand peppered with landmines and spiky metal stars. The special effects team holds back nothing as we witness men scrambling on the ground for their severed arms and running away with them, guts and gore hanging out of the heads, abdomens, chests and mouths of the soldiers. Those unfortunate enough to be gored so that their intestines spill over their bellies scream for their mother over and over again as their fellow soldiers run past them, sometimes even raiding the corpses for extra supplies and ammo. A bullet plinks off a man’s helmet, saving his life. He removes his helmet, shocked that he survived a direct shot to the head… only to be shot directly in the forehead not a minute later.
Not spooky clowns in the sewer, or ominous twins in a hotel, or shadowy figures that roam the forest disturb me as much as this. Because according to actual D-Day survivors, the opening sequence was uncomfortably realistic. Tens of thousands of men died in horrifying, painful ways on a near-suicide mission, many of them sobbing and crying for their family and home as bullets rain down like tears.
There’s nothing more that I can say than horror. Utter, complete horror.
*SPOILERS BELOW!*
I don’t know what I expected when eight soldiers put their lives on the line to save one man, based upon arbitrary orders from higher-ups. I don’t know why I expected most of them to survive, and go home happy to be reunited with their mothers, brothers, wives, sisters, fathers, children. The people that I really hoped would survive were Captain John Miller and Timothy Upham.
From the moment Upham was introduced as a stuttering, naive klutz, pulled from mundane translation work straight onto the battlefield, I fell in love with the character. He kept talking about the “bonds of brotherhood” that soldiers make on the battlefield, to which his compatriots snicker. Unbeknownst to Upham, there was indeed brotherhood formed between soldiers, but it was more heartbreak than solidarity. Upham’s entire arc, from failing to save his compatriot to shooting the German soldier that he once insisted on saving, broke my heart. He was so well-meaning, and his entire arc was a representation of the loss of innocence due to the brutality and cruelty of war.
Though it would take pages upon pages to review every moment of the film that caused tears to spring to my eyes, I believe it would be safe to say that this movie is nothing short of a masterpiece. Not a masterpiece of some great noble moral, nor a masterpiece of hope and beauty. It is dark and gritty and painfully honest, despite only being a production of two hours. In this movie, the characters do not have plot armor for the sake of the plot. There are no shining soldiers plucked out of the blue made to withstand bullet wound after bullet wound; no “main characters” in the grand scheme of things.
A Dad’s Daily DVD would not be complete without a list: here’s a depressing one.
PARTS THAT MADE ME FEEL LIKE CRYING
- The foreshadowing of almost everyone’s death in the very first 2 minutes, when old Private Ryan is visiting the military graveyard.
- The opening battle sequence, where men are dying left and right in the most brutal way possible
- Bottom half being blown off by a landmine.
- Any body part being blown off by a landmine.
- Drowning because of gear
- Getting shot in the water while drowning because of gear
- Bleeding out on the ground with your organs spread around you
- Burned to death
- Captain John Miller dragged his injured friend to safety, through explosions, only to realize the legs of his friend have been blown off and he’s dragging a dead man.
- Captain John Miller’s constant hand shaking, like constantly being on edge and drunk off adrenaline.
- Every death scene of the eight men. Especially the one concerning the sniper, Jackson, because I could feel his death coming.
- The knife scene, where Upham is paralyzed by fear and unable to move and save his fellow soldier.
- The deadness in Upham’s eyes as he commits a war crime and kills the same surrendered German that he had met and spared the life of once before.
- Private Ryan’s guilt, knowing that so many men died to save him. But in reality, he didn’t kill them. The war did. Even if they weren’t on the mission to save Private Ryan, they might have died elsewhere. It’s so bleak and awful.
- You might say it’s FUBAR.