"Saving Private Ryan"

[Greg Nowell]

I am somewhat agahst at the volume of lbo-talk.

Someone posted a few days ago the theory that even
anti-war stuff was pro-war in its effects.  If this is
so, that is a rather dismal condition.  For it would be
hard to argue that pro-war propaganda is anti-war in
its effects.    So if anti-war stuff is in fact
pro-war, then perhaps true "anti-war" propaganda is an
impossibility.  But if that is true the Nazis, in
banning REmarque's work ("All Quiet" and a film version
of Brecht's Threepenny opera, among thousands of other
things) were wasting their time.

It is of course true that even war does not make people
anti-war.  The Hanks character in Saving Private Ryan
is a seasoned veteran of other assaults which ought to
have driven him mad, if war itself were enough to turn
(all) people against war.   Spielberg is of course a
reactionary, and the film's flag-waving prologue and
epilogue lend themselves to a reactionary
interpretation of the film's ostensible "political"
content.

As for the movie, I abstain from trying to impute a
"message" to the technical virtuousity of its
battlefield recreations.  Kubrick's Paths of Glory is
also rather dreadfully "realistic."  So is the Turner
version of Gettysburg, which is, BTW, a first-rate film
and worth the time (five or six hours).  I am not aware
of a first-rate filmmaker having made anything based on
the Iliad, but a careful reconstruction of the battle
sequences would be interesting.

Nonetheless, film is an art and its technical component
is a substantial part of its ability to creaste
illusion.  From this POV,  "Saving Private Ryan" is a
brilliant achievement.   If you are "into" the history
of film it is a must-see.    The interpretive problems
it poses are neither greater nor less than war itself,
whether you want to think of it as political,
interpersonal, psychological, cultural,
anthropological, or what have you.

Incidentally the principal combatant actors were
dragged out into the Australian bush (or somehwere
awful) and drilled by a drill sergeant for two weeks.
A number of the actors begged to be fired.  But the
"hard edge" that the film has is partially reflective
of that.   As with murder, adultery, wife battery
(anyone see "Once Were Warriors"?), and other extreme
and unpleasant situations, warfare is one element of
the human condition.  As such it merits careful
attention.  Private Ryan was for me a disturbing
viewing experience even though "the good guys won for
the just cause" as is archetypal of any Hollywood
cliche WWII film.   Its "entertainment" value,
compared, for example, to a mindless John Wayne movie,
is substantially transformed by the vividness of the
experience.   I would like to see it again, but I must
confess that I probably "won't find the time" in the
same way that I didn't "find the time" to re-see "Once
Were Warriors" which is equally disturbing (in its own
way).   BTW, on a totally unrelated thematic issue, one
of the truly interesting (given the rabid anti-statism
in American films) elements of "Once Were Warriors" was
the benign view of the state, whose welfare policies
stand out as an island of sanity in a very savage
personal universe.


--
Gregory P. Nowell
Associate Professor
Department of Political Science, Milne 100
State University of New York
135 Western Ave.
Albany, New York 12222

Fax 518-442-5298