From his very first works, Steven Spielberg displayed an almost preternatural gift for film making and specifically the machinations of suspense and special effects, a skill that movie audiences responded to in droves. But the massive success of such early films as Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) - which helped congeal the blockbuster mentality of modern Hollywood - in some ways hurt Spielberg's reputation. Craving respect, he knew his movies would always be dismissed as merely popular entertainment and technical exercises.
Spielberg nonetheless tried to broaden his range with such mature experiments as The Color Purple (1985) and Empire of the Sun (1987), but it wasn't until the harrowing Holocaust film Schindler's List (1993) that he finally made a movie that satisfied both critics ant the public. With the exception of his two Jurassic Park films (1993, 1997), Spielberg has remained more or less in serious mode ever since.
Saving Private Ryan introduced something new to the director's vocabulary: A visceral, violent intensity. Spielberg had dealt with violence before, of course, but typically it was either cartoonish or carefully moderated (and then milked) as a dramatic beat punctuating moments of maximum horror. The opening battle sequence of Saving Private Ryan, however, is absolutely relentless. No sooner have American boats lands on the beaches of Normandy, than young men are mowed down by incessant bursts of machine-gun fire, the bullets piercing their useless helmets with a sickening "ping." And it doesn't stop there. Soldiers are blown to bits. Body parts fly through the air and litter the ground. The sea turns a squeamish blood red. The camera lurches wildly, the desaturated film stock the color of death. The "new" Spielberg takes no prisoners.
Admittedly, the Spielberg of old can't always resist falling back on unabashed sentimentality. A pair of flimsy bookends start and end on purely manipulative notes, and Spielberg encourages his composer of choice John Williams to indulge in his worst hamstring-tugging tendencies. More uncomfortably, the same techniques Spielberg uses to depict the horrors of the war in his truly awe-inspiring opening battle scene he later enlists to propel the more traditional good-versus-evil conflict of the conclusion.
But the familiar good guy/bad guy dichotomy actually twists the antiwar message into something more challenging. War is hell, Spielberg acknowledges, except when you're winning, since victory is ultimately what accords the right to dictate the rules of morality. Saving Private Ryan contains just enough darkness lurking in the fog of war to stave off accusations it supports blind patriotism. Looking over thousands of graves, a soldier asks of his wife, "Was I a good man?" That's a more ambiguous way of asking not just "was it worth it?" but "was it justified?" These are questions that no doubt haunt all those left standing when shooting stops, surveying the death and destruction around them wrought for even the noblest of purposes.
Quote of the Day - Captain Miller - "He better be worth it. He better go home and cure a disease, or invent a longer-lasting light bulb."
Tomorrow: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
