This week on the Ambassador Almanac I wanted to dig into one of the most celebrated war movies of all time that I rewatched over Memorial Day Weekend. Plus another update on a new release I saw and a personal favorite has finally been added to the physical media collection.
It’s not uncommon to scroll the ole TV guide over a holiday weekend like Memorial Day and see various channels running marathons of war movies and shows. Watching these was a common occurrence in my household growing up. So on a drive home from work on Friday the thought occurred to me that I haven’t watched Steven Spielberg’s World War Two classic Saving Private Ryan in a while. I figured why not fire it up again and see what’s going on. Needless to say I have some thoughts about the movie and what it represents for the generation that fought in the war and how Spielberg made something that was far from a historical document but kept the essence of their sacrifice at the forefront.
I think this is as good a time as any to say the mission to save Pvt. Ryan makes very little sense. When Miller (Tom Hanks) lands at Omaha Beach in one of the most visceral openings to a movie ever we are in the earlier phases of the wider Allied Powers invasion of France. Hard cut to an incredibly well shot sequence (that includes a lovely homage of The Searchers) of the Ryan mother learning the news that all of her sons but one were killed in action. So the US Military at a moment when the success of the invasion is far from certain are gonna send a handful of men walking across occupied France to attempt to find a paratrooper to bring him back? No shot. Nobody can sell to me that in the hours Miller gets the mission that is priority for the military.
BUT I digress, the point is that perhaps no movie gets me thinking about the balance of authenticity vs. entertainment as much as this one. Because as mentioned the very idea of the movie makes no sense practically but it’s arguably the best modern war movie we have. It was on this latest watch that I did wrap my arms around the fact that Spielberg got his cake and ate it too by having a realistic depiction of the beach landings and getting to make the movie he wanted. After all the movie isn’t interested in being a history lesson as much as it is a love letter to that generation of soldiers. He captures what the men were like, different religions, they were from different parts of the country, and had different personalities.
The best moment of this and to me the essence of what the movie is comes when Miller is sitting with Ryan (Matt Damon) and they talk about their lives at home. It comes before the big battle sequence that closes the movie so we’ve already been on a lengthy journey to this point. While on said journey there is a ton of conversation about how Ryan better cure a disease or invent something to make the lives they lost on the way worth it. So with that in mind Ryan tells Miller about the last night he was with all his brothers.
I’ll be honest and say for years I hated this scene. Miller is beyond patient with him at first, the character fulfilling the role of teacher which we learn he is back home earlier. The story Ryan tells is crude and in terms of what you remember about your dead brothers is a wild one to share. I used to think he was a jerk. Now I think he’s a kid. I think Miller knows it too, you see it on his face as he listens to the story. The person they were ordered to save wasn’t someone special just a regular young dude from an unsuspecting farm house in Iowa.
There a lot of ways to read the scene but for me its two fold. First it serves as a reminder to us from the filmmaker that the men who made those jumps and stormed those beaches were more often than not kids like Ryan. This isn’t a movie about what the soldiers did its a movie about who they are. With the world on the brink we asked a bunch of regular dudes to do extraordinary things and save the world. The other things is that it allows Miller to give his last line of the movie, “Earn this” and it have some added weight. Because the natural response is to be like yeah Ryan ya better earn this you moron! The teacher reminds the student one last time of the gift he was given by the efforts of Miller and his troops. It’s a great piece of screenwriting because Miller might as well have said the line straight at us watching. Spielberg’s emotional pull ultimately was one of us learning what the men were like and getting sense of what they went through. That line from the movie really does speak to the ideals of what the real men fought and died for and how we as a country have a responsibility to protect those things and water them so we can continue to grow into the best nation that we can.
Did we do that? HELL no but thats a story for another time.
The point is that Spielberg is the ultimate story teller and by making the movie this way he think he arms himself with the ability to drive home the thematic weight in a more emotional way than if he made movie more like the big battle movies of previous eras. Since we connect D-Day with this movie imagine if it was more like The Longest Day (1962). Certainly not all of you would have it seen but you have to imagine that war films were once big ole casts with a ton of actors that you’d have heard of at the time. The cast of movie features John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Sean Connery, and Richard Burton among others. Really big names for the era playing soldiers in a movie designed to be a meticulous retelling of events that lead long run times and a very bored Ian when he saw as a kid. Successful or not the movie wants you to know the real events by the time it’s over. Spielberg upends that idea in Ryan and leans on his craftsmanship as director and storyteller to make something incredibly cinematic (after the beach landing which he intentionally made as real and horrifying as possible).
I don’t think we get enough of those now. We really put a premium on the idea that what you see in a movie IS what happened when a movie is marketed that way. And the studios know what I often hear from people “If it’s not a true story I don’t care” so they push movies to be marketed as the REAL and DEFINITIVE versions of X story. I feel the same level of frustration or disappointment when you see something and learn later most of it wasn’t real. But also people really need to look up the word adaption and dig into what that means. Whether it be a book, video game, or real life when it makes the jump to the screen things are always lost or changed along the way. I will always side with the artist if they have a vision and they are true to it. I suppose it helps if the artist in question is Steven Spielberg…
What I Watched This Week:
I don’t mean to overreact but…are the YouTubers going to save movies? We’ve all been talking for a while about the shift happening where studios were taking low budget swings on internet talent with this year’s Obsession and Backrooms being two big moments in this concept. I talked about the former in a previous post and now Backrooms is here and having just strolled in from my screening I have thoughts.
It’s important to note as I did in my Backrooms blog a couple weeks back that I was a big fan of the YouTube series. For anyone who was concerned about the the leap from internet to film and how that would change Parson’s style as a director on the project I’m happy to report that he dips his toes into familiar water in that regard. If you told me the cold open to this movie is just straight up one of the videos I would believe you. With that comes this sort of distortion in storytelling. We get bits and pieces of information but never a clear picture of what is happening. The plot is episodic in nature – like a YouTube video – with a big reveal or clue to what is going on leading to a hard cut and resetting of the movie. I was pleasantly surprised by just how similar the imagery was.
For all of this to work you need someone who’s in control of the story. I don’t know this for a fact but one must assume that for Kane Parsons this is his baby. There was already online threads working on lore and people dissecting his story before there was ever talk of a feature. At this level of established world building + what seems to be very little studio influence what you get is someone talented able to tell his story how he wants. The complete and utter ambiguity to what the Backrooms are and why it is there serves the story greatly. I found myself walking out of the movie with way more questions than answers and I couldn’t be more thrilled. It’s clear that the filmmaker knows the world inside and out so he knew exactly what we needed to see and what we didn’t. There is such a level of confidence in how he tells the story and directs the movie. No long monologues about the origins of it or extreme hand holding exposition either. It’s not a perfect script by any means but for a first timer at this scale we simply have to take note of it.
The other piece I’ll say is that he gets two pretty damn good performances out of his leads. I mentioned how awesome it was that Renate Reinsve agreed to be in this. Fresh of the Oscars plus another prize at Cannes this year she has become a really well known and decorated actor. So for her to not only to agree to do the movie but also give such a committed performance despite the director being so young and the material so…well… odd is such a cool thing to have happen. But it wasn’t just her because Chiwetel Ejiofor was easily the best performance in the movie. He’s an interesting actor because every time you see him in something you love that he is there. But I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him do a role like this one. I think it goes without saying that these two performances are at the heart of the movie and I’m not sure just how good the movie is without them.
The Physical Media Pick Up:
This is weeks pick up was one that I wanted to get into the collection for a while. Not because it is some 5 star masterpiece that needed to be there but because it was a movie that I happen to love and by God I wanted it. Allow me to introduce you all to Gore Verbinski’s 2002 horror classic The Ring. An America version of a 90s movie of the same name this one stars Naomi Watts. A very important actress to a younger Ian because of her role in Peter Jackson’s King Kong and equally important to an older Ian because of her work with David Lynch.
The premise is simple: Watts plays a journalist whose niece dies under mysterious circumstances. Her friends say she watched a haunted tape that, if watched, will prompt a call to come to wherever you watched it to inform you that you have a week to live. So as ya do she tracks the tape down and watches it. She gets the phone call and now it’s game on.
I think this movie is similar to Backrooms for me in that beyond the VHS of it all you get a higher profile actress whose above the material to be in your horror movie and elevate the floor of the experience. The effects and scares might be a bit dated but there is still some cool stuff in there and for me it holds up as an entertaining watch.
That’s about all I have this week and next week will be a little hectic so I’m trying to decide how I’ll handle the posting schedule. Till then have a great weekend and try to go support a movie like Obsession or Backrooms.
The Ambassador Almanac 