Saving Private Ryan

Screenwriter William Goldman has a great bit about what a soft-headed, manipulative piece of crap SPR is in his book The Big Picture.

The D-Day scene in SPR is a brilliant piece of work, though, largely because of the use of sound. It's not just seeing all those bullets hitting people, you see, it's hearing all the bullets that almost hit people. That's what really makes you cringe.

Very, very true.

I used to love SPR, but lately I have be reevaluating my opinion. I do think the D-Day sequence is absolutely fantastic, but as far as the rest of the film goes, I am unsure of Spielberg's artistic intent. He goes out of his way to really show how the horrors of war, but with the prologue and epilogue, he seems to glorify it all. Are we supposed to watch people get their arms blown off, then look at Spielberg's shots of the American flag and start believing that all the carnage is really worth it?

Yeah, I almost mentioned that essay in my post above. Great book, by the way. I stopped paying any attention to almost all movies that hadn't been/aren't released yet because of that book..

a better complaint is that he glorifies it badly, cf. anthony's confusion above (and mine too, and practically everyone else's including spielberg probably)

(also the movie is BRIMMING w/ examples of his usual brand of pandering - eg. the lame present-day bookend scenes; the moment where all the officers at central command are being briefed on the ryan family situation and the officer giving the briefing announces that mrs. ryan will be receiving the letters on the same day and then EVERY MAN AT THE TABLE gets his own pained reaction shot, etc etc. By contrast, the queasy ambivalence at the film's core comes across as something rather more complicated i think)

what is interesting (in an "interesting failure" kinda way) to me about SPR and Schindler's List is the way spielberg's old-fashioned serial-style easy b&w morality implodes when it has to confront any type of complex horror or evil

gimme Peckinpah any day.

Again, I must refer to the Goldman piece on SPR, in which he makes a pretty convincing argument about the film's pretensions to harsh, nihilistic rub-your-nose-in-it-ness vs. its underlying dedication to pulling your emotional strings and ultimately Uplifting the Soul.

People don't give Spielberg enough credit for his occasional dark moments. The bit in Close Encounters when Roy Neary is going berserk and his wife takes the kids and leaves? If you flip it around and look at it from, say, the kids' perspective, it's an utterly brutal scene. After all, their dad is going nuts and, ultimately, he's going to totally disappear and never be heard from again. (This is all justified in the film by Neary's great when-you-wish-upon-a-star adventure, but that scene makes me cringe nonetheless.) And, of course, Schindler's List and SPR are full of stuff that's just plain hard to watch.

And yet, in a way, Spielberg has never made what I would consider a "grown up" film, in the sense that he must always comfort the audience at some point, even amid the most heinous material. He must always artificially milk your emotions (the little girl in the red dress in the black-and-white Schindler's List is my favorite example). He must always evoke wonder, somehow, at something. He's very good at it, and people respond to it, but it makes me mistrust him when he gets all "serious." As harrowing as parts of SPR are, other parts are undeniably hokey. I don't read that as "queasy ambivalence"; I read it as Spielberg wanted to make a kick-ass WWII movie that would make people flinch and thrill and ultimately have a good cry.

The all time best WWII movie is the Dirty Dozen.

completely OTM. This is what I was trying (less successsfully) to articulate in my comment about AI above.

Reckon so. I don't know if I'd say I'm a detractor. After all, he is a superb filmmaker. But this "serious director" mantle he seems to be trying to assume doesn't fit, really. And I reckon he's got bigger problems. Minority Report was, arguably, a "serious" film, but it wasn't very good, and that hasn't happened to him too often before.

etc etc

i think Catch Me if You Can and A.I. are masterpieces because they critically examine, either consciously or unconsciously, his entire artistic world view.

As for AI, I enjoyed it. I think Kubrick would have messed it up. Now I know this won't be popular, but I hate all Kubrick's films that I've seen. I haven't seen Paths Of Glory or Strangelove, and the only one he's been involved in that I've enjoyed is Spartacus. I know I'll be labelled a Luddite, but I can only be true to myself. 2001 is his greatest crime. The truest example of The Emporer's New Clothes. It's a terribly dull, pretentious film.

I'll step into this breach.

I'd say completely otherwise - 2001 is a pure film in the sense that it does what so few films before or since have done - which is to say to create a pure experience instead of a plotline. Slow and intellectual? Sure. Dull and boring? No. Pretentious - probably more on the part of the critical slathering, no so much the work itself.

As for war films, what, does actually reflecting upon the nature of war and the cruel calculus the environment plays upon men really ruin the genre? In my opinion, while the traditional heroic stance works well for propagandistic and cheap thrilling purposes, it really is more tyrannical as a template or construct and ultimately propagates more misunderstanding and hatred than something a little more open to nuance. I'm not against violence or entertainment, but it's hard for me to indulge in what is purely for either.

Ultimately my question is what is so wrong with thinking a little bit? Medium forms, in my view, are opportunities to change perception and consciousness, and have no really purpose beyond that.

Oh, and Thin Red Line is soooooo much better...