Saving Private Ryan

Saving Private Ryan, 1998
Saving Private Ryan (Special Limited Edition)

I can't tell you how many times I've started to watch this movie, only to get bored by the time the group of men make it to the city where they find the little girl. And a lot of it really wasn't that I was bored as much as it was that it was one of the movies that my cousin would watch on a loop. I'm talking every day of the summer for the entire summer. And to make matters worse, he would set up his army men on the entertainment center, on the coffee table, bookshelves, the side of furniture, cabinets, you name it at one point he had men deployed there and it was inevitable that I would end up stepping on them or they'd seem to get in my way. I was fourteen or fifteen if it helps to explain a bit of the dramatics involved, and I was twenty-something when I finally decided maybe I should give this movie another chance and watch all of it.

After having watched the movie:

(Possible spoilers below)

I don't know how I managed to watch what's almost half of the movie and not just see it through until the end. I mean, yeah it's a war movie so there's my easy answer, but there was so much buzz around the movie when it was first released, and my cousin watched it on loop every day for an entire summer. Of course in the perfect world I would have finally sat down and watched the entire movie with the same cousin, but unfortunately geography prevented that from happening.

I did like the movie enough though, but watching this one for the first time wasn't about finally learning Ryan's fate, as much as it was doing it because I felt as though I owed it to the movie. I mean for so long I had just kind of wrote it off as an, "eh?" without having seen the whole thing.

A movie like this, that's made on such a large scale is almost impossible for me to imagine trying to make or work on. From the outside looking in, I feel like there are so many opportunities to become so overwhelmed that suddenly you would find yourself standing around and not exactly sure what needs to be worked on. Production spent about a month shooting the Omaha Beach scene, none of which Spielberg claims had been story boarded. I can't imagine what that would have been like for the Script Supervisor. I mean, I don't think there is enough room on a page to make notes for all the coverage from that scene. On the other hand, Dreamworks was putting $100 million into the project, so if you're going to be over there you better do it and do it right for that amount of money. Reportedly, 40 barrels of fake blood had been used, and close to 1,000 extras were requested for the scene, many of which were members of the Irish National Guard. 

The $11 million dollars alone spent on this roughly estimated twenty-five minute scene though was well spent. Many veterans who served on D-Day have gone on to applaud Spielberg for not shying away from the violence, and trying to truly capture the events from that day. As a result, the Department of Veteran Affairs set up special 800 help all the soldiers who had been traumatized as a result of watching the movie.

Spielberg, a lot like Hitchcock had done with Psycho, event went a bit further as to direct cinemas on the proper way to show case the film. They had been instructed to increase the volume when showing the film so the sound effects could have the full intended effect on audiences. Theaters were also urged not to allow anyone to gain access to the movie once it had started. Remember, Hitchcock had spend money to advertise the importance of not showing up late to Psycho. Surprisingly though this doesn't make me want to roll my eyes and brush it off as being dramatic, because I can kind of see why these directors had set these requests. After all, Spielberg went to great extent to capture the right sound from each weapon so they would have authentic sounds for post production.

Final thoughts: After reading online about how many countries had first decided to decline showing the movie based on the amount of violence, I have more respect for Mr. Spielberg for not recutting the movie. The movie still isn't one of my favorite movies, but at the very least it is one that I am glad to say that I've finally watched.

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Next up: Lost in Translation