Recently in my Theatre 100 class, our professor posed the question "What is a story?" His thought, short and to the point, was that stories are simply what happens in the story. Movies also allow us to answer this question as we observe the characters and interpret their stories. There are funny stories, love stories, scary stories, etc., but one genre people tend to forget about are the war stories. In the Vietnam War novel The Things They Carried author Tim O'Brien writes:
“A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. "
That is not to say that all aspects of a war story are obscene or evil, just that they are a crucial part of the whole. While there have been plenty of movies that incorporate a plot about war, Steven Spielberg's 1998 film Saving Private Ryan wholeheartedly encompasses the essence of the war story.
Saving Private Ryan features Army Captain John Miller (played by Tom Hanks) as he leads his men through WWII, following the storming of the beaches at Normandy. Miller and his squad are given the mission of finding a young man called Private Ryan (played by Matt Damon) so he can be sent home in order to ease the heartache of Ryan's mother, whose three eldest sons have already perished in the war.
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As Miller and his men traipse across France in search of Ryan, the movie analyzes both the physical obstacles and emotional challenges they face. Throughout their journey, the men must fight their way through enemy territory, leading unsurprisingly to casualties among the squad. The more obstacles they endure, the more the team begins to question the validity of their mission; what is the point of risking a group of people to bring one guy back? Miller attempts to qualm these fears, but internally feels the toll of war as well. Predictably, the men become bitter with their task, demonstrating the demoralizing nature of war. This is particularly evident in a scene in which the men are instructed to search a pile of dog tags in case Ryan may already be dead. Rifling through the tags, the men forget the fact that the friends of the soldiers whom the tags belong are watching strangers turn their friends' deaths into a rowdy poker match, trading for tags and yelling "Full House."
The war itself seems to almost play its own character, as it is exploited through Miller's journey. The idea that a true war story does not serve the purpose of being uplifting is evident throughout this film, as we see our characters doubt themselves and question whether the sacrifices they are making are truly worth it. We see the transformation war has on all characters, as even the captain feels himself growing farther from his identity with every growing minute spent overseas. Spielberg, who won the Academy Award for Best Director for this film, was able to successfully portray these transformations by not sugarcoating the war. He tells us what we already know, but do not necessarily want to be reminded of: war is violent, everyone cannot make it home alive, and even the most level headed men can lose their grip.
Saving Private Ryan marries these elements of violence and loss with those of brotherhood and love to create a solid war story. The film is able to leave you feeling satisfied with the ending, but torn with a greater understanding of the cost of war.
If this has not convinced you that this movie can be enjoyed over and over, I think it is relevant to note that it also won four other Academy Awards in technical categories, implying that both the plot and the hard footage were well crafted.
