Went to Blockbuster, and picked up an old video of "Saving Private Ryan," to see if I still harbored animosity toward it. I do. I also think I am the only person in the country who believes it is an exploitation film and, interestingly enough, released in the summertime, so it would be assured a big audience of teenage boys, who are as fascinated with violence as they are by sex.
Herewith is the review I wrote when I was the movie critic for one of our local papers. I don't think I heard even one hand clapping.
SPIELBERG GOES TO WAR
The 90s have ushered in a new Spielbergian era, in which it appears the auteur has come to realize that the truth well told can be more horrifying than made-up stuff. And with the fringe benefit of allowing Mr. Spielberg to sermonize, and edify.
I give you the God-awful torment and death of Jews in Schindler's List, (from the best-seller) the grisly ordeal and bloody revolt of black slaves in "Armistad," and now the horrid deaths and maiming of young men in Saving Private Ryan."
All three have a legitimate reason for being, all three are morality lessons, all are beautifully-constructed films, and all portray violence or cruelty or mayhem or all three at once.
While Saving Private Ryan has met with critical acclaim everywhere, from the New York Times to the online magazine, Salon, not one voice has been raised to suggest that any of the three films pander to the voyeurs of violence. Well, except for Joe Morgenstern, reviewing for The Wall Street Journal, who says the military action in the movie "occasionally approaches a pornography of violence." But "occasionally approaches" sounds like a copout to me.
If one would rather not see elegantly framed scenes of a boy's hopeless struggle as he carries he own severed arm, or another boy crying for his mother as he clutches his belly, trying to hold in his own blown-out innards, does that mean one doesn't want to know the truth about what happened at Omaha Beach? Or could it mean that, for many, life is cruel enough without having a film's horrendous scenes forever engraved on one's frontal lobes?
With Saving Private Ryan, we are once again delivered by a filmmaker (only this time a master of the art) to the recurring nightmare of a battle scene drenched in blood, seeing men and boys like our husbands and sons, blown apart. Captain John Miller (played by Tom Hanks, an actor whom no one can touch for the essential goodness that he projects.) leads a squad searching for Pvt. James Ryan (Matt Damon) whom the Government has learned is the last alive of a Midwestern family's four sons.
I understand that Mr. Spielberg takes credit for inventing on the spot--presumably in a frenzy of creativity--the ghastly scene wherein a German is shown whispering in a soldier's ear as he slowly drives a knife into the man's heart. That's the bare bones plot, folks, until our side gets in its licks, burning German boys alive.
We women know that men think of themselves (and rightfully so) as the protectors of women and children against violence and, sometimes, as in the case of war's horror, even the knowledge of it. Perhaps that is one reason why so many men who came back from World War II kept their silence to the point of intensifying their postwar trauma. Why didn't they eventually share the horror, thus easing some of their burden? Obviously many wouldn't again tread those Dantian Circles by recounting them for any reason whatever.. (To this day, we know there are men who won't talk about Vietnam, even now, when it's an arcane notion to think that men must bear their grief unheard and unconsoled.)
Unfortunately, we couldn't count on Mr. Spielberg to leave us in the dark. He can be a harsh paterfamilias, who, this writer thinks, rather enjoys airing the awful truth and watching us squirm.
Grown men don't need to be beaten about the head and shoulders with a cinematic stick to know that war is bloody hell; that's one reason why many failed to show up for the no-winner in Vietnam.
But anyone who thinks Saving Private Ryan will cause young men and boys to leave the theatre swearing with Big Chief, "I will fight war, no more, forever" is living in a dream.
3:00:42 PM 
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