WAR: FROM THE ARCHIVES 1998
National reviews and old heretical thoughts on
Saving Private Ryan
"Bruce Shapiro, a contributor to Salon (7.30.98) smells a cover-up (now there's a major breakthrough), poses a question and, later, makes a statement: "Why has it taken so many decades to start this frank national conversation?" And also, "The U.S. Government deliberately censored news and films about battlefield traumas."
So, in effect, Mr. Shapiro gives Mr. Spielberg all the credit for uncovering a coverup and, perhaps, if one is permitted to read into the review, for being the first to have the guts to tell people that war is hell.
Left unsaid is that Americans see and hear what they want to see and hear, and question what they want to question: Our national motto: "Don't ask, and maybe they won't tell us the bad news," is as good a cover-up as any I can think of, off hand.
An example: In more recent years, we saw yet another of our many war cover-ups--a sanitized war with Iraq--on our televisions. There were no Steadicam shots of our planes chasing the enemy (a ragtag collection of men and boys) in full retreat, while we continued to gun them down like a turkey shoot.
The Iraqi dead, including civilians was reported to exceed 100,000. This informatiion was accepted, or rejected or dismissed, by the American people. Who would know? So little was made of it. We Americans believe what we want to believe: Just buy some more yellow ribbon and "Don't ask, somebody might tell us."
Also, I'd remind Mr. Shapiro that fifty-five years ago almost everything was "covered up." Including the illicit love affairs of presidents and other public figures.
Janet Maslin, reviewing for The New York Times (7.24.98) calls Saving Private Ryan," a "…soberly magnificent new war film. No adjective is spared. She calls it "…viscerally enthralling." For me, the review reads as if Janet Maslin's viscera was far more "enthralled" by the artful footage than by the revelations of the horror of war. A reaction which, I think, as you may have guessed, is the whole idea behind the film.
Anthony Lane, writing in The New Yorker (8.3.98) says: "I was practically standing on my seat and yelling at Tom Hanks to kill more Germans and then, when he had finished killing Germans, to kill more Germans."
Those words pretty much sum it up. After reading that little paragraph, I'd say the movie, at least in some parts, and for some people, is as arousing as pornography.
Long after we are gone, old men will still be sending young men off to die.
And Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan will have replaced All Quiet on the Western Front as the war movie of all time.
Pass the popcorn.
9:31:55 AM 
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