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Originally Posted by Skybird
Ryan deserves credits for having been the first to show the cruelty of the war and especially the beach landing with such uncompromising realism. Before, WWII movies always were "correct" and clinical, glossing over the grim reality (with the exception of "Steiner I -The Iron Cross", maybe). For many in the audience, Ryan's brutal pictures were a shock. I remember well the group of young adults sitting in front of me, two couples, with beers and popcorn, and joking and so on. After twenty minutes one women left, silently crying, her partner went after her and later came back alone. And after the show was over, their beers were half full, and the popcorn looked mostly untouched. A war movie that does not have a comparable effect, is making entertainment of war. Which is disgusting. The market is full of these. Shame.
The question of the movie (how many lives are worth the life of just one) is worth to be discussed. All in all Spielberg did a good job, but not that superior outstanding piece of work many were seeing it as.
What I did not like: that in the end there is pathos again coming in. I hate pathos. This they avoided when filming Band of Brothers, which technically used the same grim approach on the brutality of war. This makes BoB more unbiased and neutral - and especially because of this it is such a great movie (series).
I would not say Ryan is a bad movie. But in comparison, Red Line leads so very far beyond it's scope. the film is almost a meditation.
As good war movie especially on the Nazi era, I also recommend the German b/w-movie "Die Brücke."
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I found
Band of Brothers to be a little too revisionist, but what was I expecting with a D-List historian like Stephen Ambrose. Ambrose presents anti-semitism in a way that it is trivialized into a joking matter. This is almost as bad as Spielberg choosing to pretty much ignore it in
Ryan.
My dad was a combat infantryman in the Pacific in WWII, and he fought from Guadalcanal to the Phillipines. He definitely saw no glory in war. To cure me of any misconceptions he made me read
Naked and the Dead at a totally unsuitable age. My point being, is that if it isn't like Naked and the Dead, I don't find it realistic.
These works I do find like
Naked and the Dead.
The Caine Mutiny, novel by Hermann Wouk (Like Naked and the Dead, the edited all references to anti-semitism in the US Military out when they made the movies)
Biloxi Blues, play and movie by Neil Simon
The Thirteenth Valley, novel by John DelVeccio (Black vs White racial politics is explored in this fantastic book. It just so happens the only really competent officer in the book is Black.)
Flags of Our Fathers. Substitute long train ride, for long patrol in the jungle, and we have a movie with almost the same narrative as
Naked and the Dead. Eastwood uses American Indians instead of Jews to show that the good guys really weren't all that good. Flags is definitely not what I would call a "patriotic" movie like Ryan. Maybe Speilberg was afraid to bring this stuff up, but he got Eastwood to in Flags, since he was an executive producer.
Jarhead - amazingly almost the same story as
Naked and the Dead. A long patrol which ends in a mission that is not completed. This memoir/movie shows really how far we have come since WWII. Instead of the Marines being racist and mysogenistic, they are only mysogenistic. You've come a long way baby.