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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.
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It's funny how reactions are relative. One of the complaints about
The Longest Day was the lack of blood; yet when I showed it to a young friend of mine, he watched the scene in which 'Pips' Priller strafes the beach. All you see is a whole bunch of guys falling down a long distance away, and yet my friend said "Man that's bloody!"
My big complaint about the Normandy sequence in
Ryan was the mass of cliches: The guy is saved by his helmet, only to take it off then take one to the head again. The medics say "We can save this one", only to have him take on in the head. I wasn't disturbed or grossed out; I was laughing out loud, because I could see them coming a mile away. I didn't think the movie showed the horrors of war at all; I just thought it was silly.