# Saving Private Ryan (1998)

### reviewed by
Brandon Stahl

    Saving Private Ryan

    ****

It took me too long to see Saving Private Ryan - I finally saw the movie the second time it was released. No one wanted to see it with me; either they had already seen it or just afraid to go, they heard about the Omaha Beach scene. They knew what they were in for. It's not a buddy movie, a date movie, it's not an independent film. It's an experience, and sometimes those can be hard to watch. After the academy had deemed it Oscar worthy, after the accolades and the money and the praise heaped upon Spielberg and Hanks, and it was released a second time, I finally dragged the first available person. I wasn't going to miss out. It is the best movie of war I have ever seen. It competes with All Quiet on the Western Front, Platoon, The Best Years of Our Lives and Patton. But to me, it rises above those films because the experience stayed with me long after the theater. Yes, Omaha beach will long be in my memory, but so will the scene of the grunt trying to save the girl from sniper attack in the rainy French village; the final battle where men are slaughtered in hopes of saving a bridge, the moment on the stairs where a soldier confronts cowardice (which to me, resonates as one of the most realistic war scenes ever filmed. Of course in war there are heroes, but where there are heroes, there must be cowards. We don't see them in movies too often, but it frightens us more than death.) After three hours of Ryan, the audience didn't walk away from the theater easily. We were quiet as we left, many in tears, careful about the words we chose and who would hear what we say. Ryan is a movie that must be spoken of with the utmost care. You don't want to detract anything from the experience. Much has been written about the landing at Omaha beach; the absolute carnage, terror and shock. I never realized, even after reading the reviews, that those soldiers were simply sitting ducks in battle. You almost smell the blood mixing with the beach water. It is a triumph that any man made it off that beach alive. Ryan is honest, violent, and pulls your emotional strings at the right time, so you don't feel manipulated but instead shock, even fear. We weep because we have no other way of expressing what we're watching. He opens and closes the film with a US flag. Pride? Patriotism? Yes, but it's also a lesson not to take anything for granted. What's the point in reviewing a movie that doesn't need any else to say "Go see it?" Because it fills you with so much emotion and visual horror that a way of cleansing is to write and talk about it. After I got home from the theater I didn't say much of anything at all, only thankful that I watched it, and I wasn't there.

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