Saving Private Ryan / Schindler’s List

                             A Comparative Film Review by Steve Anthony

 My mother frequently took me to the movies when I was a boy.   The lights would dim and I would sit there in the dark, mesmerized by the larger than life images being projected onto the screen from high above our heads.  We saw many of the popular World War II films of the time, including 

I Bombed Pearl Harbor, In Harm's Way, and The Longest Day.  While we were there to be entertained, I am sure each of us watched these films from a different perspective.

To a nine year old, it really didn’t matter what movie was playing, as long as there was the wonderful aroma and flavor of fresh hot and buttered popcorn in a box within reach.  I would also consume as many sugar laden soft drinks and boxes of candy as I could talk my mother into buying.  Occasionally there would even be a corn dog to relish; deep fried to a golden brown, with a yellow ribbon of mustard running along its length.  I never thought about the reality and seriousness of war versus what was portrayed on the screen until I got much older. 

Back then, Producer/Director Steven Spielberg’s incredible visionary talent was yet to be realized and there was no hint about the World War II films he would bring to us decades later.  Nor did I fathom digital technology, which allows us to experience the realism and horror of battle in the safety of a movie theater, or even our own living rooms as we can with Saving Private Ryan. 

Mr. Spielberg's vision, combined with his Jewish ancestry, also inspired him to give us a glimpse of the horror of the holocaust as rendered in Schindler’s List.  Using both films he brings us two very different, but equally stark realities of World War II. 

Saving Private Ryan, although opening with the historical allied D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach is mostly fictional from that point on.  Still, its unrestrained bluntness presents us with the harshness of war and the impact it can have on the emotions of those involved.  The battle scenes are portrayed so well that we almost feel as if we might be in the midst of them ourselves.  At the very least, we gain empathy for the real soldiers who were actually there.  

This is largely due to the skills and performance of the actors involved under Mr. Spielberg’s direction. ¹ Thousands of real men died on the beaches of France on June 6, 1944, in a battle which was a major turning point for the allied forces.  The film’s camera angles, close ups, and realistic sounds of war and death portray an image not soon to be erased from our collective memories.²  It’s almost as if we are allowed a brief look through the window of time at just a very small portion of that bloody day.

Saving Private Ryan should strike a personal chord with anyone who served or had relatives in the war.  For me it provides a small indication of what my father may have experienced, particularly with the closing battle of the film.  I had always pictured him with his buddies, trying to hide in a fox hole they had painstakingly chipped into hard frozen and foreign soil thousands of miles from home.  I could see them cold and shivering, rifles ready, anticipating the next wave of enemy soldiers that would advance toward them.

It wasn't until I was eighteen that I asked him about it.  His hesitant and quiet reply was that he had been in Germany in the Armored Tank Division, and yes, when required, he had killed.  He was proud to serve, but not of the killing, even if it was the enemy.  I believe this is why he never spoke about it.  Like the story shown in the film, although based on some truth, the reality is slightly different than I imagined. 

In Schindler's List, although not really a war film³, Mr. Spielberg tells us his version of the holocaust.  Unlike Saving Private Ryan, there is more historical fact in this film than fiction.  We know that some 6,000,000 Jewish people were exterminated by the Nazis.  There was also a real Oskar (Oscar) Schindler; a drunkard, womanizer, and frequent partygoer, who with his vast fortune and social status protected as many of them as he could.  History tells us this was more at the urging of his wife however, at least at the beginning, than from his own initiative.  At first Schindler’s goal is simply to make money by taking advantage of Hitler’s closing of the Jewish ghetto on March 20, 1941.  Later he realizes that a human life - any human life - is worth much more than profit.

Shooting the majority of this film in black and white provides a bleak canvas on which is painted a brooding and depressing image of the German death camps of World War II.  This technique easily allows us to envision a time when it seemed Nazi Germany would conquer the world and exterminate all those it felt didn't deserve recognition as human beings.  In reality there were more than just Jews imprisoned, mistreated, and murdered.  Ultimately we learn that men like Schindler can have a change of heart, give up their own security and fortune, and risk their lives for the sake of others.  Amidst this main theme of the movie the perseverance and will to overcome adversity and maintain dignity shines through, even as some victims of the camps go to their deaths. 

Because I no longer have the perspective of that nine year old boy and my own father fought in the war, I have come to realize that movies like Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List are not meant to provide entertainment per se.  This is as it should be.  While these films are intended to draw an audience, they were also meant to help educate that audience, and to commemorate the memory of the real victims of the war.  Together they portray its horror, man’s inhumanity to his fellow man, and the high price it took to defeat the reign of tyranny that threatened the world under Nazi Germany. 

Ultimately, Saving Private Ryan teaches us that no one should ever take for granted the freedom that we have, while Schindler’s List wants us to make sure the travesty of the death camps is never repeated anywhere in the world, against any race of people.

1. “There is terror in our eyes in some of those scenes, and rightly so, because we were genuinely scared…and we knew it was fake.” —Tom Hanks, who plays Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan.

2. “What I tried to do in this film was approximate the look and the sounds and even the smells of what combat is like.” — Steven Spielberg, discussing his film, Saving Private Ryan.
3. “...and Schindler’s List, which I don’t consider a war film.  It’s in a category all its own.” — Steven Spielberg, discussing his World War II period films.