Saving
Private Ryan / Schindler’s List
A Comparative
Film Review by Steve Anthony
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.
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.