You could come closer by coming ANYWHERE FREAKING NEAR IT. The movie MIGHT be seen as pro-military, but no way in hell is it pro-war. It shows something of the nobility of the sacrifice of the men who died fighting against Naziism in WWII, but it in no way glamorizes war. You’re making the ridiculous statement that honoring the soldiers glorifies war.
Anyway, that’s the year that *Out of Sight *was chosen as best picture by National Society of Film Critics. Funny how the film critics got it right while the oscar voters got it wrong.
Actually yes, it was.
Nyeh, nyeh 
I suppose I could imagine a movie that was able to make that distinction, but this one isn’t it. The military is not shown in any other context BUT the war. SPR, as much as in any propaganda film from the 40s, is a rah rah rah for the good fight.
I never said it didn’t. If it had ended before the silly morphing effect, I might agree with your overall interpretation. But the epilogue served to recast the entire movie as: “The greater the sacrifice, the greater the glory.” In that light, the worse Spielberg makes war look, the better. SPR is anti war in exactly the same way saying “Whatever you do, don’t push that little red button!” is anti, um, button pushing.
Perhaps not in the abstract, but certainly in this movie.
The measure of an antiwar film is that it leaves you feeling, say, sad, or bewildered, or depressed, or discouraged, or in some way negative about the concept of human warfare. If the film leaves you heroically charged up and tearfully grateful for the warriors who made it all possible, that ain’t anti-anything. Spielberg, by showing the monster all it’s bloody muddy fearsomeness, was just setting us up for the greatness of the hero who defeated it.
I’m not saying WWII shouldn’t have been fought, or that war is never necessary. I’m just saying you should recognize SPR for what it is.
No it wasn’t.
If that is the best you can do, well, that’s kind of pathetic. Surely to Christ you are not seriously telling us that the opinion of the TNT channel consitutes the definitive interpretation of a movie? Just because some wankers get off to killing doesn’t mean every movie with killing in it is pro-war. Is Platoon pro-war? War-worshipping wankers love “Platoon” and “Full Metal Jacket.” Those people love all things military. From my experience in the militayr, “Full Metal Jacket” might be the most beloved movie of soldiers everywhere. Was “Full Metal Jacket” a pro-war propaganda peice?
During the 1984 Presidential campaign, the Reagan camp wanted to use “Born in the USA” as a campaign song. Many, many people, just because of the title, think it’s a really gung-ho song about American patriotism. You don’t really think that’s what it’s about though, right?
Or shall we discuss what most people think of, oh, let’s say, I don’t know… “Starship Troopers”? Gosh, why did that movie jump to mind? I wonder how that movie is presented on most shitty cable stations? Clever, deceptive satire, or dumb-as-rocks sci-fi action flick? They seem to think it’s the latter, so it must be that. Don’t you agree?
As opposed to showing them in the context of what? Playing rugby? :dubious:
No, I am afraid that interpretation comes from someone’s bodily orifice, not from the movie itself.
Well, umm…yes, actually you are. Read your own initial post.
Isn’t there a rather long and thoughtful scene where the soldiers discuss their “previous selves”? I thought Tom Hanks’ character was clearly a man who’d rather be back home teaching English.
Military recruiters are kind of desperate nowadays - surely if they’d actually WATCHED the film, they’d have second thoughts about its strength as a selling tool.
Honestly, I don’t think the takeaway was “greater the sacrifice, greater the glory”. I think it was “that was Hell - try to be worthy.”
I think you’re projected your own bias on the movie, there, lissener.
First off, who in the movie is ‘heroic’ in any classical sense? Miller wants to survive. Ryan is effectively a child caught up in events beyond him. Oppum is, essentially, ineffective (even when he kills at the end it’s a matter of ‘too little too late’).
And what I took from the movie isn’t the glorification of war but rather the necessity for it from time to time. Each time I see it (following the first) that opening shot of the troops on the landing boats makes me think ‘God DAMN the Nazi’s for making this necessary’.
It’s sort of like that old aphorism: “It takes two to make a peace but only one to make a war.”
RW, over and over again you’ve proven yourself incapable–at least unwilling–to discuss this kind of thing like a grownup, or even just without making your every post egregiously insulting and disrespectful. You insist on making it a challenge just to separate the content of your posts from the stick-in-the-eye tone of them. You can’t honestly feel that this is helpful in sharing interpretations and even possibly achieving understanding? You are a test I choose not to subject myself to. I’m going back to skipping over your posts.
Wow, you are very quick to take offense and quit the field. Probably because you know your interpretation of the film is unique to you and doesn’t come from anything the screenwriter, actors or director intended. Your pretended offense at my remarks is rather akin to someone walking in to a meeting of the AAAS, remarking in a loud voice “the universe was created by a giant green unicorn!” and then when his pronouncement is laughed at, saying “You offend me and I will never set foot in here again.”
Hmm. Interpreting a work of art without your own emotional context. There’s an interesting challenge. Nope, can’t be done. Not by you, not by me.
Who said anything about classical? and hasn’t my point been that, sequence of details notwithstanding, the equation comes out, in the end, to pro war? Whether you agree with that interpretation, please understand that I GET all the little incidents of anti-war doubletalk along the way. That doesn’t change my interpretation that the ending makes them doubletalk. Let’s assign each of those incidents, strictly for illustration’s sake, a numerical point value. 2 points anti-war here, 3 points there, till when you get to the end, before the epilogue, you have say 3,938 anti-war points. I’m saying the epilogue alone comes out to 4,365 pro-war points. The US Army obviously agrees with me. So does Spielberg, for that matter; he’s stated that he thinks it’s impossible to make a war movie that ISN’T pro-war. I find that an astonishing position for a director to take, but then watching SPR I can see that his worldview is, indeed, that limited.
As I have said before, there are many anti-war incidents within the movie. You are feeling just what you are supposed to feel. FWIW, until the ending I was thinking that Spielberg just might have pulled it off; I was riding right along with you. But he couldn’t let it go; he couldn’t let the movie end with an unambiguous anti-war message. He had to apologize; he had to go, "yeah, BUT . . . "
The epilogue is like the final episode of “The Bob Newhart Show,” or “Saint Elsewhere”: it has the effect of rendering everything that came before it in an entirely new light. When people who haven’t seen SPR, I tell them it’s a great film if they stop it at the morphing sequence.
Riiight. That’s why I’m happy to continue discussing it with grownups. Just not someone who has a bizarre inability discuss a friggin movie without being insulting and disrespectful to someone who’d agreed to engage in a conversation about an interesting subject.
If that’s the entire content of your debate arsenal–act like a jerk enough that everyone else in the debate decides to stop wasting their time on you, so you can go “I must be right, you’re giving up!”–well then, have fun with that.
You notice I don’t give up on debating the same points you’re making with other people who can discuss them respectfully.
In any case, whether my interpretation is unique is irrelevant; insisting that you’ll only listen to the majority opinion is one of those classical fallacies. Which one I’m not gonna bother looking up right now. Actually, it’s two; that one, where numbers make it right, and Arguing from Authority, where you’d expect me to say “My opinion is right because Roger Ebert agrees with me.”
Which is beside the point anyway, because my interpretation is NOT in fact unique. Not only does the US Army agree with my interpretation, there are a lot of film critics who do as well. Google is your friend.
That doesn’t back it up either.
Actually no, the Army doesn’t agree with your interpretation either, and you’d already know my argument on that if you actually bothered to read what I said rather than simply looking for the first thing at which you could take offense. The movie honors the American soldiers who fought in WWII—that is NOT the same thing as glorifying war, despite your baseless assertion that it is.
And yes, I am quite aware that there are many movie critics with weird and baseless ideas about what movies represent. That’s why few people take those particular critics seriously.
Maybe, but how would that make it less deserving of an Oscar?
Marc
Amen to that.
Count me in on the minority that thinks the first 20 or so minutes of Saving Private Ryan was a technical masterpiece and a visceral presentation of the horrors of war, followed by two and a half hours of emotional button pushing, technical and continuity errors, and an aimless story leading up to an inevitable and predictable climax. And am I the only one that thinks certain scenes were stolen in whole cloth from Fuller’s The Big Red One? And what the heck is with Tom Hanks striding around in occupied territory with bright and shiny captain’s bars on his helmet? Heck, why doesn’t he just walk around with a gaggle of balloons tied to his belt and a big target pasted to his chest with the words “Please shoot me” written across it?
A Best Picture Oscar goes to the film that is an overall accomplishment. While I’m not quite as awed by Shakespeare In Love as some here–it was cute and well constructed (“Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter”? Heh!) but it didn’t really grab me–I think if you are comparing films as an overall achievement Shakespeare comes out ahead.
And whatintheheck is with the “It’s the best, and you’re a Hoover-sucking idiot if you don’t agree with me” attitude? Gehvast, at least present some kind of reasoning or arguments supporting your own position instead of just insulting other posters.
Anyway, Paths of Glory is a good film, but Kirk Douglas as a French colonel? What the heck were they thinking? I’d place The Battle for Algiers and the original All Quiet On The Western Front in the top rolls as best insurgency and battlefield war pictures respectively. Das Boot clearly wins when it comes to sub movies, and possibly takes top honors for its protrayal of war as alternating between fearful bordeom and terrifying confusion.
The biggest Oscar rip, though, was in 1981 when Raging Bull lost Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor to Ordinary People (yawn) and Best Cinematography to Tess. This film was a technical and acting masterpiece; Scorsese’s first or second best film. That it didn’t sweep the awards–probably because the Academy didn’t want to be seen repeating themselves as loving up to another “boxing movie” so quickly :rolleyes:–is a travesty and indicates that whatever qualifications the Academy judges possess (which actually ain’t much), prognostication to see what films will endure and be held in high regard with the passing of time isn’t one of them. Personally, I don’t take the Oscars or any other awards too seriously, and that certain filmmakers and studios make films clearly designed from page 1 to compete for an Oscar make the whole process rather irritating. But at least they don’t block off my street like the damn People’s Choice Awards ( :dubious: ) do. :mad:
Stranger
I laughed out loud when I read this. His opinion about a movie isn’t objective? What opinion about a movie (or any other work of art) is objective? There’s no such animal. Your opinions are no more objective than anyone else in this thread.
Anyway, wonder of wonders, I agree with everything that lissener has said, here. The movie is, ultimatly, very much pro-war. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, except that it was ham-handedly so. Sure, it presents war as terrible, bloody, and horrifying, but also as something that enobles, something that makes a “real man” out of you, something that might kill you, but also might make a hero out of you. Or even do both. There’s nothing wrong with that viewpoint, especially in the context of World War II, but I’m surprised to hear Spielburg say that it’s impossible to make an anti-war movie. I suspect he might have meant to say that it’s impossible to make an anti-war movie that’s not also anti-military, and he didn’t want to make an anti-military WWII movie.
I’m surprised by the number of Appeals to Authority being made in this thread, as well. Sure, WWII veterans liked it. Being a WWII veteran doesn’t make one a better movie critic, though. It arguably makes one a better critic of WWII movies, and a veteran who told me SPR was the best WWII movie ever might be on to something, as they’d be in a better position to judge the accuracy of that sort of thing. But is it a better movie than SIL? Only if you like WWII movies better than Shakespearean movies. I don’t: I like Shakespeare a lot more than WWII. I don’t mean that as a value statement about the relative importance of the two subjects, merely personal preference. Which, let’s all try to remember, is all we’re talking about here. There really is no objective measure of value in art. It’s all down to personal, subjective opinions. Sure, the widow of a WWII vet might break down in tears watching SPR. The mother of a dead teenager is probably going to break down in tears watching home movies of her kid. That doesn’t mean that that home video is an Oscar contender, only that it flips emotional triggers in people who were close to the events or people in the movie. This doesn’t mean there’s no point in discussing the subject of the OP, but let’s all keep in mind that posting, “You’re wrong!” when someone has a different opinion is neither accurate nor productive.
I always thought SPR would have been a better movie if when they finally found Ryan, instead of him being wholesome, all-American Matt Damon, it had been someone like Steve Buscemi and he was drunk and torturing cats.
I’d be surprised to hear him say that too…since he didn’t say that. He said, IIRC, that it’s impossible to make a good war movie that isn’t anti-war.
On further review:
“Of course every war movie, good or bad, is an antiwar movie.”–Spielberg from a Newsweek interview.
Guess I will take that into consideration when forming my opinion of your and lissener’s “take.”