I really, really hate war movies, so it's saying a *lot* that I found those movie mostly interesting and overall very touching. The fact that the story was so very personal probably had something to do with it - I really felt like it was about seeing the people deal with war, rather than a Movie About War. It's one of the few war flicks where I *have* felt it was a personal story, and I really appreciated that. It's not going to live in my top 100 of all time or anything, but it's a very solid effort, especially for a genre that I have to work hard to watch. Well done. 3.5 stars.
Best Part: Tom Hanks' monologue about who he was before the war was very moving. I especially liked his line that was something like, "Every time I kill a man, I feel further from home."
Worst Part: I felt like the bookend bits about grown-up Matt Damon were unnecessary. He's so clearly not the main character throughout, but throwing focus to him at the end made it feel like maybe he was *supposed* to be.
Flickchart: #766, below Death at a Funeral and above A Hard Day's Night.
3 comments:
I totally agree about the bookend, which I have to guess was prompted by Titanic somehow. Yes, I know there were only six months between the two films but that's enough time to dash off a couple of scenes that don't involve anyone or anything else from the principle photography.
It's funny you describe it as a film about people; one of the things I was most conscious of was how remote the photography was when showing us the Americans under attack. We never saw the German side of any battles. We weren't even meant to recognize them as other people, unless that specifically suited the narrative (such as the lone survivor whose fate prompted the monologue you appreciated so much).
As I noted elsewhere, I was underwhelmed by Saving Private Ryan. Yes, the action sequences were solid, but I need more than that in any film. I cannot compensate for the fact I wasn't there so I don't know firsthand how powerful those recreations are for the real veterans. I can only respond as myself and where I was let down was the rest of the film.
I hadn't even noticed the extreme focus on the American side of things - I bet that's part of what I liked about it, that we *didn't* get any big picture view of things. What we saw was what these people saw, and it made it extremely personal.
Spielberg generally does a great job isolating the scope of the stories he tells. In Schindler's List, for instance, very rarely do we see anything that isn't also seen by either Schindler himself or the few key Jewish prisoners. I think there are just a couple of brief scenes that tell just the Nazi view.
Of course, the most obvious example of Spielberg's penchant for keeping the story focused is War of the Worlds, where we never see anything that Tom Cruise doesn't see. No war room meetings with the president, no news reports from what's happening elsewhere and certainly nothing from the Martians.
It does create a sense of intimacy that humanizes his protagonists but it can also be very reductive of his antagonists.
Post a Comment