The Spielberg Effect

Few people in the motion picture industry have the gall to underestimate Steven Spielberg. But the idea of opening a violent and depressing film about World War II in the middle of the summer--a time usually reserved for action movies, comedies, action comedies and sequels--must have sounded rather brazen to colleagues and competitors alike. Yet by Labor Day weekend Saving Private Ryan's box office receipts totaled $166.6 million, making it the second-highest grossing film of the summer. Spielberg's war has both won over the critics (Joel Siegel gushes that he "can't wait to see it for the third time") and the American public, with whom the movie has clearly hit a nerve. Three months after its opening, people keep turning out to see D-Day in all its bloody glory on the big screen.

All this will merely cement Spielberg's reputation as Hollywood's perpetual winner, a cinematic genius and shrewd moneymaker who is almost incapable of taking false steps. Even when he does flounder, as he did with Amistad, he seems to bounce back with a stronger, more awe-inspiring, more heartfelt success than ever before. Such appears to be the case with his latest film. But the lovefest spawned by Saving Private Ryan has prevented most critics from questioning Spielberg's motivation in creating such a movie, which is by no means clear.

Saving Private Ryan is neither a great film nor Spielberg's best effort, mostly because of one significant flaw: a weak, almost nonexistent storyline. A troop of soldiers (led by Tom Hanks, earnest and convincing as always in this limited role) is ordered to seek out a private who, fighting somewhere in France, is unaware that his three brothers have been killed in action. The U.S. government wants to send Private Ryan home to his bereaved mother.

It doesn't matter very much that the plot is an unlikely stretch of the imagination. It also doesn't matter much that Private Ryan, played by Matt Damon, appears too late in the film to develop as a character, thus making the story's framing device--an elder Private Ryan saluting the grave of his savior--seem a bit forced and hokey. What matters most is that the story is merely a vehicle for transporting the viewer from one spectacular, eerily realistic battle scene to another. A great part of the movie's near-three hour length consists of guns, tanks, limp bodies, bloodshed and explosions--all of which, though accurately and emotionally depicted, do not constitute a war movie. Instead, they constitute a war. Private Ryan is, for the most part, missing the movie which should come along with the battles.

Spielberg has essentially taken a subject imbued with sympathy and compassion and recreated it as a kind of redemptive entertainment. He uses costly special effects and tricks of the camera to place viewers in the midst of battle, making them feel the pain and acknowledge the pointlessness. A recent report in Business Week revealed that Spielberg was "determined not to sign off on the movie until the World War II epic [had] the adequately faded look of a 1940s-era documentary." Clearly, it's the reality of war, not a glorification, that Spielberg is after.

But then why not simply make a war documentary, a project which Spielberg is surely capable of executing with success? Instead, Private Ryan doesn't hold up because the movie's attention is so heavily and inexplicably focused on creating the impression that we are watching old, authentic war footage.

Though Spielberg has a genuine interest in this chapter of history--as demonstrated by Schindler's List, Empire of the Sun and his next project, Memoirs of a Geisha, which will examine the war's disruption of traditional life in Japan--in this case he seems less concerned with history than with showing us, plainly, what war looks like. And it looks hellish. Still, one expects more from such an epic work, which should, ideally, be a springboard for discussion and contemplation.

What, ultimately, can be gleaned from Spielberg's depiction of D-Day (which takes up the first half hour of the film) except the terror and remorse that we already know are inherently a part of war? The problem is that Private Ryan is an anti-war movie only by virtue of the bloodiness of its battles, rather than by any ideas it presents. Stunning but obvious, it relies on automatic audience empathy without bringing anything new to the table. This wouldn't be such a problem if Spielberg weren't the man behind the camera. But because he sets the standard for both quality (i.e. winning Oscars) and financial success, Saving Private Ryan will be revered as a pinnacle of moviemaking. And the movie of ideas will continue to occupy a secondary berth underneath such displays of fireworks. The Truman Show was also made by a major Hollywood studio and cost a lot of money, but through a cleverly fabricated story it manages to give its viewers something new to think about.

Nobody wants to deny Spielberg his success. A scrappy kid who dropped out of film school, he's earned his reputation as a media mogul and magician. But it would be a relief to find him working with material that doesn't come with built-in compassion and grandeur, that instead explores the textures and ironies of everyday life. Saving Private Ryan, though emotionally staggering, leaves no room for discourse--which is why one can walk away feeling simultaneously weepy and cheated.

Erwin R. Rosinberg '00 is an English concentrator in Mather House. His column will appear on alternate Wednesdays.