95. Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Stars:  Tom Hanks (Captain John H. Miller), Tom Sizemore (Technical Sergeant Mike Horvath), Edward Burns (Private First Class Richard Reiben), Matt Damon (Private First Class James Francis Ryan), Jeremy Davies (Technician Fifth Grade Timothy E. Upham), Vin Diesel (Private First Class Adrian Caparzo), Ted Danson (Captain Fred Hamill)

Director:  Steven Spielberg

Awards / Honors

• 5 Oscar wins - Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound
• 6 Additional Oscar Nominations - Best Picture, Best Actor (Tom Hanks), Best Writing (Orginal Screenplay), Best Art Direction, Best Make-up, Best Original Score
• #45 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills list (2001)
• #10 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers list (2006)
• #71 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (2007)
• #8 on AFI's 10 Top 10 lists - Epic Movies (2008)
• According to Box Office Mojo, Saving Private Ryan is approximately the 102nd highest grossing movie of all time (when accounting for inflation)

Genre:  War Drama

Running Time:  2 Hours, 49 Minutes

Fomrat:  DVD, Blu-ray

Odyssey Rating:  4 1/2 Stars (John - 5 Stars, Beth - 4 Stars)

John's Take

OK, let’s cut to the chase with this film.  Saving Private Ryan is an excellent film.  I give it a rating of 5 Stars and it deserved all of the accolades that it received.  I love this film, and can watch it over and over.  Add to that, the Blu-ray transfer is spectacular.  There.  Now that is out of the way, here is what I actually want to talk about: artistic license in historical fiction – when is it OK and when it is not? 

Historical fiction has always been popular in movies.  The problem is filmmakers haven’t always been very concerned about differentiating between what is “historical” and what is “fiction”.  Sometimes it can’t be helped. I get that.  History is complicated, and the more exciting, action-packed, and emotional an historical event seems, the more complicated that event probably was, and complication makes for bad story telling.  Good stories are always very simple at their core.  They have heroes (preferably one or a really small group) overcoming great difficulties or villainous foes (preferably both) – in other words you need conflict and you need to resolve the conflict in simple and direct ways.  So, if a filmmaker needs to modify / omit events or characters a little to make the narrative work a bit smoother, then that is understandable.  It is the definition of “a bit” that seems cause problems.

While there are any number of examples of films where “artistic license” was used a bit too liberally, the one that immediately comes to mind is the film Braveheart.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I love this film and I have seen it many times.  However, it is probably one of the most inaccurate historical dramas ever made.  Short of having the story take place in Australia and having William Wallace wielding a light saber, I am not sure it could get any less accurate.  Historian Sharon Krossa described the film thusly:

"The events aren't accurate, the dates aren't accurate, the characters aren't accurate, the names aren't accurate, the clothes aren't accurate—in short, just about nothing is accurate."

Director and star Mel Gibson freely acknowledges the many historical inaccuracies, but has always defended his directorial choices, by saying that the way events are portrayed in the film are much more "cinematically compelling" than the historical fact.  I would certainly agree with the “cinematically compelling” statement.  Like I said, I love this movie.  So do millions of people.  So what is the problem? 

The problem is that we were being sold a lie.  If movie had been marketed as the fictional story of Wally Williams and it took place in some non-specific time in the Middle Ages, well then no harm, no foul.  It wasn’t, however.  It was sold as a being based on real events, but very little in the movie happened the way it was depicted, if at all.  Sorry, artistic license or not, that is just wrong.  How can we learn from the past if our popular forms of media feel that they can just present history any way they like and not be clear about the fact they are doing so? 

Sometimes historical fiction is done well.   The movie I should be talking about, Saving Private Ryan, is an example where it is done well.  It was fictional story, but it didn’t feel the need to completely disregard actual events.  About the most critical thing you could say is that the movie seems to give the impression that Americans took Omaha Beach all by themselves, which wasn’t the case.  For example, Tom Hanks and crew should have been aboard a British landing craft with a British pilot.  Many nations fought and died on those beaches that day, but the movie just shows you Americans and Germans.  Could that have depicted more accurately?  Sure, and it probably should have been.  That being said, the Omaha Landing was depicted far more accurately than say the Battle of Stirling Bridge was in Braveheart.  Which battle was that you ask? It was the “They will never take our Freedom!” battle.  Yes, I know, there is no bridge depicted in the film.  There was one in real life mind you.  And a river.  And an over-extended British army trying to cross the little tiny bridge when they were sneaked attacked by the Scottish.  In other words, where WWII vets were going on record for saying how realistic the D-Day scenes were in Saving Private Ryan, absolutely nothing of the battle you see in Braveheart actually happened. 

Look, Mel Gibson is going through a lot these days and I am not trying to pile on him, but the fact is that he doesn’t let little things like… umm… facts, get in the way of the story he wants to tell (don’t even get me started on The Patriot) and he and other directors do a disservice to everyone when they allow their expressions to run unchecked by reality.  Hollywood seems to think that words “based on” or “inspired by” means “we only have to get some of the names correct”.  Like it or not, the entertainment industry has a measurable effect on how people learn about and view both historical and current events. F ilmmakers should feel free to tell whatever stories they want, but when they get sold as being true when in fact they are not, it is false advertising and people should be held responsible.  

Not only that, it hurts documentary and educational filmmakers as well.  Even when historical fiction is done right, like Saving Private Ryan, there is just no way documentaries and educational movies can compete with multi-million dollar Hollywood productions.  Yes, Saving Private Ryan is a great piece of historical fiction, but regardless of how accurate it may be it shouldn’t be confused with historical fact.  Hollywood should make a much better effort to differentiate between the two.  It would benefit everyone if they did.

John

BETH TAKE:

Let me just start to saying...I love Tom Hanks...he my favorite actor of all time..LOVE HIM...LOVE HIM...LOVE HIM!

Like John, I loved this movie...I gave it 5 stars...so yeah, I loved it! Unlike John, I can not watch this movie over and over. I don't know if there is anyone like me out there, but I can't watch sad and dramatic movies over and over. I can watch it once, and be glad that I did see it...but I can truly go without watching them ever again. I can name two movies that I feel this way about...this one, Saving Private Ryan and The Green Mile...oddly enough, they both have Tom Hanks in them (I just realized that lol). I loved both movies but Saving Private Ryan is a little bit too dramatic for me and The Green Mile is just way too sad.

And unfortunately, at the end of SPR...Tom Hanks dies...WHAT? Tom Hanks can't die in a movie :(