Thoughts on Saving Private Ryan

Went to see "Saving Private Ryan" in the theater tonight and here are some thoughts.

One thing I've usually done in these posts is identify visual elements on the sides of the screen or usually out of focus that are clearer in a large screen presentation. I only have one thing for that - "Saving Private Ryan" is pretty plain in its visuals, pretty much "what you see is what you get." But when Mrs. Ryan is about to be informed of the death of her sons, she opens the door and to the right of the door is a photograph of all 4 boys together. It's plain enough that I'm not sure this even counts but it stuck out, watching tonight.

But I also want to note an element of the audio. As the final battle approaches, we hear the low rumble of the German tanks grow louder and louder. A special theater experience is that eventually the roar becomes so loud that it shakes everything inside you. It's a great touch.

One moment that stuck out especially, to me, is the scene early on when the movie becomes quiet for the first time and Giovanni Ribisi (Medic Wade) has a quiet monologue. He tells the story from his childhood, how he would try to stay up late at night to speak to his mom when she came home. He loved talking to his mother except sometimes she wouldn't get to talk to him because he would pretend to be asleep. He wonders why he would do that.

Film 101 tells you that this memory must have some higher meaning, some greater significance to the plot but I have never found it. My best guess is that it's a subversion - the memory is just a typical memory that all of us have. If you have any theories, let me know. But notice this: this meaningful memory is all about his mother which connects later to him bleeding out and dyeing - his last words are a call to his mother. These were men but these were kids.

As he's telling the story, the company who had been joking around up until now, becomes completely silent and still. There is a sense in which his memories from home are hallowed and holy, no one dares encroach on them. This is a motif that reappears throughout the film - talk of the life before, talk of home stops everyone, freezes everyone. In one of these moments Captain Miller opines, "I just know that every man I kill the farther away from home I feel." If each kill is a further descent into Hell, then could it be that everything about their life before the war becomes sacred? And it is perhaps significant that when Ribisi delivers his monologue, the setting is a church.

In the penultimate scene, there is another repetition of the motif. A memory too sacred to even be uttered.

Private Ryan: Tell me about your wife and those rosebushes?

Captain Miller: No, no that one I save just for me.