Tuesday 29 May 2007

Scathing Private Ryan

The End Of Cinema likes Spielberg's top heavy movie even less than I do. He doesn't much like the top bit for a start:
Spielberg's decision to show the battle from Hanks's point of view is especially limited, in that it reduces the heroism of many to that of one: the star and protagonist. In SPR, Spielberg repeatedly reduces the general and the epic to the specific and generic. Thus the massive Omaha Beach landing is reduced to a half dozen guys in a small space fighting one gun and a handful of Germans.

He doesn't much like the films conclusions:
Thus the audience member, after being shown their own cowardice, is asserted to be a murderer as well. It's one of the most insulting things I've ever seen on film, and I can't believe how many people are willing to let Spielberg get away with it. How can this film be taken as a glorification of The Greatest Generation when it shows them repeatedly engaging in the same brutal habits as the pure evil Nazis of Schindler's List?

And he reckons he's seen 53 War Movies that are better, that Pearl Harbour, Top Gun and Braveheart are among them speaks volumes.

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