movie review: saving private everyone
Mar. 13th, 2008 12:00 pmso ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lonewolfnight and i watched saving private ryan last night. he'd seen it before, but it was a first for me.
and i know that i'm late in the game. and that this movie is 5 years old now. i have not bothered to cut for spoilers for that reason. let me know if you need me to adjust that.
and i know everyone was talking about how great it was when it came out and that ya'll have probably done all your big thinking about it.
but i am thinking about it today. in part because i am bored at work and at part because it was really good. i liked it WAY better than thin red line (which i also saw for the first time recently).
my grandfather said it was the most realistic war movie he'd ever seen.....and that statement was with me in a hardcore way at the beginning of the film when everyone was getting blown to bits. decimation is the term we use for losing a 10th of a population and we think that is a huge deal. it is a huge deal. but this looked more like keeping a 10th of the population and losing everyone else. why don't we have a word for that? it makes me want to ask my grandpa if that is what he meant by his statement. if he lost 90% of his company in france.
the main thing i really liked about this movie was not that the acting was great (and it was), and it isn't that it did a great job provoking questions about mercy in times of war (and it did), and it isn't even how well it points out how badly an idiot can mess things up by making decisions based on sentimentality or election strategy (and it does) it isn't even the profound and wonderful recognition of how people are damaged by the killing they do and not just the injuries inflicted on them (which about made me fall over with gratitude for the writer and director).
the main thing i like was that it wasn't just about private ryan. private ryan was a metaphor for every man, woman and child. this movie raises the question of how can anything be worth such sacrifice - and keeps poking at it all the way through. because those silly, sentimental relationships is what people fight wars for in the first place, or at least the ability to have them on their own terms. and when ryan says, "why me, why not any one of these guys here".....i kept thinking, yeah, why any of us. why is ANYTHING worth that.
i'm a pascifist. so of course i am going to push that issue as hard as it can go in my brain...but it isn't often that i find a piece of pop culture that goes in that direction all by itself. especially in the context of the questionable mercy issue. i like it that i don't know what the right answer is. i like it that i know i would have let the german go in that place, but also that i don't know whether or not that decision would have been right. the Bible says, "be wise as serpents and gentle as doves." how do you be wise when faced with a situation like that?
maybe that's why i cling to a pacifistic principle. so i won't have to face that kind of question and take the risk of being wrong. i know that my reasons for hating violence are pure and that if i avoid it at all costs, the blame for violence goes on the other guy and not on me. if i allowed room for even a little bit, i don't think i would be confident i could draw the line in the right places. that feels like God's job and not mine, to draw that line.
lonewolfnight and i watched saving private ryan last night. he'd seen it before, but it was a first for me.and i know that i'm late in the game. and that this movie is 5 years old now. i have not bothered to cut for spoilers for that reason. let me know if you need me to adjust that.
and i know everyone was talking about how great it was when it came out and that ya'll have probably done all your big thinking about it.
but i am thinking about it today. in part because i am bored at work and at part because it was really good. i liked it WAY better than thin red line (which i also saw for the first time recently).
my grandfather said it was the most realistic war movie he'd ever seen.....and that statement was with me in a hardcore way at the beginning of the film when everyone was getting blown to bits. decimation is the term we use for losing a 10th of a population and we think that is a huge deal. it is a huge deal. but this looked more like keeping a 10th of the population and losing everyone else. why don't we have a word for that? it makes me want to ask my grandpa if that is what he meant by his statement. if he lost 90% of his company in france.
the main thing i really liked about this movie was not that the acting was great (and it was), and it isn't that it did a great job provoking questions about mercy in times of war (and it did), and it isn't even how well it points out how badly an idiot can mess things up by making decisions based on sentimentality or election strategy (and it does) it isn't even the profound and wonderful recognition of how people are damaged by the killing they do and not just the injuries inflicted on them (which about made me fall over with gratitude for the writer and director).
the main thing i like was that it wasn't just about private ryan. private ryan was a metaphor for every man, woman and child. this movie raises the question of how can anything be worth such sacrifice - and keeps poking at it all the way through. because those silly, sentimental relationships is what people fight wars for in the first place, or at least the ability to have them on their own terms. and when ryan says, "why me, why not any one of these guys here".....i kept thinking, yeah, why any of us. why is ANYTHING worth that.
i'm a pascifist. so of course i am going to push that issue as hard as it can go in my brain...but it isn't often that i find a piece of pop culture that goes in that direction all by itself. especially in the context of the questionable mercy issue. i like it that i don't know what the right answer is. i like it that i know i would have let the german go in that place, but also that i don't know whether or not that decision would have been right. the Bible says, "be wise as serpents and gentle as doves." how do you be wise when faced with a situation like that?
maybe that's why i cling to a pacifistic principle. so i won't have to face that kind of question and take the risk of being wrong. i know that my reasons for hating violence are pure and that if i avoid it at all costs, the blame for violence goes on the other guy and not on me. if i allowed room for even a little bit, i don't think i would be confident i could draw the line in the right places. that feels like God's job and not mine, to draw that line.