No insight here, I’m not saying I’m smart about anything. But  during a commercial break in the Syracuse-Georgetown game this morning (Hoya Saxa!), I caught a little of Saving Private Ryan, and it reminded me of something. 

In college we had four movies on VHS that we watched over and over. Every one, hundreds of times. Ghostbusters, This is Spinal Tap, To Live and Die in LA, and Jaws. I loved each of them so much. For different reasons. 

Ghostbusters, for Murray (I had never been allowed to watch SNL), and everybody, and absolute exquisite sillies.

Spinal Tap, for being like every doc ever, but nothing I had ever seen, and every line a diamond. Again, silliness (“Don’t look for it, it’s not there.”)

To Live and Die in LA, for attention to detail, and the greatest car chase I’d ever seen (after a lifetime of CHiPs, which I WAS allowed to watch),  and criming,  and double-crossing, and bad luck and confusion, and Turturro’s dialogue:  “Like every other swinging dick in this place makes it. Day by motherfucking day.” 

I had no idea at that time what a big deal William Friedkin was, or that years later the movie would be recognized as a “near masterpiece.”  I loved it so much, but I also felt like it was kind of cheesy- maybe it was the Wang Chung soundtrack? Very not the best of the 80’s.

The one that was clearly a masterpiece to me was Jaws. My parents had taken my grandmother to see it when it came out, and I think maybe she refused to go in the ocean after that?  Whatever, it was definitely impactful to her personally. I loved it for Quint, and his fingernails, overwhelmed Chief Brodie, the obtuse, greedy mayor, and the reluctant, developing friendship between these incredibly different men. 

Quint’s Indianapolis monologue blew my mind- I still go back and watch it at least once or twice a year, and it’s hypnotizing, and terrifying. And it wasn’t til much later that I found out that Quint’s story was basically true, and so much more horrifying than what he described. Check out this episode of Hardcore History from the amazing Dan Carlin. He puts the word “nightmares” in the title of the episode, and explains why.

Yikes.

But what I really loved about Jaws was that after I got the story down, I noticed something new every time I watched it. Some tiny visual detail of which I wasn’t previously aware, but which was now a glaringly conscious choice by the director. I’m thinking of stuff like Quint’s shack, with the jaws of sharks he’s killed hanging on the walls, and even the windows, and how as they head out to sea in the Orca, the shot is framed as them sailing right down into the gullet of the shark that would be attached to the jaws hanging in Quint’s window. Maybe everybody else noticed that right away, but noticing new details like that made each viewing such a treat. Rich. Showing instead of telling?

There’s too many good movies, and too much access to all of them, and too much life stuff happening, to watch anything over and over like that anymore. Now, if I’m flipping through and I happen upon Full Metal Jacket at any point in the film, I’ll stop and watch til the end.  But that’s about it. 

So I come in on Saving Private Ryan during this commercial break. Two hours into the movie, give or take. The fellas have just taken a German machine gun position, and Wade the medic (Ribisi) has been killed. They’ve captured a prisoner, and everybody assumes they’re gonna execute him. But Captain Miller (Hanks) lets him go (I mean, come on- it’s Tom Hanks). A decision which will have consequences later...

This causes great dissent in the ranks. They really want to fucking kill this guy.  One guy in particular, Private Rieben (Burns, who all movie has been wearing his uniform jacket, on which he’s written “Brooklyn, NY- USA”) is furious, and basically tells Miller to go fuck himself, he’s no longer interested in Saving Private Ryan. Sergeant Horvath (Sizemore) throws Rieben to the ground, tells him to get his shit together, and when Rieben refuses, Horvath threatens to shoot him in his big mouth. 

Things are escalating, but Miller is a great leader, and realizes now is the perfect time to tell everybody he is a high school teacher (English composition) from Atley, Pennsylvania, and coaches the baseball team in the spring. Everybody is like, what the fuck? (Or really the much more charming 1944 equivalent, which is Horvath saying “Well I’ll be doggoned,”  though they do say fuck in the movie.)

This disarms everyone (especially Horvath, since he’s about to shoot Rieben in the goddam mouth). Taken aback, they listen to his speech. He talks about who he is, and why he feels their mission is valuable:

He doesn’t care about SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, doesn’t know him,  doesn’t give a doggone about him.  He just wants to get back to his wife. And then he walks up the hill to start burying bodies. His men fall in with him and they all start to work together. We see them in silhouette, digging, moving bodies, barbed wiire behind them.  

(The shot would be echoed very effectively in Band of Brothers on HBO a couple of years later, which Spielberg and Hanks were EP’s on, and Hanks also wrote and directed on).

But the shot that stood out to me this time was the shot at the end of Miller’s speech about getting back to his wife. 

 During his speech there are a bunch of reaction shots of all the guys listening in astonishment. Typical stuff.  Jeremy Davies is astonished. An English teacher?

Barry Pepper is astonished. A baseball coach? Tom Sizemore and Ed Burns are astonished. He’s from Pennsylvania? The Keystone State? Virtue, Liberty and Independence? Adam Goldberg is astonished.  I’m gonna be in The Hebrew Hammer? Giovanni Ribisi astonished off screen- I’m dead? Vin Diesel is already making Fast and Furious 6.

 

But at the very end of his speech Spielberg does the thing I noticed this time. Like I said, show, don’t tell. (I know, you probably saw it the first time you watched the movie, but I was caught up in the story details). 

Hanks speaks to everybody.  He’s breaking up a very tense moment, and reinvigorating his men’s sense of mission for SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.  But towards the end he addresses  Rieben directly. He takes a couple steps towards him, telling him he can leave if he wants to. He confronts him face to face. 

At this point the shot is Hanks walking into a medium close-up over the shoulder (?- not sure terminology, didn’t go to film school!) of Burns. He lands (in the cinema we say “lands” instead of “stops”- that I know) uphill from Burns, facing him (and us).  Hanks is facing Rieben/the camera/us for the most significant moment of the speech: “I just know that every man I kill the farther away from home I feel.” 

Pretty standard  -  a medium shot of Hanks. Static.

But then three things happen. 1) Hanks starts walking straight uphill, to start dealing with men he has killed;  2) simultaneously the camera tracks left.  3) A moment later Burns starts crossing left along with the camera.  Then, eventually, everybody stops, and the shot has been reframed (?).

So from a medium close-up of Hanks over the shoulder of Burns, the shot becomes a long shot of Hanks over the shoulder of Burns, and we can see more of Burns’ back. We can see the whole thing: “Brooklyn, NY. USA” Hanks has just said every man he kills the further away from home he feels, then walked over to the men he has killed, while literally moving further away from home (What’s more home for an American soldier than Brooklyn, right, Mac? Woulda been weird if Rieben’s jacket said Pennsylvania).

It reminds me of the Orca sailing into the shark gullet.

What I’m saying, and feel free to disagree, is that it is my opinion that Spielberg is a fairly adept visual storyteller. He does NOT suck.

 

 

 

Go here for an essay about the scene.