Dark Victory
Steven Spielberg's good war
"Every man I kill, the further I feel away from home," says Miller when his men champ at the bit to execute a German soldier who has killed one of them. To Spielberg's credit, he acknowledges that Miller's scruples are as garbled as his grammar, for they return later on to haunt him in ways that underscore the anachronistic fragility of his honor code. When Spielberg returns to what he does best - showing, not telling - we see the unit digging in for its last stand along with Private Ryan (Matt Damon), who has refused to leave his own detail until it completes its mission to defend a bridge. In the final battle, a wounded Miller sits weakly emptying his handgun at an approaching tank. One thinks of William Holden in The Bridge on the River Kwai, aghast at Alec Guinness' mad interpretation of honor, observing that the point is not to die like a gentleman, but to live like a human being. Such is Spielberg's skill that Miller's scene, at once telling and moving, needs no elaboration. Except that, as always, Spielberg can't resist completing the thought on our behalf. Like Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan ends in a burst of schmaltzy ritual. One of the survivors, now an old man, falls to his knees in a cemetery filled with white crosses, then begs his wife to tell him that he's a good man. With this hopelessly cloying coda, Spielberg, having won his battles, loses sight of the war.
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Publishing:
ONOFF
