One of the 50 best war films in cinema history turns 25 years old. And it is not ‘Paths of Glory’ (Kubrick, 1957), ‘Apocalypse Now’ (Ford Coppola, 1979), ‘The Hunter’ (Cimino, 1978), ‘Ivan’s Childhood’ (Tarkovsky, 1962), nor ‘1917’ (Mendes, 2020). Steven Spielberg’s war milestone was released in 1998 with an old friend as the protagonist. Tom Hanks, who that same year released the autumn classic ‘You’ve Got Email’ (Ephron, 1998) while accumulating stardom worthy of Hollywood with a couple of Oscars behind him thanks to ‘Philadelphia’ (Demme, 1993) and ‘Forrest Gump ‘ (Zemeckis, 1994), he launched himself to lead the platoon during Spielberg’s D-Day in a filming that was as rushed as it was intense and immersive.

Saving Private Ryan

The film that will leave Netflix ‘s catalog on December 31, won a total of 5 Academy Awards : best director, editing, photography, sound and sound editing. A recognition that is also shared by the millions of viewers who will always find humanity in this milestone of war cinema.

After the Normandy landings during World War II, where many Allied combatants died, a group of American soldiers is chosen to carry out their last mission: save a single man who is on the other side of enemy lines . Captain John Miller’s (Tom Hanks) patrol must risk their lives to find and return home safely Private James Ryan (Matt Damon) , whose three brothers have died in the war. Thousands of soldiers as extras, 2,000 weapons, a landing in Ireland and a week of military training were some of the requirements for the filmmaker to fulfill his mission: to trace the horrors of the armed conflict . To do this, Spielberg assembled a platoon of eight main actors to recreate the last phase of World War II. Among them, Vin Diesel, Adam Goldberg, Bryan Cranston or a then unknown Matt Damon.

Private Ryan’s story begins in a book . Specifically, in ‘D-Day, June 6, 1944’ (1994) written by S. Ambrose. The film’s screenwriter, Robert Rodat , remembers “reading and seeing mentioned the case of the Niland family and the priest who saved his remaining brother with the help of a troop. I thought: how did they do it? “That’s where the movie came from.” The Battle of Normandy , decisive for the outcome of World War II, was one of the bloodiest in history . On June 6, 1944, 7,000 ships and 156,000 soldiers from the Allied side crossed the English Channel and simultaneously attacked the German army on five beaches in Normandy. Among them, Omaha, recreated during the first part of the film in one of the rawest scenes ever filmed.

Spielberg’s tribute

Spielberg, in a tribute addressed to war veterans (including his own father) , decided that the film should not fall into the glorification of combat, as usually happens on other occasions. “ My father always explained to me how unglamorous war was, and I never forgot it . He is romanticized in the best war films because those were the extravagances of a climactic Hollywood. This movie was not fun in that sense, because it tries to approximate what war is really like .” In the director’s words, “ I’ve always thought that the movie should be called ‘Saving Captain Miller’ , because it’s really about a man who is searching for his lost decency . How do you find it in World War II? That was the paradox that attracted me to the project. Who is Miller? Who was the person who is now killing people? “That person is Tom Hanks, who celebrated his 41st birthday during filming . “

“Few filmmakers can compare to Spielberg in terms of sense of spectacle,” says Daniel Monzón in his review . “As in ‘Schindler’s List,'” he continues, “Spielberg has applied his powerful sense of wonder , the same one that moved ‘ET The Extra-Terrestrial’ or ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ , in the opposite direction, nailing the viewer in the seat before the most grandiose and unbearable ceremony of death. His intention in immersing us almost physically in the horror that Coppola spoke of in ‘Apocalypse Now’ is not so much to underline the madness of war as to place us at the exact point where it is found. that Captain Miller to whom Hanks lends his timely everyman presence .” For reasons like this, ‘Saving Private Ryan’ has earned a place of honor in the collective imagination of so many viewers who will never forget the sound of a gunshot underwater while keeping in their retinas the image of grainy and toned viscera. desaturated .