Notes on Saving Private Ryan

[kuangning]

... death en masse was never meant to be a spectator sport.

Silence.
The stillness suffocates,
Presses down upon hearts growing old,
Upon once-blithe spirits that now match
Suddenly-gaunt faces
And eyes bleak with knowledge
In the moment before the fire falls -
And still, they went forward.

Chaos.
Bodies fallen across bodies
Beneath boots that do nothing to soften
The sickening crunch of bone
Shattering like driftwood underfoot,
The meaty slide of flesh
Resolutely ignored,
Familiar faces and bodies
Reduced to obstacles to be climbed over
Lest you, too, lie where they fell -
And still, they went forward.

Hell.
Fire around, before, behind,
The inescapable stench of fear and scorching flesh,
The stickiness of blood, staining and drying,
That will not wash away.
Shouts almost indiscernible;
Human voices have lost the power
To pierce the cloak of terror
That is the certainty of death -
And still, they went forward.

What does it take,
What strength, what magic,
To go forward when all around you
Is death,
When every moment is another snatched,
Stolen from the hounds of hell
Whose breath is the rank whiff
Of fire and fear, so warm on your neck?
Causes cease to matter.
When your day comes to fall,
The only victory lies in going forward.
It is inelegant, it is vicious, it is repellent,
Glory of the most heinous kind -
( but glory, nonetheless )
That when the call came,
To go out and stand to die -
They went forward.

Arguing the cause
Is the province of civilians,
Whose duty it must be,
To ensure that those who stand
Do not do so needlessly or in vain.
Weighing the necessity
Is for those who must count lives
As coin, and spend them dear.
Debate, for that is needful,
But -
When you come to argue the right,
To judge what is just and what reprehensible,
No matter on which side of the gulf,
Behind which colours, country, or ideal you stand,
Remember, of the wall of bodies
Who protect you and fall for you -
Remember -
They went forward.

Comments

[silmarian.livejournal.com]

_Saving Private Ryan_ was an excellent movie, one that I will probably watch again in a few years.

Yes, it's horribly graphic. It's about war. But it doesn't do war in the same trivializing way that _Pearl Harbor_ did war. This is about how horrible, pointless, and bloody war is. It takes you places that are usually glossed over by the media.

It, along with _Schindler's List_, are two of my favorite World War II movies. _Tora, Tora, Tora_ is also excellent. But SPR and SL really take you down the road of 'war is awful'.

No, death en masse isn't meant to be a spectator sport. But given the constant barrage of images depicting war as bloodless and 'fun', I think that bringing America on a tour of the ugly side of war was probably a good thing.

Not that'll do us any good, in the long run, I suspect. But, then, I'm a pessimist.

[i.livejournal.com]

i don't need any convincing that war is a horrible thing. i suppose i'm hypocritical in that i enjoy stuff like starship troopers and the highlander, and countless other violent films. maybe i just want to know when i see a movie that the violence isn't real, if that makes sense. i'm not looking for an education into the horrors of war. i can get that on the nightly news.

Re:

[silmarian.livejournal.com]

Not American news, you can't. Right now, it's so sanitized and pro-Shrub that there's no real content.

Re:

[i.livejournal.com]

PBS and NPR are OK. i also listen to the BBC world today and Democracy Now.

[kuangning]

That's it exactly, I think. The only other war film that's made me feel like that is Full Metal Jacket. And I made myself watch it because there was something there that isn't usually shown. The men's faces were worn-looking. The ramps came down and you saw horror in their eyes as boatloads of men died before ever making it to the beach. And still, nobody ran. No-one gave up. They died, always horribly and sometimes mercifully quickly, but they kept going. The look behind their eyes was real. That kept me watching... knowing that this happened, this actually took place, and I was only seeing a cleaned-up version of what thousands of boys and men, schoolteachers and doctors and kids fresh from farms and with families who miss them and are never going to be the same without them, actually went through. It seemed to me that turning my face away from it was betraying everything they did. And when it was over, even though I still felt sick, I also felt that I had to make it so they didn't die for nothing. And maybe, if I can, to make sure that anyone we ask that much from isn't doing it for nothing. We don't get to change what happened then. We only get to vindicate it and make it count.

Re:

[silmarian.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Which is part of why what's going on right now is making me so sick. We're playing at being World War Germany, except on a global, and not European, scale.