Sacrificing Private Ryan
So… I’m not a fan of Saving Private Ryan. One of its core messages was about that same as Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers: “Show your enemies no mercy, for you will be shown none.” And Spielberg really drives that mega-budget message home, you may recall, by having that dirty ex-prisoner kraut blast Tom Hanks to kingdom come in the final act… and by making sure the Good Guys are surrounded by nubile babes with perky breasts, even if those babes are the Good Guys’ daughters.
Okay. That’s just me.
Have you heard about the LDS film Saints and Soldiers? This 2003 flick is about as polar opposite a war film as you can get from Ryan and Spielberg. It’s micro-budget, the cast is filled with whoozits… and it has a decidedly different take on the whole mercy thing. But it tells a similar story, of a small unit of soldiers carrying out a dangerous Allied mission behind German lines during World War II in the wake of a POW massacre.
In his feature film debut, Canadian native Ryan Little pulls a cinematic rabbit out of his hat, taking advantage of every ounce of “re-enactor” muscle that Utah could muster, and tells a compelling story in fine, professional fashion. The film this most reminded my of is Rachid Bouchareb’s Oscar-nominated Days of Glory. It’s no surprise that this film won scads of awards on the festival circuit.
What’s especially nice is that Little’s Latter Day Saints background lends this production a moral dimension(amidst all the squibs and flashpots) that Spielberg has never come close to mustering. The central character of “Deacon” is highly convincing, given the LDS mission-field experiences of the director and several cast/crew members.
At the crux of the plot is that same dilemma as in Ryan: Do you show mercy to your enemies? Little’s film doesn’t treat that question in a perfunctory manner, on either end of the spectrum… though, naturally, it just isn’t possible to read this as a “shoot the bastards” tract.
If Little represents the future of LDS filmmaking (a sequel is in the works right now), I’m all for it. This is real cinema with a clear spiritual dimension.
You can stream Saints and Soldiers on Netflix.
Copyright © 2014 Carl Phillips
I liked Saving Private Ryan. It was a spectacle movie. I also enjoyed Saints and Soldiers. It was a well-filmed small indy movie. I much appreciated what the director and producers were able to pull off.