Tom Hanks as Captain John H. Miller and some of his company Saving Private Ryan publicity photo '98
by David Lee Guss
Title
Tom Hanks as Captain John H. Miller and some of his company Saving Private Ryan publicity photo '98
Artist
David Lee Guss
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
"Many World War II veterans, stated that the film was the most realistic depiction of combat they had ever seen. The film was so realistic that combat veterans of D-Day and Vietnam left theaters rather than finish watching the opening scene depicting the Normandy invasion. Their visits to posttraumatic stress disorder counselors rose in number after the film's release, and many counselors advised 'more psychologically vulnerable' veterans to avoid watching it. The Department of Veterans Affairs set up a nationwide hotline for veterans who were affected by the film, and less than two weeks after the film was released it had already received over 170 calls.
The film has gained criticism and negative reviews from war veterans and film critics. film director and military veteran Oliver Stone has accused the film of promoting 'the worship of World War II as the good war,' and has lumped it alongside films such as Gladiator and Black Hawk Down that he believes were well-made, but may have inadvertently contributed to Americans' readiness for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In defense of the film's portrait of warfare, Brian De Palma commented, 'The level of violence in something like Saving Private Ryan makes sense because Spielberg is trying to show something about the brutality of what happened.'"
Actor Richard Todd, who performed in The Longest Day and was amongst the first of the Allied soldiers to land in Normandy (Sword Beach), said the film was 'Rubbish. Overdone.' American academic Paul Fussell, who saw combat in France during World War II, objected to what he described as, 'the way Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, after an honest, harrowing, 15-minute opening visualizing details of the unbearable bloody mess at Omaha Beach, degenerated into a harmless, uncritical patriotic performance apparently designed to thrill 12-year-old boys during the summer bad-film season. Its genre was pure cowboys and Indians, with the virtuous cowboys of course victorious.' Historian James DiEugenio has argued that the film was actually '90 percent fiction' and that Tom Hanks knew this, with his goal being to 'commemorate World War II as the Good War and to depict the American role in it as crucial.'"
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September 9th, 2016
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