Word: spielbergism
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...perhaps the most remarkable thing about this passage is that it is not what it would be in a more typical war epic, a virtuoso end in itself. For Spielberg it is something to build on, not build toward, and that says much about his confidence as a filmmaker and the stubborn, instructive earnestness with which he approached Saving Private Ryan. To him, this carnage--his vision of which has moved strong men to run from the screening room and caused the Motion Picture Association of America to give the film an unusual (for the director of E.T. and Raiders...
...bloody business of liberating Europe in World War II. He makes his way through ranks of crosses, their fearful symmetry broken here and there by a Star of David. Finding the grave he seeks, he falls to his knees sobbing, overwhelmed by that flood of memories it is Spielberg's business to reimagine, then to incise on the minds of a generation dismayingly heedless of history...
...makes no difference. Whether you live or die here is entirely a matter of chance, not survival tactics. Spielberg's handheld cameras thrust us into this maelstrom, and his superb editing creates from these bits and pieces a mosaic of terror. We see as the soldiers see, from belly level, in flashes and fragments, none more vivid than the shot, rendered almost casually, of a soldier staggering along, carrying his severed arm--the struggle against mortality encapsulated in what amounts to a sidelong glance...
...fanatically detailed, in part because the action is so compressed--all that panic in such a tight spot--in part because the horror is so long sustained, for more than 20 relentless minutes. "I wanted the audience in the arena, not sitting off to one side," says Spielberg. "I didn't want to make something it was easy to look away from...
...throughout the battle on the beach (filmed in Ireland using some 3,000 performers), Spielberg and screenwriter Robert Rodat have been introducing us to members of a small Ranger unit commanded by Tom Hanks' Captain Miller, in effect bonding us with them as they pass through this inner circle of hell, feeling their fear, enduring their losses, sharing their weary triumph when they destroy the enemy pillbox that commands their sector. They--we--have done enough. Time now to rest, regroup...