Graeme Robertson on why Saving Private Ryan should have won Best Picture at the 71st Academy Awards…
The Oscar ceremony celebrating the best that 1998 had to offer is something an embarrassment looking back.
While many were deserving of the awards they received, such as the legendary James Coburn (one of my favourite actors) finally winning a Best Supporting Actor award for his role in Paul Schrader’s Affliction. Other winners that night are slightly more controversial, with the most controversial and laughable result being the decision to award Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love.
Why in the hell was this film deemed as the best film of 1998, did the members of the Academy not watch the other fucking nominees?
The line up of films that competed against Shakespeare in Love included some of the fiercest competition possible and many are certainly more deserving of the top award than John Madden’s historical romance.
However, for my money (and I imagine most of you reading’s money) the film that have named as Best Picture of 1998 was Steven Spielberg’s war epic Saving Private Ryan, quite possibly one of the most famous and popular war films in cinematic history, a status that it cemented within its opening minutes.
The film follows a platoon of American soldiers in war-torn France, who shortly after the Allied invasion of 1944 are tasked with finding Private Ryan, a soldier who lost all his brothers during the Normandy landings of D-Day thus is eligible to send back to America as part of the US military’s “sole survivor” policy.
Do I really need to fully discuss the various aspects of this film and why it’s better than the romantic twaddle of Shakespeare in Love?
This film from the opening seconds of its breathtaking D-Day sequence is simply one of the most visceral and believable depictions of war ever capture in a motion picture. The cinematography is outstanding; with it often feeling like the camera man is an extra character following the action, one who struggles to keep his head afloat when he has to jump from a landing craft into the chilly waters of the Atlantic.
The sound design is some of the best in a film, with every bullet pinging, whizzing and cracking as it races past the heads of our protagonists or the way that the dropping of rain onto a leaf is brilliantly synced to the sounds of a distant battle growing ever fiercer and ever closer. This is a film best experienced with the biggest speakers around, with the volume turned right up to max.
The battle sequences themselves could have entire articles written about how masterful their execution is they are, with the ferocity and horror of the frontline perfectly reconstructed by director Spielberg and his crew. This is not a film for those with a weak stomach, though, with the film holding nothing back in showing the gore and mayhem of war, with the D-Day opening being a true horror show of blood, guts and pain of the soldiers as they attempt to push further up Omaha beach.
The cast led by Tom Hanks is also excellent, with Hanks giving a great understated performance as the school teacher turned army captain whose eyes we see the horrors of war through. Matt Damon gives a fine turn as the titular Private Ryan, with his standout moment being a truly wonderful, (not to mention entirely improvised) monologue remembering a funny moment involving his brothers. Also fine turns from the likes of Edward Burns, and Tom Sizemore, but for my money, though, the best performance goes to the wonderfully named Barry Pepper as Jackson, the platoon’s deeply religious sniper who quietly prays to himself before he takes a shot.
I could continue writing about this film and why it’s so brilliant and deserving of its stellar reputation, but I’ll simply say that if you haven’t seen this film, I implore you to watch it immediately.
Saving Private Ryan is, in my view, not only one of the best war films ever made, but it is also one of the best films ever made with Spielberg having very much earned his Best Director Oscar for this film.
How this film didn’t win Best Picture I’ll never understand because Shakespeare in Love was not the best picture of 1998, it was Saving Private Ryan.
Graeme Robertson
Originally published February 16, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
