A lot of people have had a lot to say about Spielberg's latest,
but one thematic possibility has so far been left out, likely never
even thought of.
In TIME, July 27th, Richard Schickel, hopefully with complete accuracy,
quotes Spielberg re the character Corporal Upham thus: "He was me in
the movie. That's how I would have been in war." If so, this is
immensely important; it's likely that Spielberg wrote himself in, period,
in which case Upham was meant for much deeper and broader scrutiny than
list comment suggests he was given.
I want to focus on one Upham-event. During the battle to hold the bridge,
in an upstairs room a desperate seesaw drama of hand-to-hand combat ends
with a German soldier slowly plunging a bayonet into one of the Ryan
detachment. Upham, who has been militarily dysfunctional for about ten
minutes, is squatting halfway up the stairs in some state of immobility.
Descending the stairs, the German casts Upham a quick appraising glance
and passes him as he might pass a palsied beggar on a city street,
although Upham is holding a carbine and is swathed in ammo belts.
Why did he do this? Had he gotten his fill of killing just before,
in that struggle? And he had been saying something to his opponent,
in frenetic German, over and over: was it standard Nazi invective
or "Stop, just go limp; I don't really want to kill you"?
In "statement" movies, a whole suite of ideas must sometimes be conveyed
symbolically, in the actions of individuals. Was this such a case?
In WW2 Germany took on the resources of four world empires, and succeeded
only against the least of them (and then just because the French army was
crippled by a deep ideological schism). In early 1943 the Red Army closed
the Stalingrad Pocket and began its westward push; in the Pacific US forces
had been on the offensive since the Battle of Midway in June of 1942.
By D-Day the Wehrmacht had been fighting and living for over a year with
a crushing sense of futility: its momentum was gone and the war was lost.
It now fought not to conquer, not to hold its captured territories, not
even to prevent the home front's overrunning, but just to defeat somehow
the spectre of unconditional surrender. There were officers who would
have preferred to meet the Normandy invaders with cold beer rather than
hot lead, turn about and jointly prevent the Russians from taking Germany.
All sorts of diplomatic dealings-in-progress were being fantasized about
during that last full year of the war; meanwhile Germany had to show just
enough fight on the ground to be taken seriously as a new ally. In fact,
the mad dream of breaking the US-Soviet alliance dominated the Fuehrer
Bunker right down to the very last days of the war.
Whether Spielberg, who found the contradiction of Oskar Schindler and
immortalized it, was introducing ambiguity that another film will explore
in full we don't know, but personally I can't believe that he is capable
of a cinematic gratuity. Be prepared for a still broader revision of
history when Corporal Upham's promised book reaches the screen.
valis
