Reel Anniversaries: SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and SCHINDLER'S LIST

This month marks significant anniversaries for two of Steven Spielberg’s best films; both set in the Second World War.  

Celebrating its 25^th anniversary is SCHINDLER’S LIST. 

Based on the novel Schindler’s Ark, the film followed a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand Jewish refugees from the Holocaust by offering them employment. Filmed in glorious black-and-white with the approach of a documentary, it is today considered to be one of the best films ever made, and was the recipient of seven Academy Awards (out of 12 nominations); including Best Picture and Best Director for Spielberg. It was a turning point for Spielberg, as it was a major departure from the whimsy and childhood dreams that had populated most of his works up until this point. It was also the capstone of a very successful year for Spielberg, who earlier in 1993 wowed audiences with his dinosaur adventure JURASSIC PARK. 

And celebrating its 20^thanniversary is SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. 

Loosely based on the real-life WWII stories of the Niland brothers, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN was set during the Normandy Invasion, and followed a U.S. Army squad tasked with the impossible mission of finding one soldier to send him home after all three of his brothers were killed in action. Also hailed as one of the best films ever made, RYAN had startling battle sequences which hung its helmet on realism; literally dropping audiences right into the thick madness of battle. It was nominated for 11 Oscars and won five, including Spielberg’s second win for Best Director. Today it is considered a landmark in the war film genre, and credited with a resurgence in America’s interest in WWII. 

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This Blogger has often written that WWII will never run out of stories to tell; it was just too big of an event that affected too many people. The scale of the war was massive,and the challenge for Spielberg for both SCHINDLER’S LIST and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN was to maintain that sense of scale while finding the humans underneath it all. Both films stick close to the ground and their characters, making sure that the humans come first and the largeness of the events second. Time is the best test of all things, especially films, and both of these masterworks feel timeless after 20 or 25 years. If lessons are to be learned from war, then these two works from Spielberg are the perfect starting point for all of us.