this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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Saving Private Ryan
The opening starts with D-Day and it destroyed my emotions. I was ricocheting from terror to grief back to terror and being drowned in sensory overload. Twenty minutes of cinema around the horror of war and the mass infliction of death was unbearable. I cried for an hour afterwards and I can never bring myself to watch it again. The movie was definitely a masterpiece, and it's a story that should be told, but it is brutal.
That part honestly wasn't what got me. It was a little past that when done guy gets shot or maybe hit with a grenade (I forgot) and he's bleeding out. The skirmish was over and everyone else was fine so they're all gathered around their friend while he's living out his last moments, and he knows it, and they know it but they're still trying to encourage him to think positively. All he wants is his mother, but the best they can do is hold his hand and try to give him a cigarette.
That scene was just so realistic. There's no closure for anyone. They have a mission to do and they're behind enemy lines so they just have to leave his body there. There's no dignity, and the war goes on with hardly anyone caring about the guy in the grand scheme of things, but that situation is likely replaying every few seconds across France. Many of them don't even get those last few seconds to think back on their life, their accomplishments, and their regrets; they just get their leg blown off and can't think of anything but how painful it is and then die.
When scenes are that realistic, I can't help but put myself in their shoes and imagine that's exactly how I would act in that situation and it is terrifying. I got light headed and nauseous, turned off the TV, and never tried finishing the movie.
That was also realistically powerful. I am glad I made it through the picture, if only to be reminded of the horror of sending young men to kill each other. Saving Private Brian is a masterpiece, but most of us aren't capable of more than a single viewing.