The first time I watched Saving Private Ryan I was 15 years old. Before that I was a sheltered kid under social services' care in a foster family, who couldn't play even old shoot em up games because there were spaceships being destroyed and even lasers were considered too violent. But by then I was in a foster home because I'd gotten rebelious etc etc. And that afternoon one of the educators showed up with a VHS tape (That was in 2004, there were still places that let you rent VHS tapes) and said "hey kids wanna watch a movie" and we were all "yeah sure I guess" so we sat in the living room and he put the VHS in and told us it was a war movie. I was like, yeah sure whatever and then he pressed play.
Hence a horror movie begun.
When people talk about horror movies, they mostly refer to scary movies, movies with jump scares, slasher flicks, psychological horror, the lot. However, By the end of the movie I was completely numb. I had just watched a horror movie in the purest sense of the word: A movie that horrified me, a movie that disturbed me, a movie that despite being fictional managed to legitimately traumatize me. Each death, each moment of tension, each time a bullet was fired I was just sitting there, completely quiet, feeling emotionally numb aside from a distant yet terrible gut feeling. I had seen violent movies before in those rare moments when I wasn't under the supervision of a christian family (not a knock mind you, bless them for they obviously cared about me), Robocop and Blade comes to mind, but I still knew I was watching a movie.
Here I might as well have been watching actual war footage. I learned many years later that No, not every german soldiers were this sadistic and monstrous, but Steven Spielberg's a jew, he earned the privilege of making them as disgusting as he wants long before he even was born. But when I saw anyone die in this movie, it felt as if I really was watching someone die. Unlike Robocop's ludicrous gibs and splattered melting man or Blade's CGI gore, in my mind in that very moment I was pulled into the movie;
I was watching living beings being wounded, maimed; many of them then dying violently with the least lucky suffering slow, painful deaths. I dreaded every gunfight almost as much as they themselves did, I wanted it to end. Yet, I couldn't look away like I would have in a slasher movie like Friday the 13th.
As I mentioned, this movie left me traumatized. I barely talked for the rest of the day, and for the next few days I had trouble sleeping because of what I'd witnessed. I was kind of a wuss seeing how the other teens gobbled it up like it was candy.
Earlier this year I came across the movie on DVD. I am 29, turning 30 soon. I figured, now that I am older and have gotten used to violent movies and toughened up in general, I should watch that movie again. I also decided to watch it in english this time (I am french canadian), because why not?
I put the dvd into the player, then when the main menu came up I pressed Play on my remote.
When I watched this movie nearly 15 years ago, I watched a horror movie, something beyond frightening; This year I watched the saddest movie I have ever come across.
This time, I had enough maturity to back me up as I watched the movie. It still pulled me in, and I still felt as if I was seeing actual people dying, but this time I saw beyond the violence, beyond the horror, and bore witness to the tragedy, the sadness of it all.
To me, there are two scenes that still affected me the most. The first was Corporal Caparzo's death, or more accurately the moment he is fatally-wounded.
Some context is needed here: Back when I lived with the christian family, We lived on a farm. They hated violence yet there were moments when we'd have to kill some of our livestock, especially chickens and rabbits, because that's where most of our food came from. I once took part in this. There were one way to deal with the chickens: Decapitation. I was asked to help with that but I couldn't bring myself to even hold the axe. I was then asked to help with the rabbits. Decapitation was once again one way to deal with them but there was an alternate way: Rabbits have fragile spines, and one way to kill them quickly that my foster parents were taught was to simply grab one of them and throw them as hard as possible against the ground, immediately breaking their spine. They then go into convulsions briefly while letting out a death scream, and pass away in the span of seconds. This is brutal yet quick and most of the time cleaner than having to decapitate them. I still only helped out once and after that I would stay inside the house when they had to do the deed again. I couldn't bear the thought of doing this again (not coincidentally I am also the student who failed home economy in high school because I wouldn't throw the lobster into the boiling water).
When I saw Corporal Caparzo get hit, he jerks and flails in a way no human being is supposed to, and I was instantly reminded of the dying rabbits who intentionally or not just flailed away on the ground before dying. His death felt like I was watching an animal die, only his death was much slower, bleeding out in proximity of his peers who were pinned down and were unable to save him in time. It felt incredibly saddening and unjust, as war is known to be.
The second scene, the one that still gets to me the most, is Doc Wade's death after an ill-thought assault against a german squad that previously ambushed and killed other american soldiers. After the battle, the smoke is carried away just enough that we can see the band of brothers we'd been following since the start of their insane mission around one of their own, who is clearly wounded. There is no music, no machismo, no "it's only a scratch"; only men desperately trying to save their own medic, applying morphine and frantically applying pressure to his wounds which in the course of the scene bleeds more and more profusely (I have a phobia of real/realistic blood by the way), the poor man's face getting paler and paler, his words becoming almost incoherent in the midst of shock. His fellow men try to encourage him while pouring sulfa powder into his wounds. The efforts are ultimately yet inevitably futile and Wade himself despite his own will to live realizes it ("Oh god my liver!") and in his last moment of clarity demands more morphine, fully understanding as a trained medic the overdose and death that will ensue. Even his peers understand this, and after brief hesitation they grant his last wish, this act of mercy from a frightened, mortally wounded man, who then devolve into near gibberish; tearfully, weakly calling for his mother with his very last words before passing away.
Before I watched this movie again, the only two scenes that stuck with me from nearly 15 years ago were the Normandy beach landing, and seeing (and hearing) that nazi slowly stab Private Mellish through the heart near the end of the movie. This fact made the other deaths in the movie strike me almost as hard as it did back then, with a huge difference: Where before I saw living beings die, I now rightfully see them as human beings, and this realization made their demises all the more harder to watch, especially those who didn't die right away, those who were still conscious enough to see their own life seep away helplessly and despite their brothers in arms' best efforts.
Knowing all this, it shouldn't come as a surprise to you that seeing Doc Wade die made me cry. The tears began rolling when I started seeing the blood pool and spill from his chest; I wept, horrified (blood phobia, hey) but the valves were truly forced open when I found myself paying attention to what they were saying. Despite the dialogue and the noises the whole thing felt uncomfortably quiet, and as I witnessed the medic's death I again saw a real man dying, not just an actor playing the part, and with the veil of trauma pushed away I saw and felt the tragedy of it all, and that's what ultimately broke me. I was still bawling even after his merciful death, and I felt down for the reminder of the movie.
This movie broke me down again. The symptoms were different but the result was the same. I still felt down after the movie ended, until one of my good friends showed me cute art of millitary planes reimagined as anthro animals, canines, cats, the like. It was suitably adorable and in a twisted way, innocent and light-hearted.
It's gonna sound stupid to you that I took a hour and a half to find the words to write all this just because of actors convincingly faking death, maybe you think I'm being pompous or that I'm taking this too seriously and you probably think it's stupid that I waited so long before making this thread, but sometimes you don't find the right words right away, and at long last I needed to get all this off my chest. Despite this, I hope that perhaps this will be an interesting read to you, fellow redditor.
Submitted May 29, 2018 at 10:10AM by everett1911 https://ift.tt/2L433mS