Saving Private Ryan

In September 1998, Steven Spielberg received the Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany from President Roman Herzog, who expressed Germany's appreciation to the American Jewish director. "Germany thanks you for work that has given us more than you may realize," said Herzog. The film that made the Germans realize that there were maybe heroes among them would be Schindler's List. Yet at that time, Spielberg's subsequent film was also playing in German cinemas--a film that had as its cornerstone the same verse from the Talmud emblazoned on the screen in Schindler's List: "Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire."

In making Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg inverted that principle to show an entire group setting out to save a single--and virtually unknown--soldier, someone more remote to them than Schindler's people were to him. Saving Private Ryan focuses on Captain John Miller's (Tom Hanks) leading a special squadron detailed to find and save the last son of Mrs. Ryan, whose other three boys have perished on three different fronts. The carnage they must face is so often blamed on their quest that, by the time we meet Ryan himself, he all too readily accepts the burden of guilt. Spielberg's ability to look at World War II first this way, then that, has guaranteed him an altar in the magazine/TV/newsprint edifice that enshrines pop culture--where our latest products are sheltered, framed, hung, and subjected to an examination of ourselves within the work of art. The critical establishment seldom bothers to wire in a feed from Europe, where reactions to Hollywood product can alert us to surprising things about the movies themselves, as well as the auteurs behind them. In Germany, for example, the reception of Schindler's List undoubtedly benefitted from the effect of historian Daniel Goldberg tutoring the people in their proper role as willing villains. Spielberg brought relief by focusing on the hero among them and creating a masterpiece dedicated to their past.

By the time President Herzog came to thank Spielberg, he could tacitly include Saving Private Ryan for its relatively benevolent portrait of the German soldier certainly from the point of view of those who could understand the German dialogue of the film. Why the German dialogue was not shared with English-speaking, or rather, non-German-speaking audiences raises an issue that