Saving Private Ryan

🚬takes a long drag …. 💨 whenever my dad puts this banger on best believe im seated. ive seen some claim that this movie falls under the classic US “good war” propaganda typically associated with ww2 which i can certainly understand, however i would argue this movie at least to me comes across as an anti-war film. the whole premise of the mission is this hypocritical plot to save a single man and send him home because to his mother, as well as himself, has lost all of his brothers in the said war. the irony is made obvious from the start, everyone in the war has lost “brothers” everyone in the war has a mother everyone in the war is simply a man. one may argue that the propaganda comes in at the cinematic sacrifice of tom hanks and his group for ryan and the whole “alter of freedom” and abraham lincoln speech and sure but i think the overall message of the film IS that there is no such thing as this idealized “good war” millions of men lost their lives regardless of who they were or what uniform they were wearing (obvious exceptions in this context). they were all human beings they all had families and lives that they personally felt responsible to protect and in Americans case: uphold democracy and  freedom from oppression/tyranny. now once again there is many problems with this seeing as the united states was fighting for the very freedoms they only allocated to select group of americans cough cough elite/middle class white men. ww2 and the era that would follow it in the united states is often looked back upon as a romanticized golden age where everything was just “better”. the generation of ww2 is often referred to as the “golden generation” as a result of this ideology as well and have since been honored for their contribution and sacrifices during the war (and rightly so). BUT often this view neglects to acknowledge the hypocrisy imbedded within america’s “democracy” itself: jim crow laws, segregation, japanese internment camps and rampant misogyny all plagued this so called “golden age” not to mention the hundreds of thousands of american men who lost their lives or returned mortally wounded or psychologically scarred. all this yap to say: good movie. jackson was my GOAT !!!