thedrifter
10-29-06, 07:37 AM
October 29, 2006
Burying Private Ryan
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
WHEN Peter Bardazzi, a film professor, took his students at the Fashion Institute of Technology to see “Flags of Our Fathers” last Sunday, they were surrounded in the theater by gray- and white-haired people who seemed genuinely touched by the movie’s depiction of the marines who took Iwo Jima. But the young men and women with Mr. Bardazzi, he said, found it tough to sit through.
One, Shirlyn Wong, 23, said she had barely learned about Hiroshima growing up, let alone about the bloody battle for Iwo Jima, and World War II just didn’t seem all that relevant now. Iraq is where it’s at, she said, and the images of carnage that she’s drawn to are the videos popping up on YouTube, despite what she and her friends see as the best efforts of the government and news media to suppress them.
“As soon as you hear something on CNN about a beheading, or a sniper video, the first thing we do is check on the Internet for it,” Ms. Wong said.
It’s been a long eight years since “Saving Private Ryan.” And the underwhelming turnout for “Flags of Our Fathers” so far — it made just $10.2 million its opening weekend, a third of the gross for “Ryan” — may drive home something that Clint Eastwood, the director, and Steven Spielberg, his producer, could not have guessed when they set out to make it: the phenomenon that took hold in 1998 with Mr. Spielberg’s re-enactment of D-Day in “Ryan” and the publication of Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation” may be, like that “last good war” itself, a thing of the past.
Demographics have a lot to do with this. Hundreds if not thousands of World War II veterans die each week, and those living aren’t so quick to rush to theaters. Indeed, the mortality of that generation was what drove a small army of writers like Hampton Sides, author of “Ghost Soldiers” (2001), about survivors of the Bataan death march, to get going before their sources all died, said Mr. Sides’s publisher, Bill Thomas of Doubleday.
Movies will always be made about World War II, just as there will always be westerns. But the dozens of projects in development include precious few intended mainly to honor the men who fought. Two in the works are about the same all-black 761st tank battalion.
But Douglas Brinkley, the historian and author, said “Flags” had missed its moment by at least five years. “This movie doesn’t fit into the zeitgeist of our times,” he said. A decade or two ago, “writers and filmmakers were honoring World War II veterans. Those mining that field in 2006 seem to be capitalizing on them.”
The wave of interest in, gratitude for, and adulation of the nation’s World War II veterans began in 1984, when President Ronald Reagan spoke in Normandy at the 40th anniversary of D-Day. Mr. Brinkley’s mentor, the historian Stephen Ambrose, was there, as was the newsman Mr. Brokaw.
Mr. Ambrose, for whom D-Day was an obsession, had the idea to begin collecting veterans’ oral histories for the 50th anniversary; Mr. Brokaw had the idea to interview them for a book. Mr. Ambrose’s project turned into “D-Day,” published in 1994, and in it Mr. Spielberg found the material for “Saving Private Ryan” in 1998. A few months later Mr. Brokaw’s book flew off the shelves.
Much has been written about why so many Americans gobbled up those stories. Consider that in 1998, the cold war was over, the globe was shrinking, a threat on American soil was on few minds — and a trip down memory lane to a time when the nation was united in a morally unambiguous cause was an intoxicating escape from the polarization of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
There were other psychic rewards, too, for readers and film audiences of a certain age: “It was such a surprise to the boomer generation,” Mr. Brokaw said. “Their parents hadn’t talked about it, and there’d been a rejection of it in the 1960’s.” Mr. Brokaw recalled a gruff and grimy fire captain who, in the chaos of Ground Zero, thanked him for his book, saying, “I learned about my father in a way I never thought I would.”
Hollywood would return to World War II periodically with genre films like the submarine thriller “U-571,” Holocaust films like “The Pianist” and just plain critical failures like “Windtalkers” and the blockbuster “Pearl Harbor.” But the glorification had already begun to tail off when Mr. Spielberg and his “Private Ryan” star, Tom Hanks, teamed up as producers of the acclaimed HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers,” based on another Ambrose book.
“Flags of Our Fathers,” the story of a man’s discovery of his father’s past as one of the lionized flag-raisers of Iwo Jima, had been on the best-seller list for a year when “Band of Brothers” was first broadcast, and Mr. Spielberg quickly snatched up the rights. But Mr. Spielberg abandoned “Flags” after two years of reworking scripts, and he invited Mr. Eastwood to take over.
Though Mr. Spielberg failed to develop a screenplay he wanted to direct, Mr. Eastwood’s movie still feels like a sequel to “Ryan.” “Earn this,” Mr. Hanks says as he sacrifices his life to save Matt Damon’s Ryan; in “Flags,” the surviving marines spend much of the movie haunted by knowing that they’ll never be able to live up to the sacrifices their comrades made.
The first episode of “Band of Brothers” was shown on Sept. 9, 2001, and although the miniseries was a success, what happened two days later abruptly made war a real and scary thing, not a gauzy memory. Many critics discerned in President Bush’s post-9/11 speeches — declaring that “another great generation” had been summoned to action — a baby boomer’s struggle to live up to his father’s wartime example. But with the shift of focus to Iraq, the continued mythologizing of World War II, Mr. Brinkley said, began to be viewed in some quarters as a form of American triumphalism.
Jump-cut to 2006, with body bags filling in Iraq and an American public exhausted by the war’s toll, and it’s not so mysterious why a war movie — even a prima facie Oscar contender — should face an uphill battle.
Mark Rondeau, 45, a writer in North Adams, Mass., said he read “Flags” and loved it, and loved Mr. Eastwood’s work, but had no interest in the film, now that it reminds him of a war he’d rather not think about. “Private Ryan,” he said, came out in a “whole different era.”
“It was possible then to look back at World War II with nostalgia, and think that those were great men doing great things that Americans would never have to do again,” he said. “You’d think, well, people were shot to bits, but that was then. You could put sort of a mental distance to it. Now, if you see it happening on the sands of Iwo Jima, you know it’s happening in Iraq, at the same time, and for a lot less noble cause.”
Ellie
Burying Private Ryan
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
WHEN Peter Bardazzi, a film professor, took his students at the Fashion Institute of Technology to see “Flags of Our Fathers” last Sunday, they were surrounded in the theater by gray- and white-haired people who seemed genuinely touched by the movie’s depiction of the marines who took Iwo Jima. But the young men and women with Mr. Bardazzi, he said, found it tough to sit through.
One, Shirlyn Wong, 23, said she had barely learned about Hiroshima growing up, let alone about the bloody battle for Iwo Jima, and World War II just didn’t seem all that relevant now. Iraq is where it’s at, she said, and the images of carnage that she’s drawn to are the videos popping up on YouTube, despite what she and her friends see as the best efforts of the government and news media to suppress them.
“As soon as you hear something on CNN about a beheading, or a sniper video, the first thing we do is check on the Internet for it,” Ms. Wong said.
It’s been a long eight years since “Saving Private Ryan.” And the underwhelming turnout for “Flags of Our Fathers” so far — it made just $10.2 million its opening weekend, a third of the gross for “Ryan” — may drive home something that Clint Eastwood, the director, and Steven Spielberg, his producer, could not have guessed when they set out to make it: the phenomenon that took hold in 1998 with Mr. Spielberg’s re-enactment of D-Day in “Ryan” and the publication of Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation” may be, like that “last good war” itself, a thing of the past.
Demographics have a lot to do with this. Hundreds if not thousands of World War II veterans die each week, and those living aren’t so quick to rush to theaters. Indeed, the mortality of that generation was what drove a small army of writers like Hampton Sides, author of “Ghost Soldiers” (2001), about survivors of the Bataan death march, to get going before their sources all died, said Mr. Sides’s publisher, Bill Thomas of Doubleday.
Movies will always be made about World War II, just as there will always be westerns. But the dozens of projects in development include precious few intended mainly to honor the men who fought. Two in the works are about the same all-black 761st tank battalion.
But Douglas Brinkley, the historian and author, said “Flags” had missed its moment by at least five years. “This movie doesn’t fit into the zeitgeist of our times,” he said. A decade or two ago, “writers and filmmakers were honoring World War II veterans. Those mining that field in 2006 seem to be capitalizing on them.”
The wave of interest in, gratitude for, and adulation of the nation’s World War II veterans began in 1984, when President Ronald Reagan spoke in Normandy at the 40th anniversary of D-Day. Mr. Brinkley’s mentor, the historian Stephen Ambrose, was there, as was the newsman Mr. Brokaw.
Mr. Ambrose, for whom D-Day was an obsession, had the idea to begin collecting veterans’ oral histories for the 50th anniversary; Mr. Brokaw had the idea to interview them for a book. Mr. Ambrose’s project turned into “D-Day,” published in 1994, and in it Mr. Spielberg found the material for “Saving Private Ryan” in 1998. A few months later Mr. Brokaw’s book flew off the shelves.
Much has been written about why so many Americans gobbled up those stories. Consider that in 1998, the cold war was over, the globe was shrinking, a threat on American soil was on few minds — and a trip down memory lane to a time when the nation was united in a morally unambiguous cause was an intoxicating escape from the polarization of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
There were other psychic rewards, too, for readers and film audiences of a certain age: “It was such a surprise to the boomer generation,” Mr. Brokaw said. “Their parents hadn’t talked about it, and there’d been a rejection of it in the 1960’s.” Mr. Brokaw recalled a gruff and grimy fire captain who, in the chaos of Ground Zero, thanked him for his book, saying, “I learned about my father in a way I never thought I would.”
Hollywood would return to World War II periodically with genre films like the submarine thriller “U-571,” Holocaust films like “The Pianist” and just plain critical failures like “Windtalkers” and the blockbuster “Pearl Harbor.” But the glorification had already begun to tail off when Mr. Spielberg and his “Private Ryan” star, Tom Hanks, teamed up as producers of the acclaimed HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers,” based on another Ambrose book.
“Flags of Our Fathers,” the story of a man’s discovery of his father’s past as one of the lionized flag-raisers of Iwo Jima, had been on the best-seller list for a year when “Band of Brothers” was first broadcast, and Mr. Spielberg quickly snatched up the rights. But Mr. Spielberg abandoned “Flags” after two years of reworking scripts, and he invited Mr. Eastwood to take over.
Though Mr. Spielberg failed to develop a screenplay he wanted to direct, Mr. Eastwood’s movie still feels like a sequel to “Ryan.” “Earn this,” Mr. Hanks says as he sacrifices his life to save Matt Damon’s Ryan; in “Flags,” the surviving marines spend much of the movie haunted by knowing that they’ll never be able to live up to the sacrifices their comrades made.
The first episode of “Band of Brothers” was shown on Sept. 9, 2001, and although the miniseries was a success, what happened two days later abruptly made war a real and scary thing, not a gauzy memory. Many critics discerned in President Bush’s post-9/11 speeches — declaring that “another great generation” had been summoned to action — a baby boomer’s struggle to live up to his father’s wartime example. But with the shift of focus to Iraq, the continued mythologizing of World War II, Mr. Brinkley said, began to be viewed in some quarters as a form of American triumphalism.
Jump-cut to 2006, with body bags filling in Iraq and an American public exhausted by the war’s toll, and it’s not so mysterious why a war movie — even a prima facie Oscar contender — should face an uphill battle.
Mark Rondeau, 45, a writer in North Adams, Mass., said he read “Flags” and loved it, and loved Mr. Eastwood’s work, but had no interest in the film, now that it reminds him of a war he’d rather not think about. “Private Ryan,” he said, came out in a “whole different era.”
“It was possible then to look back at World War II with nostalgia, and think that those were great men doing great things that Americans would never have to do again,” he said. “You’d think, well, people were shot to bits, but that was then. You could put sort of a mental distance to it. Now, if you see it happening on the sands of Iwo Jima, you know it’s happening in Iraq, at the same time, and for a lot less noble cause.”
Ellie