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Twenty best reviews of 2004: in no particular
order and with a bias towards novelty
1
School Reunion, an historic part of the capital, Tuesday
2nd November 2004
From: Remi
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 07 November 2004
Review
One of those tricky classifications again. At first, the
life category would be more appropriate, but on further consideration you
realise that an event that takes part in the legal quarter of London, with
plenty of blasonage and dignitaries of the past on display, lends itself more to
an exhibition. What went on? Ostensibly, very little. A group of just under 300
men, varying from 18 to 85 stood in the same room, reunited by the fact that
they attended the same secondary school for five years, or less. Three men, were
heard out, clapped and cheered. People from the same school year greeted each
other and talked about what they were doing in everyday life, and what they had
achieved since leaving school. Everyone enjoyed various degrees of privilege and
authority, and compared this with one other. In fact, just by being at that
school, it seemed that you were guaranteed an important position. Few didn't
wear a suit, and those that didn't made a statement of not doing so. Such was
the atmosphere of conformity. People were friendly, and implicitly acknowledged
that one's attendance was considered far-reaching enough to unite with your
fellow man in the room . Those who otherwise would have little to share, found
reams to talk about. Individuals who were less than friendly in the past, were
suddenly transported into a complicit union. All was forgiven and forgotten;
this is the power of religion. What can you take away from this event? That you
belong to a group of some description, and for a small fee, people will befriend
you for a few hours on account of it. Then, if you want, you can turn this into
your own identity and put other considerations second.
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2
ten things to think about Judd at Tate Modern
From: Judge
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 25 February 2004
Review
1 Negative spaces
2 Handmade quality although they may be industrial
looking, they have a large number of flaws. small details like screw heads or
the join of two pieces of wood become big.
3 Reflections dematerialising solid objects(like the
half-circular bits reflecting on shiny metal, and making them look like tubes)
4 minimalism's pervasive influence on design and
architecture.
5 colour creating mood or denying structure
6 how the different objects react to the space they're in
or vice versa
7 the beauty and fascination of arranging simple things
8 the fact that they are not abtractions of natural
things, a relief after all that picasso/ henry moore etc shit
9 moving around the Judd objects, making the viewer active
physically and mentally.
10 our ability to project art on to what we see in a
museum
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3
cold in London, cold on mars
From: Fratz
Category: Other stuff
Date: 25 January 2004
Review
So its going to be minus 10 in London soon. It's much
colder on Mars though. I might move there, I hear it's a great time to buy. By
2050 it will be more expensive than Hoxton. The days are clear now, as though
the clouds have gone so all the heat can be let out. There is beauty of the sun
shining on a winter's day. But on Mars each day will be wonderful, as none of my
responses will have been felt before by a billion dunderheads, no clichés of
hard sun on winters days ever said, I shall describe mars's seasons for the
first time, as I am sure the bacteria, whom we will have to dispossess of their
homes, write no poetry.
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4
Jazz after Dark
From: Jill
Category: Music
Date: 27 July 2004
Review
Jazz after Dark. We imaged the table we booked to be
round, shady and mysterious, in a spacious dark room, with single spot light on
Harriet Lester, star of the show. We reeled in. Stumbling through the crowds.
Table full of hen party-ers. Bunch of men. Couples in corner. Smiling. Small
neon place. Harriet singer on small stage with piano friend on visit from
Norway, drummer. Singing very good, dampened by ugly noise of electric piano.
Inspiring. Inspired I danced. Noticing friends stopped. Made it in their
direction. Cheerfully said hello. Precious seat space offered. Suddenly
distracted by other friend in corner of my eye. Abandoned friendly seat and
conversation opportunity to give enthusiastic greeting to next person. Secretly
exulted to have avoided any kind of coherent conversation. Rushing around.
Knowing my purpose I returned to dance floor to celebrate performance. Moving
and shaking, not chained up to chat. Good bad dancing catching surprised eyes of
on lookers. Glimpses of known faces I blocked them out with constant movement.
Visit to reserved table, return to stage disappearance of singers. Continued
dancing with fine companion. Final departure amidst cheering booing audience,
required bow and thoughts about what moves might have provoked this response and
the ratio of appreciation to disapproval.
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5
manet, face to face, at The Courtauld
From: pete
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 12 December 2004
Review
http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/current/exhibitions.html
manet faces manet, and what does he see. He sees a boy and
then turns round to view a fed-up bar maid. Manet always appealed to my
adolescent admiration for painting panache and dazzle, a carefree ability to
create surfaces and space. Manet sees that the critics and interpreters want to
mire him in meanings. He knows they want to stuff him full of ideas about the
viewer, the subject/object, and reams of psycho drama, and he concedes that
these thoughts crossed his mind too, yet ultimately miss the simple
impossibility of painting people in places.
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6
The English Seaside
From: Jane Devers
Category: Other stuff
Date: 16 February 2004
Review
The English sea is the colour of tea. Muddy and shit like
everything in this great country. Outside London, is a land of misery, peopled
by whites, denuded of beauty, the talented or interesting lured to the
metropolis; outside of london is hell and earth. Don't go, or go only to count
your blessings, and stare into the sublime water that even englishmen's greatest
efforts cannot wreck, for water washes and drowns UK sorrows.
Don't leave London, this shitty city is a dancing
twinkling jewel, surrounded by a sea of shit food, morose landscape, and grassy
mud masquerading as landscape. If you must go somewhere, take a plane to the
sun, the only quality the greatest city lacks.
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7
Keeping a house rabbit May to present 2004
From: Chloe
Category: Other stuff
Date: 02 July 2004
Review
We've wanted a pet for quite sometime, the problem was
agreeing on exactly what.
We both like cats and dogs, but I am the one with more
time in the house so cleaning up, walking (for dogs) would mainly fall on me. I
am pregnant and the risk of toxicplasmosis is extremely high, if handling or
inhaling (?) said animal's excretia, plus I'm unbeliveably squeamish. The
thought of trundling to the park picking it all up frankly does not appeal. We
wanted to practice our newly honed parenting skills on some poor unsuspecting
creature. One day in town, we passed some pet shops. Dan and I had both kept
rabbits in childhood (a distant pleasant glimmer in the memory), and an idea and
a solution was born.
Being amazingly British we chose, inevitably, the creature
that looked like it was being hassled the most by the other rabbits. A black and
white lop eared cutey became ours for the princely sum of £24.
Advice and tip, if buying a rabbit or guinea from a pet
shop, make sure they are older than ours was, 7-8 weeks old. It is simply too
young to leave the mother and the social life of the litter and they get
disorientated, lonely and stressed out.
We got a lift home from a perfect stranger in a van, as
she overheard me complain that our taxi had not turned up ( another great and
amazing thing about pregnancy).
Decided to call rabbit Elby, a name made out of LB (
standing for Little Bollocks, after our fav Father Ted epidode, when Bishop
Brennan gets terrorised by mysterious rabbits when he comes to stay on Craggy
Island).A Shy, shivering creature. He sooon learned to get a voracious appetite.
Vegetarian animals are so much better for the squeamish, easier to clear up
after.
He lollops around the house, but lives contained in a
small cage under the chimney breast. He is now pretty house trained, has a lot
of freedom, runs around and leaps for joy, and practises running up and down the
floor boards, perhaps to keep his claws in check.
One day he went missing. There was no roof on the cage, I
figured he'd climbed out. We had a cat flap on one of the doors, so I credited
him with enough intelligence and curiosity to escape into the garden, or our
cellar as the door was slightly ajar.
After an entire day, we could not find him. Dan decided we
had eliminated the possible, so he decided to think laterily and try the
impossible. We found him seven feet above his cage, where he'd been all day, up
INSIDE the chimney breast, on a shelf we didn't even know existed.
Maybe he was actually a Nepalese climbing rabbit, instead.
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8
750 grams of salt, middle second aisle, Asda Leyton,
Wednesday 28.7.04
From: Remi
Category: Other stuff
Date: 31 July 2004
Review
As if by a serendipitious sleight of hand, I saw a lonely
bottle of salt standing on a metal trolley-shelf not long after entering the
store. Salt is a great way of fixing dyes,as all you readers know, and this is
just what I needed to fix that wandering red colour onto a polo shirt of mine,
still virgin and crimson. In fact, red is reputed to be one of the less fixable
colours, which a sartorial chemist could perhaps explain. So I was determined to
not let it get out of my clutches. Armed and dangerous, I took the salt back
home and prepared a devilish concoction with soap in a serving bowl and let the
t-shirt stew in its own juice. Interestingly, the water did not turn even a
faint pink, so trustworthy was that sodium chloride of mine. I left it for an
hour, rinsed it promptly and lay it on a plastic chair on the patio. My
handywork has preserved the boisterous shade for a little while to come. But
will my friends trust me when I try and wash it with other shirts?
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9
new series of Sopranos E4 UK tv
From: marker
Category: TV
Date: 11 August 2004
Review
Good. Same pleasure as before. Worry that the whole thing
is premised on men enjoying seeing men out of society's control. A fantasy about
being able to kill or attack those who anger us. A male idyll of money, whores,
food, sexy psychiatrists, uninhibited violence, and power.
What's wrong with that? Encourages rage. Road,
Supermarket, restaurant, family, rage. It's the artistic parallel of those
people you see on the bus, who one second are cooing and babytalking their
children, the next screaming threats cunts and fucks and anger down their
mobile, or at some fellow human who has bumped them or otherwise disrespected
them.
The Sopranos express what we want to be, and what we
should try not to be. Now go fuck yourself or I'll beat your brains out.
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10
Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller
From: Jack
Category: Books
Date: 16 August 2004
Review
To Miller all women are ‘cunts’. Any sign of
personality is perceived through their cunts: “there are cunts which laugh and
cuts which talk: there are crazy, hysterical cunts shaped like ocarinas and
there are planturous, seismographic cunts which register the rise and fall of
sap; there are cannibalistic cunts which open wide like the jaws of the whale
and swallow alive; there are also masochistic cunts which close up like the
oyster and have hard shells and perhaps a pearl of two inside: there are
dithyrambic cunts which dance at the very approach of the penis and g o wet all
over in ecstasy; there are the porcupine cunts which unleash their quills and
wave little flags at Christmas time: there are telegraphic cunts which practise
the Morse code and leave the mind full of dots and dashes; there are the
political cunts which are saturated with ideology and which deny even the
menopause; there are vegative cunts which make no response unless you pull them
up by the roots; there are religious cunts which smell like Seventh Day
Adventists and are full of beads, worms, clamshells, sheep droppings and now and
then dried breadcrumbs; there are the mammalian cunts which are lined with otter
skin and hibernate during the long winter; there are cruising cunts fitted out
like yachts, which are good for solitaries and epileptics; there are glacial
cunts in which you can drop shooting stars with out causing a flicker; there are
miscellaneous cunts which defy category or description, which you stumble on
once in a lifetime and which leave you seared and branded; there are cunts made
of pure joy which have neither name nor antecedent and these are the best of
all, but whither have they flown?” It has quite an impact, he likes to list
for impact and I think that I find it works well. May be this kind of sexism is
not so bad in the face of the obsession with penis though who invented the idea
of a correlation between penis foot or any thing else size I don’t know. May
be it all started when learning about ratio in maths lessons. I quite enjoyed
those lessons.
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11
the olympics athens 2004
From: David Mosley
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 19 August 2004
Review
The main sport is spotting willies, vaginas, and nipples
poking their distinct shapes through lycra. Other than that, failure by Great
Britain comes a brave second. In third place is the recognition that all the
competitors want to win, and it makes little difference, in all reality, which
nation's sportspeople achieve the ecstasy of victory, what have we, slumped on
our sofas, to do with these lottery pumped freaks wasting their lives chasing
shuttlecocks around on a rectangular piece of rubber?
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12
brazil part five 27-10-04
From: angelina
Category: Other stuff
Date: 27 October 2004
Review
One good thing about travelling is meeting new people and
last night we sat down to a mixed table again, myself, my travel companion
Annie, a woman who works in Arrial (M) and a traveller (C)whom Id met earlier
that day. M was a real local who had lived here for years and she worked as a
tour organiser arranging horse trekking and scuba diving. I had met C today on
the beach. Annie had been in the hotel for most of the day and I walked for
miles on the beach, on the way back Id stopped for a drink at a beach hut and we
started chatting, a law school teacher from Puerto Rico whod taken sabbatical on
top of his summer leave to travel for six months around South America,
researching his new book. After a few drinks and a hearty philosophical argument
about the nature of evil, we decided to meet up for dinner later on. M had
tickets to sell for a show tonight, so after dinner we went down to the club,
and sat through a slightly dodgy African floorshow, good dancers and music but a
bit un-PC, metallic bodies and headresses and fire etc...Chairs were then
cleared to make way for a disco, and under the leaky tarpaulin we danced until
the techno beats got a bit hardcore and then the dancefloor was empty, except
for the slender figure of V, a transvestite. We got chatting as she had the
figure and the moves of a professional dancer which Annie and I were admiring,
got on so well that we went off to the next bar after the club shut. By this
time M had gone home but it was us three gringos and V, who seemed to be a
celebrity round these parts. The local bar was really local, away from the
tourist throng, a simple shack with chairs outside and a shy waitress who looked
around 14. We had a beer and then a man appeared with his drum, playing for
whoever would put money in his hat. As soon as he started, the barman turned off
the music and brought out a tambourine, another guy happened to have some
maracas and the whole place was full of lambada-samba-ing bodies. Later V
invited us back to hers for a post drink drink. Down a dark alley and into a
rented room, on the way there she related her story of how she was going to save
up and get her boobs done but not her penis. Her place smelled of incense and a
small black kitten curled up on her bed, attempts to make the place homely with
plants and pictures did not detract from the squalor, when she shut the door a
knife was embedded in on the inside, ready, just in case she had unwanted
visitors.A bit of cachaca was drunk, she said excuse me and started to melt down
some heroin. Chatted some more about her operations, she wants a man she can
settle down with, not just a one night stand. After giving us a stick of incense
each, she walked us back to the hotel. Off she went to continue partying. We
made vague arrangements to meet on the beach today, but we will probably never
meet again.
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13
The Corporation a film
From: Fitzroy
Category: Films
Date: 09 November 2004
Review
http://www.thecorporation.tv/
Sat in the wrong seats, two people, separately, said we
could stay where we were, but would have to move, you know, if someone claimed
their new seat. What generosity and unselfishness!
This film is long and quite boring, but the subject,
greedy disgusting capitalism, is a good one to entertain self-righteous
bourgeoiss. It's part of the fad for right-on documentaries and had the usual
style of talking heads juxtaposed with all sorts of bits of old film
illustrating what they are talking about. MTV crossed with Eisenstein. Michael
Moore, to supersize me, to this, they're all too frightened to call for a
communist revolution, that would be toooooooo much, the best we can hope for is
organic milk from happy cows to be served in our lattes. That's what we want,
and we want it to go.
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14
Swimming Pool Swimming
From: Eva
Category: Life
Date: 11 November 2004
Review
This activity is flexible enough to suit all moods.
Swimming can be rewarding if you enter the pool already
relaxed. The stroke becomes leaner and stronger. Not trying too hard lessens the
splashing, allowing energy often wasted fighting the water to be put to better
use. If the swimmer is too relaxed then frequent small breaks may be taken until
the stroke is found, as muscles can on occasion be fixed against exercise.
Conversely, if the starting point is a foul stinky temper
swimming is a great way to let it all out. If the swimmer is in a crowded pool
and fears this will worsen a bad mood there are tactics that will help. A fast
swimmer can aggressively overtake those in the same lane. Belittling large
splashing show-offs can be especially satisfying, but beware as this can
backfire. A very slow swimmer in a brooding mood may prefer to swim slower than
usual to frustrate those behind.
The swimming pool swimming experience is a world away to
that of sea swimming. Chlorine is one obvious factor, though with growing sea
pollution the chemical difference is decreasing in significance. Pool swimming
for adults often involves fixing the eyes on a white line at the bottom of the
pool, concentrating on stroke, time and lap counting. Sea swimming involves
concentrating on keeping your head above the water and not being caught by the
tide, and, depending on the place the temperature and beauty of the spot.
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15
Frieze Art Fair 2004 London
From: Rachel Adams
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 14 October 2004
Review
http://www.friezeartfair.com/
Jamie Theakston (English tv presenter with a desirable
nose) was there, so don't stare, he's quite plain and badly dressed in a purple
coat. The fair is the unspeakable (collectors, hangers on) in pursuit of the
inedible (lots of bad paintings and dull photos). Occasionaly something jumps
out from the morass of bog standard contemporary artifice, a few Andy Warhol
drawings of cats, an Albert Oehlen painting, a little Matisse. It's dazzling the
difference between what is good and all the rest. Makes you wonder whether those
old buffs were right about their value hierarchies. Now the only differentiation
is between the various repulsive levels of personal success and respect to be
obtained: vips, super vips, gallerists, celebs, important people, famous
artists, those with special passes, those that shall not queue, those that walk
along thinking others will move out their way, humble uninvited people who wait
outside for reentry tickets to be discarded, the beautiful, the ugly, the rich,
and the poor (not just artists).
That's the fun of this glorious bright yellow fair in the
green cold treey park. It's a spectacle of society, and not for seekers of
metaphysical greatness or sympathetic humans..
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16
people A and people B, A people and B people.
From: david
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 05 January 2004
Review
people A have hotmail email, people B yahoo.
people A have pcs, people B macs.
people A take the tube, people B ride bicycles.
people A eat chinese, people B vietnamese.
people A play tennis, people B badmington.
people A holiday in Italy or Spain, people B in france.
people A eat white bread, people B eat brown bread.
Do you know any A people or B people? What other
characteristics do they have?
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17
Anatomy viva, Friday 19th November 3pm-3:30pm
From: Remi
Category: Theatre
Date: 19 November 2004
Review
This took place in a morgue, which resembles a theatre
except that the actors are dead and you act upon them. Something of a role
reversal. You can say what you want to them, and feel all sorts of things that
they are inured to. Well today, they made us do a short test on the parts of the
body, and the anatomical nomenclature. Suddenly thinking in that mode was
completely different, and not as easy as people made out. Know your tongue well.
We slipped up and tumbled down the hill. Corporal held the recruits together,
and we took the hill in the end, but not without casualties. If they want to
teach you one thing, never doubt what you know for sure, as the basis of
knowledge may well be imperilled. Cave!
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18
John Kerry wins Iowa Caucus
Reviews
From: Jane Devers
Category: Other stuff
Date: 20 January 2004
Review
I thought the caucuses were in Russia. Still John Kerry http://www.johnkerry.com/won,
but I can't help but feel that he is dull loser: he is married to a Mrs Heinzhttp://www.heinz.com/jsp/index.jsp,
of the ketchup fortune, so will have plenty of sauce to splash around on ads,
yet he lacks the electric charisma of a president like Clinton, or even the faux
naive everyman charm of frat boy Bush. The Democrats are fucked, Wesley
"snipes" generalissimo Clark http://www.clark04.com/is
brittle, and Dr Democrats Death Dean http://www.deanforamerica.com/
is small state demagogue who will lose big if the dcrats go for the suicide
lefty option, John Edwards http://edwards.senate.gov/about.html
suffers from a generic name and a plastic appearance. Lieberman no one loves.http://www.joe2004.com/site/PageServer
So prediction, a big bush licking of whichever loser the
D.s choose. Only events can save them now from four more years of the grinning
monkey fronting the oligarchic interests of the military industrial complex.
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19
a poem
From: D. Pangbourne
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 16 April 2004
Review
Inside the chalet, sheltered from the cold
slept the pale donkey - out of place, but calm
legs stretched on blue rug, like sea piers,
lost in a dream where it runs to a bridge
and hurls off the man, that fat bauble of a man
Locked out of the chalet, shivering in the cold
Stood the fat bauble of a man, angry
From the bridge, on tiptoes straining, he spied
his pale, sleeping donkey and - cursing -
condemned it to a lifetime's service on Southend pier.
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20
Saving Private Ryan’- a realistic portrayal of history?
From: Amanda B
Category: Films
Date: 24 April 2004
Review
‘‘Saving Private Ryan’, 1998. Directed by:Stephen
Spielberg.
The film Saving Private Ryan is Stephen Spielberg’s
homage to the American involvement in Operation Overlord on the 6 June 1944.
Before viewing, it is tempting to separate the film into two possible camps: a
gung-ho action movie, or a profound and shocking one. To pre-judge the film on
the basis of Spielberg’s previous movies, his earlier films are entertainment
based and drama/ excitement prioritise over reality. Caryl Phillips criticised
Spielberg as being involved in ‘decisions that had to be made to heighten the
drama’, at the expense of dramatic truth 1 . K.R.M Short points to Hollywood
as a ‘dream factory’, where history became part of the ‘Hollywood lie’;
films are more for escapism than reality 2. For instance, Since You Went Away
(1944) was a patriotic and sentimental film- the music soundtrack ‘triggered
emotional responses unconsciously in the American audience’. When viewing
films, the historian should assess their ability ‘to reflect historical
realities in a useful if not unique manner’3 . Obviously, Hollywood was (and
often still is) based on glamour, entertainment and escapism from everyday
reality for the audience, and Spielberg’s films are no exception to this rule.
Whether or not Spielberg (who said that, “you can’t look at history
selfishly”4 ) has now drawn away from his tendencies (bias) toward adventure
and escapism and can portray history in a realistic and objective manner, can be
discussed with reference to Saving Private Ryan.
Saving Private Ryan is based on a true experience: to find
a soldier after his brothers have been killed and escort him to safety. In the
movie, the mission is led by Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks, the admired
‘all-American’ actor) with his troop of men. Private Ryan is played by Matt
Damon the ‘all-American’ golden boy. The actors were sent to a harsh boot
camp for added realisticity: Tom Hanks voted to remain there when the others had
enough, mirroring the situation in the film when Miller faces dissent from the
troop about saving Ryan and risking their own lives. The film can be divided
into three sections: the D-Day landings at Omaha beach, the search for Private
Ryan in the countryside of France, the discovery of Ryan and a final, dramatic
war battle. The footage of the landings dispel any doubt about an authentic
representation of battle. The cinematography is swathed in a dull coloured
effect to reflect the atmosphere. Spielberg’s hand-held and at times, blood
splattered camera puts you there on the beach, as scenes capture carnage,
individual soldiers’ responses to the hell of ‘Bloody Omaha’ and the
military strategies they used to survive. The Germans had moved their 352nd
Division to Omaha beach for training on the night before the invasion, which was
too late for the planners behind Overlord, who had managed to deceive the enemy
in every way. The American soldiers on Omaha beach were sitting ducks to the
German army (portrayed by Spielberg from the point of view of a relentless
firing gun, a killing machine, without showing the man behind it). The carnage
also included sinking tanks and blown up tanks piling onto shore, not entirely
conveyed by the film; Spielberg admits that true horror can never be totally
depicted on screen 5. Research for the film covered hundreds of veterans’
testimonies and Spielberg honours them by representing the true feeling of
soldiers; their fear (Captain Miller’s shaking hand) their bravery (Ryan,
wanting to stay with his troop to defend their bridge) and heartache (Miller’s
tears). Spielberg points to his responsibility as a director to convey war in an
objective manner 6 . Although patriotic (the film opens and closes with an
American flying flag and the heroism of the soldiers is made clear) Spielberg
can be exonerated from totally swathing the film in American-propaganda. G.I’s
are seen shooting surrendering soldiers, a scene depicts a crashed aircraft due
to incompetence from the American army by protecting a major and our troop of
soldiers recurrently refer to “foo-bar”, a term defining the sheer madness
and cruel irony of war. However, Saving Private Ryan may be guilty of falling
short on realism and thus misrepresenting ‘history’.
The original exercise to rescue Private Ryan was a
propaganda ploy by Generals, on discovery that Ryan’s three brothers had been
killed. To successfully bring Private Ryan back would have shed a good light on
the army. In the film’s version of this event, the realisation by a secretary
that three Ryan brothers have been killed is depicted with moving, orchestral
music in the background. The soundtrack is provided by John Williams, a composer
reviewed in The Times 7 with his theme to Star Wars;
‘…a piece of music so impossibly stirring that I still
find it hard to listen to without feeling the immediate need to go out and
enlist for national service.’
The newspaper article claims that, ‘Spielberg’s films
are awash with music in a way that drives some critics up the wall’8 . Perhaps
this is because soundtracks in Spielberg’s films are there to heighten
dramatic and emotional tension in typical Hollywood style (perhaps biasing or
commercialising the subject matter like the soundtrack in Since You Went Away).
The music we hear when viewing the secretary- and the subsequent scene with
gathered Generals deciding to save Private Ryan in an heroic manner- affects the
audience watching the scene 9 . There is no inference in the film that the
motives of the Generals are anything but of the highest moral order.
Perhaps Spielberg’s decision to present the mission from
the start, as an heroic gesture by the American army, can be explained in the
documentary interviewing him 10. He defines America as a cynical society and
himself, as having a cynical viewpoint. Therefore he uses films to
counterbalance this perspective, by providing escapism and sentimentality- this
latter quality he is controlling as he grows older. Spielberg is an audiences’
director in the respect that he caters for them in all his films (perhaps he
entertains them in fictional style at the expense of dramatic truth though).
Spielberg admits that his depiction of German soldiers in Indiana Jones was
‘comic book’ and his later films are more mature efforts to represent
history. Saving Private Ryan succeeds in revealing the historical truth of
D-Day- never have the landings been presented so realistically, or war scenes
filmed so graphically- and tells the soldier’s story in a way many veterans
have claimed to identify with. War is Hell- this Spielberg portrays. However,
Spielberg’s insistence to don his rosy tinted ‘Hollywood’ spectacles when
suggesting that saving Private Ryan had no dubious undertones, does bias this
area of history. Spielberg’s sentimentality has produced magic in his films
and has helped him become one of the foremost directors of our time- but perhaps
in future films he will further abandon it for the hard reality and bare facts
of life?
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