How Saving Private Ryan changed my life | Little White Lies

Long Read

How Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan changed my life

24 Jul 2018

Words by Spencer Moleda

Three soldiers in military uniform and helmets, their faces visible, sitting in what appears to be an armoured vehicle.
Three soldiers in military uniform and helmets, their faces visible, sitting in what appears to be an armoured vehicle.
Steven Spielberg’s World War Two dra­ma brought me clos­er to my grand­fa­ther, who sur­vived the D‑Day landings.

Tell me I have led a good life. Tell me I’m a good man.” You are.” These are the last words spo­ken in Steven Spielberg’s Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan, and they remain the secret to its dev­as­tat­ing pow­er. They illu­mi­nate char­ac­ters with colours beyond the green of their uni­forms and wounds deep­er than flesh. Through their eyes, the hor­rors of war trans­form into a sprawl­ing epic about the val­ue of life, and the weight car­ried by those who sur­vived what many did not. The movie is less about com­bat than con­se­quence, the gory details of which could fill three full-length reviews.

But this is not a review. This is a sto­ry – one I’ve kept to myself for too long – about a very spe­cial per­son and the extra­or­di­nary movie that exposed the most hid­den cor­ners of his soul.

John Bald­win Pre­ston, my grand­fa­ther on my mother’s side, was a lawyer, Jus­tice of the Peace, and unin­hib­it­ed fam­i­ly man from Vir­ginia Beach, liv­ing just blocks away from my child­hood home. As far back as I can remem­ber, he and my grand­moth­er were always present in our lives; even after we moved to anoth­er state, they were always right there in the foreground.

The two-year gap between when we moved and when my grand­par­ents fol­lowed us south awoke in me a new­found fas­ci­na­tion with my grand­fa­ther. I began dress­ing like him, lis­ten­ing to his music, and adopt­ing what­ev­er ideals I imag­ined him to have. By all con­tem­po­rary yard­sticks, he was an old-fash­ioned man – to my young and impres­sion­able mind he resem­bled a griz­zled out­law, like Clint East­wood in Unfor­giv­en. I want­ed to be the Schofield Kid to his William Munny.

But if the west­ern mythos imparts any moral, it’s that out­laws pay a price. For my grand­fa­ther, it was can­cer. I had just begun home­school­ing when he was diag­nosed, so I had a front row seat to every­thing that fol­lowed: hos­pi­tals, floods of tears and the reduc­tion of liv­ing to its ugli­est, most clin­i­cal com­po­nents. As treat­ments dragged on and com­pli­ca­tions com­pound­ed, his ill­ness slow­ly smoth­ered the life out of his body and mind. His dulled appetite shrank him to a skele­ton; at his skin­ni­est, he could touch his index fin­ger to his thumb and fit his whole arm through the hole with space to spare.

The news that the can­cer had spread to his liv­er was, in a way, a relief – at least we final­ly knew what to expect. I sus­pect my grand­fa­ther felt the same way. My moth­er and her sib­lings took turns liv­ing in my grand­par­ents’ spare bed­rooms, where they spent the next sev­er­al months assist­ing with what a hos­pice nurse termed the dying process”. I admire the word­ing. It makes the end seem as harm­less as breath­ing or blink­ing – it’s just one more func­tion we all car­ry out.

On 6 Decem­ber, 2008, on a cloudy morn­ing, I was star­tled awake by the sound of the phone ring­ing from our kitchen. It was my moth­er, call­ing to tell me what I had des­per­ate­ly pre­tend­ed she would nev­er have to. Her words didn’t feel real until we vis­it­ed my grand­moth­er that after­noon, when the sad empti­ness of their house final­ly sold me the hard truth. My grand­fa­ther, my hero, was gone. He was 84.

It was a trans­for­ma­tive moment that opened my eyes to life’s intim­i­dat­ing size and scope – my own lit­tle world sud­den­ly felt like a drop of water in a vast ocean of peo­ple, places, and most of all, ques­tions, the major­i­ty of which I knew I may nev­er find sat­is­fy­ing answers to.

These ques­tions opened my world to the pow­er of movies. In my mid-teens, films like A Clock­work Orange, The Depart­ed, There Will Be Blood and The Social Net­work became objects of my fas­ci­na­tion. They were bristling enter­tain­ments that sly­ly dou­bled as vehi­cles into more pri­vate depths. By paint­ing pic­tures of the peaks and val­leys of human behav­iour, they pre­pared me for a life I’d only just begun to taste.

But there is no prepar­ing for Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan.

The movie fades in. An elder­ly man hob­bles down a dusty path, his fam­i­ly trail­ing behind. The cam­era moves in on his eyes, trans­port­ing us to Oma­ha beach, towards which boat­loads of sol­diers are fear­ful­ly head­ed. This begins the famous D‑Day sequence, in which Spiel­berg and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Janusz Kamin­s­ki wipe away the frame and pull the audi­ence into every frag­ment of the film’s mosa­ic chaos. It’s not a sequence exact­ly, but rather a series of split-moments jum­bled like puz­zle pieces dumped onto a table: bul­lets carv­ing bub­bly streaks through blue water; a scream­ing man with his intestines spilled across the sand; anoth­er man car­ry­ing his own sev­ered arm, as if he might need it lat­er. All of this is anchored by the mag­net­ism of Tom Han­ks as he sham­bles through the cross­fire, the absence in his eyes is an achieve­ment in acting.

Shipyard workers in protective gear working on large metal structures in the water.

The genius of this sequence isn’t sole­ly in its apoc­a­lyp­tic inten­si­ty – it also invis­i­bly intro­duces near­ly all of the cen­tral cast with­out a word of expo­si­tion. These eight men, all sharply defined through humour and telling instances of unguard­ed human­i­ty, are respon­si­ble for going behind ene­my lines and find­ing Pri­vate James Frances Ryan, who has lost all three of his broth­ers, and whom our char­ac­ters must find so that he may return home to the only fam­i­ly he has left.

The first time I watched the film, I had to turn it off halfway through. I was on a plane with my par­ents, and the last call before land­ing broke the film’s elec­tri­fy­ing spell. Once we were on the ground and sta­tion­ary, I let loose, telling my par­ents how gal­vanis­ing and intense­ly realised every moment of the movie was, and how it would raise my expec­ta­tions for every view­ing expe­ri­ence there­after. I must have sound­ed a bit shellshocked.

You know, Papa was there too.” my moth­er said.

What do you mean? The movie?”

No, I mean, he was there.”

This was a rev­e­la­tion to me – like Han­ks and Spiel­berg, my grand­fa­ther had stormed the beach­es of Nor­mandy, only when he did it, take two wasn’t an option. He wasn’t part of the first wave depict­ed in the film, but his boat wasn’t far behind. If any­thing, my moth­er explained, his expe­ri­ence was even more severe. In the movie, our char­ac­ters were wel­comed to a clean beach. By the time my grand­fa­ther arrived, waves of red water lapped against dozens, if not hun­dreds, of dead sol­diers, some no old­er than himself.

That’s quite a view”, says Hor­vath in a brief moment of calm. Yes it is,” answers Miller, star­ing at the off­screen car­nage, Quite a view.” For our char­ac­ters, that sight is where the fire end­ed; for my grand­fa­ther, that’s where it began. Is it any coin­ci­dence that Hank’s char­ac­ter is also named John? To direc­tor Spiel­berg, doubtless­ly. But those shots scan­ning the blood-soaked beach offer a kind of tran­scen­dence far too rare in cin­e­ma; for mere­ly sec­onds of a near­ly three-hour odyssey, I feel like I’m see­ing the world through grandfather’s eyes for the first time.

When that first occurred to me, ques­tions flood­ed my mind, all of them begin­ning with How”. How could my grand­fa­ther, the most hon­ourable man I’d known, have come through such relent­less blood­shed with any of his trade­mark qual­i­ties in tact? How do you pre­serve the best of your­self when it was the worst that helped you sur­vive? And how is it that some­thing so hor­rif­ic could break so many spir­its while arm­ing oth­ers with the courage to face the remain­der of their lives?

What if he was com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent before mil­i­tary ser­vice? What per­son did he need to turn into to pow­er through the unspeak­able, and how did he do it? Per­haps in a back­wards way, it was the war that sculpt­ed him into the judge who stood so strong but loved so eas­i­ly. When you’ve endured a tri­al that tor­tur­ous, you may well for­get what it’s like to live with­out ques­tion­ing who you are and what you’re worth. Per­haps that’s why war pro­duces such match­less writ­ers – with­out the Bat­tle of the Bulge, could JD Salinger have scraped the depths of The Catch­er in the Rye’?

He rarely talked to about it to any­body, no mat­ter how intense­ly peo­ple hound­ed him,” my moth­er explained, and after see­ing it through the safe­guard of a lap­top screen, even I could see why. But he might have told you.”

This sparked an epiphany that stretched far beyond World War Two: my grand­fa­ther had lived an entire life about which I was com­plete­ly in the dark. He had 84 years worth of friends, fears, and med­i­ta­tions, none of which I’d ever paused to con­sid­er. I called him Papa, saw him near­ly every week of my life, and loved him as dear­ly as I knew how, but at the end of the day, who was he real­ly? I paint him with words like old-fash­ioned” and hon­ourable”, but do they real­ly apply to the life he led? What did I actu­al­ly know about him beyond the clothes he wore and the records he liked? More impor­tant­ly, what was I doing instead of find­ing out.

Group of soldiers in military uniforms standing near film equipment and crew during a film shoot.

Of the sol­diers we fol­low in Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan, one lingers espe­cial­ly: Cor­po­ral Upham, a scrawny writer and trans­la­tor played with eery vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty by Jere­my Davies. Miller recruits his lin­guis­tic prowess to help find James Ryan behind ene­my lines. Upham is a tick­ing time-bomb of meek­ness and inse­cu­ri­ty, whol­ly unpre­pared for the respon­si­bil­i­ties of war­fare. The film’s cli­mac­tic show­down sees Upham’s cow­ardice unrav­el in a teeth-clench­ing moment of pet­ri­fied inac­tion. The reper­cus­sions are so dev­as­tat­ing, your mind scram­bles to deter­mine what you’d have done under the same pressures.

Take the ammo up the stairs. That’s all he need­ed to do. How dif­fi­cult could it be? I cer­tain­ly wouldn’t be so timid in the face of some­thing so simple.

But peo­ple often are. In try­ing times, peo­ple occu­py them­selves with what­ev­er pos­si­ble to avoid reality’s cold stare. For Cor­po­ral Upham, it was the safe­ty of the moment. For me, it was the inter­net. The whole time my grand­fa­ther was dying, I was always in the room, but my mind was nev­er on him. Instead, I threw myself head­long into a world of com­put­ers, geek forums, and pod­casts, rarely spend­ing time on any­thing else, let alone my grand­fa­ther. My par­ents were too pre­oc­cu­pied with tak­ing care of him to mon­i­tor my time, so how I spent it was up to me. I devot­ed every wak­ing sec­ond to that machine in order to mute the sad­ness sur­round­ing me. If I pre­tend­ed hard enough that none of it was hap­pen­ing, per­haps it would all sim­ply stop.

But it didn’t, and glu­ing myself to the com­put­er screen meant iso­lat­ing myself from some­one I was about to lose. Every bone in my body wish­es I could wind back the clock, close that tech­no­log­i­cal nui­sance, crouch down next to my grandfather’s favourite lounge chair, and say to him, Tell me every­thing.” I spent so much time aspir­ing to the idea of the man that by the time I caught a flash of who he real­ly was, he was a ghost. Instead of help­ing him feel young again one last time, I sat on my com­put­er, plugged-in and cold­ly remote. The night before he died, I wasn’t even brave to enough to look at him, let along tell him goodbye.

You were too young,” my inner voice whis­pers, What teenag­er could see the emo­tion­al after­math of some­thing so minor?” And small it cer­tain­ly was – if any­thing, it was an act of self-preser­va­tion. But the old­er I get, the deep­er my regrets cut into me. I believe big mis­takes become sto­ries worth telling. The small ones unmask the per­son we pre­tend not to be, and whether you learn from those mis­takes or let them con­sume you is your call.

And I’m still learn­ing, 10 years on. Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan is the per­fect com­pan­ion in that endeav­our. Its scenes of loss and long­ing don’t haunt me with the atten­tion I nev­er paid, instead draw­ing me clos­er to the love I still pos­sess. Per­haps that’s why I became a crit­ic – I think I’m still look­ing for my grand­fa­ther in each new movie I find. I’ll prob­a­bly nev­er reach him, but the search is its own sto­ry. As long as Spielberg’s World War Two epic exists, those rich mem­o­ries and end­less ques­tions will always be there, wait­ing to be dust­ed off when life tears me away from the cause.

That, I sus­pect, was Spielberg’s true inten­tion. A film like Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan dis­lodges the pre­cious his­to­ry our minds often shove to the bot­tom, along with the life­times locked inside the most unsus­pect­ing peo­ple. The film’s lega­cy is my grandfather’s lega­cy, and in that sense, it’s mine too. There’s too much about him I nev­er learned; I can’t afford to for­get what lit­tle I did. So if cher­ish­ing this impec­ca­ble work of art keeps alive mem­o­ries of the bravest man I’ve ever known, I say to him: I’ll see you on the beach.”

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