Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998)

Tom Hanks, Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore, and Jeremy Davies in Saving Private Ryan

Capt. Miller: Tom Hanks
Sgt. Horvath: Tom Sizemore
Pvt. Reiben: Edward Burns
Pvt. Jackson: Barry Pepper
Pvt. Mellish: Adam Goldberg
Pvt. Caparzo: Vin Diesel
T-4 Medic Wade: Giovanni Ribisi
Cpl. Upham: Jeremy Davies
Pvt. Ryan: Matt Damon
Capt. Hamill: Ted Danson
Sgt. Hill: Paul Giamatti
Lt. Col. Anderson: Dennis Farina
"Steamboat Willie": Joerg Stadler
Minnesota Ryan: Nathan Fillion
Gen. Marshall: Harve Presnell
War Dept. Col.: Dale Dye
War Dept. Col.: Bryan Cranston
Elderly Ryan: Harrison Young
Elderly Ryan's Wife: Kathleen Byron

Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenplay: Robert Rodat
Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski
Production design: Thomas E. Sanders
Film editing: Michael Kahn
Music: John Williams

The criticisms usually leveled at Saving Private Ryan are that its framing scenes of the elderly Ryan visiting the cemetery in Normandy are superfluous and sentimental, that it trades on war-movie clichés such as the ethnically mixed company of soldiers (an Italian, a Jew, a Brooklynite, a Bible-quoting Southerner, and so on), that it eschews any portrayal of the enemy as other than cannon-fodder, and that there's no overall originality of vision on its director's part. And they're all valid criticisms. Are they outweighed by the sheer brilliance of Steven Spielberg's movie-making -- and that of his usual team of cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, editor Michael Kahn, and composer John Williams? As a lover of movies I have to say they are. I would like Robert Rodat's screenplay to be edgier and more intelligent. I would like for the film to provoke thought and to give us a new vision on World War II. But each time I watch the film I come away admiring the way Spielberg and company push my reservations about it into the background as I'm caught once again by the masterly way they manipulate both the medium and its audience. I have learned to ask more of movies than Spielberg gives us -- the unique personal visions of Ozu and Hitchcock and Tarkovsky, for example -- but I'm also content to suspend my expectation that all movies should aspire to that standard and to let myself be manipulated into temporary submission to simple wonder at mastery of the medium.

Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, 2012)

Sally Field and Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln: Daniel Day-Lewis
Mary Todd Lincoln: Sally Field
William Seward: David Strathairn
Robert Lincoln: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
W.N. Bilbo: James Spader
Preston Blair: Hal Holbrook
Thaddeus Stevens: Tommy Lee Jones
Robert Latham: John Hawkes
Alexander Stephens: Jackie Earle Haley
Edwin Stanton: Bruce McGill
Richard Schell: Tim Blake Nelson
John Hay: Joseph Cross
Ulysses S. Grant: Jared Harris
Fernando Wood: Lee Pace
George Pendleton: Peter McRobbie
Elizabeth Keckley: Gloria Reuben
George Yeaman: Michael Stuhlbarg
Clay Hoggins: Walton Goggins
Corporal Ira Clark: David Oyelowo
First White Soldier: Lukas Haas
Second White Soldier: Dane DeHaan
Samuel Beckwith: Adam Driver
Lydia Smith: S. Epatha Merkerson

Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenplay: Tony Kushner
Based on a book by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski
Production design: Rick Carter
Film editing: Michael Kahn
Music: John Williams

The all-star patriotic historical pageant celebrating American democracy had long been a featured genre of Hollywood films until the disillusionments of Vietnam and Watergate put it pretty much out of favor. But during the brief resurgence of liberal optimism after the election of Barack Obama, Steven Spielberg decided to bring it out of mothballs with a film about Abraham Lincoln's struggles to pass the 13th amendment, banning slavery in the United States. He initially planned to star Liam Neeson in the title role, but when Neeson decided he was too old for the part, the choice fell on Daniel Day-Lewis, the most chameleonic of actors. Lincoln has been played on screen by actors as varied as Walter Huston, Henry Fonda, and Raymond Massey, but Day-Lewis covered himself with glory and encumbered himself with a third Oscar in the role. It is in fact a superb performance, emphasizing the humanity of the man with depictions of his marital problems, his earthy sense of humor (no previous movie Lincoln was ever heard to utter the word "shit"), and above all his willingness to play down-and-dirty politics. The bulk of the drama is in the maneuverings to get a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives to ratify the amendment, which has substantial opposition even within the president's own party, the Republicans. This means maneuvering some of the holdouts with promises of government jobs and patronage, a task that falls to a team of lobbyists led by W.N. Bilbo, played beautifully by James Spader. It also involves persuading the most volatile of abolitionists, Thaddeus Stevens, to utter compromising language on the floor of the House, in which he asserts that all men are equal before the law, but not necessarily equal "in all things," creating a fiery, funny scene for Tommy Lee Jones as Stevens. Lincoln is also forced to conceal that he is engaged in peace negotiations with the Confederates, fearing that this would lead to postponement of the vote on the amendment. Tony Kushner's screenplay is more cerebral than most, focusing on points of law and political maneuverings, which is why some reviewers and audiences were not fully enthusiastic about it. Though it was nominated for 12 Oscars, it won only two, for Day-Lewis and for production design, losing best picture to Argo (Ben Affleck) and best director to Ang Lee for Life of Pi. Both losses, I think, are inexcusable, as was Sally Field's loss as the fragile Mary Todd Lincoln to Anne Hathaway's lachrymose Fantine in Les Misérables (Tom Hooper). I suspect Lincoln will grow in esteem over the years, thanks to its many finely detailed performances, the superb re-creation of a period in its sets and costumes, and a general lack of cinematic clichés: John Williams even manages to compose a score without quoting from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," "The Star-Spangled Banner," or any number of other sure-fire, heart-tugging patriotic melodies.

Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg, 1993)

Amid the nearly universal acclaim for Schindler's List, two major criticisms are often heard. One is that Spielberg tends toward the sentimental, especially at the end of the film: He lets Schindler's remorse at having not been able to save more Jews from the Holocaust go on too long, and the appearance of the surviving Schindlerjuden with the actors who played them is an unnecessary extension of the film's already clear moral statement, blurring the distinction between documentary and fictionalized narrative. The other objection is that the appearance of the girl in the red coat during the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto is a too-showy use of film technique in what should be a gripping, realistic scene. The former objection is a highly subjective one: For many, the film needs something to soften the harshness of the story's catharsis. For others, the answer is simply, "Let Spielberg be Spielberg," a gifted but traditional storyteller whose vision of the material he chooses is invariably personal. It's the second objection that gets to the heart of what film criticism is all about. I think David Thomson, in his brief essay on Schindler's List in Have You Seen ... ?,  puts the objection most provocatively when he observes, "With that one arty nudge Spielberg assigned his sense of his own past to the collected memories of all the films he had seen. All of a sudden, the drab Krakow vista became a set, with assistant directors urging the extras into line.... It was an organization of art and craft designed to re-create a terrible reality done nearly to perfection. But in that one small tarting up ..., there lay exposed the comprehensive vulgarity of the venture." I can't be as harsh as Thomson, for one thing because when I saw the film in the theater shortly after its release in 1993, I didn't notice the red coat -- the one note of color in the middle of the black-and-white film -- because I am mildly red-green colorblind. (It's difficult to explain to the non-colorblind, but those of us with the color deficiency usually see the color in question, but it's not quite the same color that the normally sighted see.) I did, however, notice the little girl: The framing by Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski puts her in the center of the action and makes her search for a hiding place evident even in a long shot. What I did miss that time was the reappearance of the girl's body in a stack of corpses later in the film, something that would be evident to anyone who had earlier seen the red of the coat. Later, when I saw the film on video, after having read about the controversy over the red highlight, I was able to perceive the color -- not so intense for me as perhaps for you, but once brought to my attention inescapable -- and to be shocked by its reappearance in the later scene. But only when I watched the film again last night did I realize the function of the "arty nudge": When we first see the girl in the red coat, we see her from the point of view of Schindler (Liam Neeson) himself, on a hillside above the ghetto. And when we see her body, we are seeing it again from the point of view of Schindler, visiting the cremation site where Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) has been ordered to burn the bodies of those killed in the liquidation of the ghetto. It is a subtle but effective move because it coincides with (or perhaps precipitates) Schindler's decision to try to save as many of his Jewish workers as he can. Is it "arty" or "tarting up" or "vulgar"? Perhaps it is, but it's also effective filmmaking. And only the fact that the Holocaust remains so large and sacrosanct an event in the moral history of the West raises the question of whether "effective filmmaking" is inappropriate to such a subject.