SPR: Vile brainwashing?

There is one point in SPR that made me shudder.

When they have taken the German bunker, they want to shoot the German survivor ("Steamboat Willie"). The interpreter is the only one to take his side, but finally Cpt. Miller decided to let him go.

In the final scene, a) the interpreter is portrayed as a useless coward, and b) "Steamboat Willie" is the one to kill Cpt. Miller, and c) of course the interpreter is the one who finally kills "Steamboat Willie"!

Message: In war, mildness is mindless, only suppoerted by wimps. Letting this guy live was a crime, and it was punished with death penalty. (Keep this in mind if you're ever part of a commando...!)

I think this is a very disgusting and inhumane brainwash of the viewer.

Don't get me wrong: I KNOW that it is probably the best and only practical choice for commandos to kill enemies if they can't take prisoners. But still this plot construction was VERY unnecessary. Why not create something thought-provoking instead of such a spoofing?

 

Oui Knight, this is a diffcult one.

In the closing stages of WW2 when the allies were closing in on Berlin, the Germans were a desperate bunch and were told of stories of Rape and torture of their loved ones by the Russians and whomever "invaded" their country.

I would assume if I was in the same boat as he I would do the same. You gotta do your job as a soldier. Killing Hank's character in combat is fairer than killing steamboat as a prisoner.

I'm pretty sure the audience saw the situation and realised this...(I'm assuming the audience is semi-intelligent)

Opheim (the translator) killed steamboat because it was on his conscience that he influenced Hanks to let him go. I really see no insidious message there. He wanted to clear his own conscience, not send a message to the viewing public.

One other thing...

Steamboat was "picked-up" by the Waffen SS and being seen to be soft on your enemy (not having known who "saved" steamboat) would have probably earnt him a bullet or worse.

 

I did neither imply that Steamboat Willie is portrayed as evil; neither that Upham's action in the end is shown as good.

But the conclusion of the entire situation is that it was a BAD choice to let SW live... with only negative results. Each person involved is worse or at least as bad off than it would have been if they had killed SW. Even Upham is bad off - now there are eye witnesses that he murdered a giving-up enemy for no justified reason - maybe it will have an aftermath?

 

I don't think there were any witnesses that count (the Germans he let go) really for one thing. The other thing is that they do not suggest that letting Willie (who I met a short while ago actually, weird bloke) go was a 'bad' thing to do morally speaking, after all Upham (not Opheim ) let the other prisoners go at the end. That decision struck me as particularly strange as there was no reason he could not have taken them across the river to be looked after by the unit that relieved them. The way I see it Miller's decision was correct morally speaking, there was no need to kill him and they could have let him go on the condition that he would turn himself in to US soldiers. That was the morally right thing to do, Willie did not turn himself in to the allies, wound up killing Miller, message? Doing the right thing in war sometimes may not help you to stay alive but it means you will die a human being. Willie got shot, not because he killed Miller (think about it, Upham would have seen him shooting in Millers direction but not necessairaly kill him, more to the point how would he - Willie - know it was miller?) but because he did not stand by his agreement, Upham let the other prisoners go because it was the right thing to do, knowing that it might come back to bite him on the bum so to speak. Message? That doing the wrong thing will not always help you survive and if you do, you will die half a man. I also disagree that Upham is portrayed as a 'useless coward', he fights, when the wall falls down he is shouting along with the rest, he does not sit crying and shivering all the way through the film. That one scene where he is on the stairs makes people condemn him. I don't see him as a coward, he was scared, REALLY scared, he had no idea what was going on around him. It was his first real battle, everyone reacts in different ways, how do any of you know you would not sit in a corner and cry as so many soldiers before you have done (I once heared it said that on the western front in WW1 an NCO's main job was to drag scared conscripts from shell craters)? Apart from anything, he shot Willie face to face, what could be harder than that? Message? There is a coward inside every one of us, we don't know if in combat it would be let out or not.

 

Actually you're not the first recognizing this :

http://www.ww2forums.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=18;t=000004#000003

Cheers,

 

Huh? In this other thread, I didn't find any statement on this my topic.

 

Hey Knightmove, neither did I, I was just trying to find reasons for them showing it in the first place .

I agree. For goodness sake that guy was a typewriter clerk!!! You're comparing him to a squad of Rangers!

I do maintain that there are plot holes everywhere though. .. why, if its a story is about morals to do with POWs does Upham let the 4 other guys go then after shooting Willy for escaping to fight another day, that he had a deciding factor in!!???

 

Erm, DOES he let them go? I mean, American reinforcements just have arrived, which is why they give up... I can't imagine they will REALLY go now, will they?

 

Well they hi-tailed it in the opposite direction to the way the US forces were coming, not exactly surrendering eh?

What he should have done was hold them or marched them off to the Americans who were just on the other side of the Bridge!

 

They get up, he points a rifle at them, he shoots steamboat and lets them go, they leg it with the rest of the retreating Germans.

Letting them go is not a plot hole, he let them go because to shoot them would be wrong, just as shooting steamboat would have been wrong. It just occured to me that to take them prisoner would not work as the spearhead elements of advancing troops rarely had facilities to look after prisoners.

 

I don't know about you guys, but I wasn't watching this movie for the morals. I enjoyed the movie because it had Spielburg-famous tension buildup, great action scenes, and great character development (costing me a few tears in the end). Whether it's historically or morally straight is a different issue I think is worthless to discuss (no offense).

 

I find that often a little analysis gives a movie depth, a lot of films are fine if you take them at face value but when you look into them a bit they gain a lot. Actually I find shallow films to be irritating and pointless because whilst they may be fun for a while, they fall apart if you start to think about them, films with depth keep you thinking and can raise some very important issues.

 

Good point...but does one really need to look for non-existent morals from the products of Hollywood? In my opinion, people are looking too deep into the fact that Spielburg is a Jew and the rumor that he has created an anti-Nazi moral to SPR.

 

@KnightMove:

Read my 04 December, 2000 07:55 posting on the "Saving Private Ryan" thread. The storyline is set up to say: "if he would only had killed all germans earlier."

Cheers,

 

I'm getting what you're trying to say, but I really dont think that it's a racial issue. Spielburg does have a point...I mean, look at it this way: It was a stupid mistake (tactically and militarily) to let a POW go on his own.

 

If a film is meant to be nothing but entertainment, then I agree that no moral element need be sought.

But, this comment is from the producers own promotional material from the time of the films' release ; -

'Amid the chaos and terror of those days in early June 1944, this remarkable story strives to find decency in the sheer madness of war ' ( my italics )

This would indicate that the makers of the film had more than simply entertainment in mind, and therefore a discussion about ethics and morals is not out of place....

 

Eisenhower, the influence of a movie must always be open to discussion, and here I state this movie has - possibly - bad influence. This is the point.

 

Indeed, I had missed that, sorry.

Hmmmmm, I'm not sure yet whether this also changes the judgement of POW shooting at the beginning.

 

Read that and then reconsider my point, the shooting of the POW issue is about doing the right thing, 'decency in....war' so to speak. The fact is that tactically letting them go may have been wrong, Upham saw that it meant Millers death, however, he still let the rest of the prisoners go. The morally right thing to do was to let the prisoners go, even if there is the possibility that it will not end well for you (apart from anything what were the odds that the released prisoner would wind up killing miller?). That is the point of the story, that decency, doing the right thing, can be more important that the risks it may pose you.

 

I'm afraid the message of the movie is exactly the opposite. If your decency does not have ANY good results, only bad ones, what may the viewer conclude from this?