The other day I found myself watching some scenes from Saving Private Ryan on TV. You know you really like a movie when you own it on DVD, have watched it multiple times, yet find yourself sitting through it again when it shows up on TV, commercials and all. Very few films fall into that category for me. This is one of them. It's incredibly violent, but also incredibly powerful and moving.
When we lived in Britain we used to hear over and over again how awful Saving Private Ryan was. "More American propoganda," they would say, "spreading the lie once again that the U.S. won the war all by themselves." They would point out that all you see in the film are Americans, those "bloody Yanks" who obviously think they were the only ones fighting in WWII. There was real animosity about it. I tried to explain to them how they were wrong, but they often didn't have ears to hear.
Where they were wrong is this: Saving Private Ryan is not about how America won WWII "all by themselves." Yes, there is a palpable absence of Allied troops from other nations, but that is part of the purpose of the film, a purpose with which folks in Europe simply couldn't identify. Why? Because in Europe, WWII is still very much in the public consciousness: it was a war fought on their homeland, it was their soil that absorbed the blood of loved ones, and the marks and memories of war are still very much a part of the culture. Just about every town in Britain has a war memorial of some sort, marking the names of those from that city who gave their lives to fight the Nazi menace. We were living in Scotland during the 50th anniversary of VE Day, and it was all they talked about all week, and the memories were still very fresh.
In America it is vastly different. Apart from Hawaii, we didn't fight the war on our soil. Although the people of the U.S. paid a great price in blood and sacrifice, the cultural memory is nowhere near as resonant here as it is in Europe. After all, it was a war fought "Over There," and as such many Americans have forgotten the depth of sacrifice that made our freedom possible. We had the "police action" of Korea and the mess of Vietnam come along and wipe our consciousness clean of the memories which otherwise are still fresh in Europe.
We have forgotten, plain and simple.
That's why Steven Spielberg made Saving Private Ryan: to call Americans back to the reality of what that generation of brave men and women bought for us with their lives. That's why there are so few non-American troops in the film--not because we think we did it "all on our own," but because so many of us have forgotten we did it at all. We needed to see Americans dying on the screen because we've lost sight of the Americans who died on the battlefield. It was a call to the U.S. to remember once again the price that was paid for our freedom: it was made for Americans not in pride, but out of the shame that we could forget such a sacrifice. That's why it could never resonate in a part of the world that has never really forgotten.
I can't stop thinking about this today, because I think it's an important message during Holy Week. Just like America is so quick to forget the price that was paid for our liberty, so we also are quick to forget the price that was paid that we might be reconciled to God. We fail to appreciate the depth of the sacrifice made for us. We need Lent as a reminder--before Easter Sunday, there was Good Friday. In that respect, The Passion of the Christ is sort of like Saving Private Ryan for followers of Jesus: a film that reminds us of the blood that was shed for our freedom. But we don't need a movie for that, do we? Christ himself told us what to do: "Do this in remembrance of me." Each time we celebrate communion, we are called to ponder the sacrifice made for us.
May we never forget.
