While he just turned 60 last week, Tom Hanks is showing no sign of slowing down. Despite having never been a sure thing at the box office, the everyman actor can still skip from the kind of bubblegum comedy he made his name on to the historical dramas that constitute his bread and butter. In large part, this is because Hanks has managed to avoid being pigeonholed as one particular kind of actor.
READ MORE: The 50 Best Moments In Steven Spielberg Movies
Hanks has turned in a number of iconic performances, from “Big” to “Cast Away” to “Forrest Gump,” yet none have hindered his career with the burden of one indelible performance (think Daniel Radcliffe, despite how hard he’s trying). But the movie that might come the closest to embodying the way the general public view Hanks —as a hardworking everyman with sad eyes and unbreakable will— is “Saving Private Ryan.” It’s undeniably a brutal film, crafted specifically to display the nightmare of war, and Hanks’ Captain Miller is the perfect cypher to express the fear, agony and the brotherhood at its very center.
The folks over at History Buffs have put together a video essay that lays out the historical context for Steven Spielberg’s war epic and reviews the film’s accuracy. The 23-minute “History Buffs: ‘Saving Private Ryan’” dives into the chaotic complexity involved in the invasion of Normandy, highlighting just what the allied soldiers were up against and how Spielberg and co. evoked the reality of war to an unprecedented degree. As the video points out, “Saving Private Ryan” does not avoid historic discrepancies common to gigantic, serious-minded Hollywood productions, but which do little to overshadow the research and accuracy injected throughout the film. If anything, “Saving Private Ryan” does what’s necessary to make a movie a movie —flubbing facts here and there to craft a narrative and build tension— in order to provide a vehicle for the emotional authenticity Spielberg was clearly interested in.
Check out the captivating video essay above and weigh in with your thoughts in the comments below.
