“Saving Private Ryan” is a cult film for several generations. Inspired by a true story, it is distinguished by ultra-realistic details that are not found in most war films.
Huge success upon its release and breathtaking historical reconstruction, Steven Spielberg’s film Saving Private Ryan has been visible on Netflix for a few weeks. An event for the platform. This war film, inspired by the true story of the Niland brothers, looks back on the dangerous mission of an American squad to find Private James Ryan, whose three brothers have already died on the battlefield, at the time of the landing of June 1944.
And if the reconstruction of the Normandy landings is reproduced with incredible precision and images that moved the whole world when it was released, these are not the only key elements of this very meticulous feature film. Several of the most realistic details, difficult to notice on first viewing, have appeared for a few years, as reruns and SVOD releases progress. Some have been shared on fan forums or moviegoer conversations even recently.
One particularly telling example was much talked about in 2021. In Saving Private Ryan, attentive viewers noticed that the thumb of Private 1st Class Daniel Jackson (played by Barry Pepper), the team’s famous sniper by Captain John H. Miller (Tom Hanks), had a blue mark on the thumb of his right hand. A bruise visible at several points in the film.
One shot in particular was unearthed: the one where Jackson takes aim with a rifle at a German enemy in an unbearable atmosphere (at 21 minutes and 43 seconds). The left hand on the trigger (he is left-handed) and the right under the barrel, we can see this mark perfectly. A reference to the “Garand Thumb”, a common injury for American soldiers during World War II who regularly got their thumbs stuck in the loading mechanism of the US Army’s M1 Garands semi-automatic rifle. So, did you notice?
Full of these kinds of details, Saving Private Ryan has definitely entered the ranking of the best historical films of all time. And with him, Steven Spielberg no longer needs to prove he’s probably the greatest filmmaker of his generation. His latest films, such as The Fabelmans (2022) or West Side Story (2021), have once again proven that he is a virtuoso director.
