Saving Private Ryan - Indigènes (2006) Discussion

[–] krasny 17 years ago

no, it's very much a complete opposite of SPR

SPR glorifies the dead, while this movie makes us watch france spit on their graves

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[–] zzzpssshzzz 17 years ago

quiet already, SPR is the only thing that lead to all these later WWII films.

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[–] jodvova 17 years ago

SPR is just a cheap American fake.

Common guys! How did you ever come up with a comparasion like that?

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[–] SomeGuyWithoutAHat 17 years ago

Well in the scenes a little bit.

(SPOLIERS!!!)

The bridge scene, cmon everyone died at that scene (Well except 1) and of course it's on a bridge, just like SPR. I swear if a Panzer rolled into the town i was gonna just scream out load.

The GY scene at the end is a little like SPR only he isn't surrounded by his family.

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[–] Yip_Man 17 years ago

yeh thats what i meant

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[–] aaronsons1 17 years ago

Think there are definate comparisons - which we can all see. But as one message here says, SPR kind of paved the way for the 'new wave' of WWII movies. Wheather they glorify the dead or whatever other things they do within the storylines, one thing they all have in common is that they present WWII in the horrific way (as far as a movie can do) that it clearly was, and opposite to how the vast majority of early WWII movies movies were portrayed.

Think eveidence of this is that "Days of Glory" and "Joy Division", two relatively low budget WWII movies to come out in last few months, both have different storylines to each other and to SPR, but all really make you sit back and think. War is hell and touches the lives of every kind of joe!!!

Think the battle scenes in "Days of Glory" and "Joy Division" were easily on a par with SPR (they just didn't last as long as the famous Beach landing scene).

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[–] ttaskmaster 13 years ago

The bridge scene, cmon everyone died at that scene (Well except 1) and of course it's on a bridge, just like SPR. I swear if a Panzer rolled into the town i was gonna just scream out load.

OMG, it has a bridge in it. It MUST be a rip-off of SPR...
Just like how Star Trek is set in space, so it and anything else in space is a rip-off of Star Wars, right?

There are hundreds of bridges in Europe. They are always strategically very important, which is why a lot of units made efforts to defend them, why others blow them up to messup the enemy and why you get so many Last Stand scenes at them.

Look how many war films are about bridges:

Bridge Too Far - a story about taking several bridges
The Bridge At Remagen - a story about taking a VERY important bridge
Bridge Over The River Kwai - a story about POWs forced to build a very important bridge.
Bridges And Their History - OK, I am making this one up, but you get the point.

Two more very important bridges are Jeff Bridges and Beau Bridges, but I'm getting silly now :-D

So yeah, the similarities in both films are there because those things happened a lot in WW2.

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[–] Ged59 17 years ago

There are some similarities in the screenplay/scenes etc...BUT......SPR is about American heroes, families, and all that war stuff. This film is about racism and injustice, so it's totally different.

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[–] nosnojsirhc 17 years ago

Since the film IS about such different subject matter, it's strange that the director chose to lift the bridge and the cemetery scenes pretty much right out of SPR instead of continuing on with his original film. On an interesting note, the film also follows the general arc of Band of Brothers (which traces a group from the Normandy invasion up to the storming of the Eagle's Nest) and which one could argue is the general arc of WWII - but this film doesn't center on glory of war and heroics but instead on how futile and wasteful those great attributes are in battle.

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[–] Screendoctor 17 years ago

I was amazed by the similariteis to SPR, especially as these show up in force at the end of the film (the village defence, the bridge, the two men dying next to each other in the same room, the impeccably timed rescue, the way soldiers die when shot (especially the Germans) and then the cemetary scene poored right on top of it).

It cannot be unintentional or inspirational - it is just too obvious.

It also seems obvious that - to me - the director does this to say that if Americans do this stuff it is heroic and the outcome is glory, while as the North Africans do the same thing (they are just as scared and desperate and die just as easily and terribly) they are forgotten and ignored.

And that is what this film is about naturally, but I still feel the links to SPR maede it weaker, as - again, to me - it showcases that almost everything we do in this world is, consiously or subconsiously, measured against American standards - which is the major cause of frustration and lack of happiness in most parts of the world.

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[–] nosnojsirhc 17 years ago

I agree. It's a Catch-22, but like John Malkovitch entering his own head, it's a Catch-22 on a loop track. How to escape?

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[–] zzzpssshzzz 17 years ago

Total ripoff, its like SPR Jr.

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[–] teacher_tom516 17 years ago

I thought that the start and middle were more like 'GLORY' with Sgt.Roger Martinez taking the Robert Gould Shaw role and the idealistic Corporal playing the 'Denzel'. The ending though was very Saving Private Ryan with a much smaller force on both sides, everyone but the protagonist getting killed and the cemetary scene afterwards. Not that I didn't like it or thought it detracted but there it was...

Tom516

"It is not enough to like a film. You must like it for the right reasons."
- Pierre Rissient

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[–] slacker2526 17 years ago

I agree with the "Glory" comparison. As Americans watching a movie intending to reawaken French historical consciousness, this has a closer connection with movies like "Glory" (and somewhat "Windtalkers," too) because of the racial element.

However, I can't think of anything in American film that comes close to the empire-theme (i.e., North Africans fighting their "mother country" France, the Corporal's nascent national consciousness, etc.) because that element is not nearly so strong in American history. Maybe a film on the Philippine Scouts in WWWII--has that been done, yet? But I would think that such a film would be about survival more than nationalism or imperialism.

To compare this movie with "Saving Private Ryan" may be like comparing apples and oranges.

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[–] zone_leader 17 years ago

Sort of, but this is way better.

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[–] i_luv_to_bead 17 years ago

I just saw this movie for the first time, and I feel that the similarities to Saving Private Ryan are intentional and ironic.

Saving Private Ryan is a terrible movie, its premise is ridiculous. Days of Glory is a subversion of this "fighting for the motherland" and "liberty, equality and fraternity" mindset, and from the first scene to the last it out-acts, out-directs and out-scripts Saving Private Ryan.

I think that if you look at the title (Days of Glory-clearly ironic), think about the characters in the movie, and understand the French-Algerian history (especially their treatment during the 1960's and 1970's), you should understand what the director is getting at when he challenges the Saving Private Ryan archetype.

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[–] batistuta47 17 years ago

First, the title of the film in English is incomprehensible. The subtitles were way off. The film was low budget, poorly produced and not even particularly well written or acted. Did they even have someone checking for continuity? What it has over SPR is a far stronger concept. This film is political in nature, but it is hardly the first or the best of its kind in a war movie. I do think that the similarities to SPR are intentional, but even if the director was aiming for the ironic (which I am not sure that he was), he failed to pull it off.

Better French films about the futility of war abound, in particular "La Vie et Rien d'autre" and "Capitaine Conan". As for more recent war films (post SPR and lower budget), El Alamein (an Italian production) was far superior.

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[–] Connor3820 17 years ago

no it was more like saints and soldiers

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[–] smilecitizen 17 years ago

I'm more interested in why, always when you're discussing a war movie, there is a seemingly necessary comparison to "Saving Private Ryan"? Every time.

SPR is at best a decent movie with some really gut-punching special effects. But, in my opinion, that's about it, really.

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[–] jmact 17 years ago

Comparing this to SPR (and BBB) is ridiculous. They are both big-budget movies that can afford to be historically/technically accurate. I might note, also, that in polls, SPR has been voted as the best WWII movie, by far.

A better comparison, I think, are the two recent Clint Eastwood movies, Flags and Letters, that both strive to present stories that have not been told before, likely due to their inherent controversies.

In Indigènes (I wouldn't call it Days of Glory, bad translation), in the "Making of" on the DVD, the director talks about what had to be done to make the movie commercially viable- hence likely some effort to have it look like other contemporary WWII movies. I mean, if a movie can't at least recover costs, who's gonna back it? Unfortunately, that often means artistic compromises. Their goal was to get as much attention as possible paid to the movie (esp in certain markets)- I think they succeeded (pensions paid, etc.).

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[–] tcfilmbuff 17 years ago

It is a total rip-off of the entire Harry Potter series.

tc

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[–] INDIEFILMROCK45 17 years ago

Stop comparing every WWII film with SPR. SPR was a more of a western than a war movie. It was lackluster at best and a recruiting film at its worst. Give me millions of dollars and some serious war consultants and I'm sure I can produce the same trite, sentimental nonsense. Days of Glory was by no means perfect, but it honors something brave and noble without being exploitative and sacchrine, and when it comes to war movies that is truly a rare thing indeed. I don't know who decided SPR set some kind of bar for war movies, but I hope for the sake of humanity as a whole someone in Hollywood breaks that mold and ventures into new territory. I know Terrence Malick already did that, ironically in the same year SPR was released, but that is a topic of discussion for either of those two movies' boards. Please, just stop putting everything up against some delightfull hollywood romp through warland. Peace.

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[–] garethgazz 17 years ago

Apart from them both being about WW2 theres not much of a comparison. They're war movies with totally different messages. People forget though that SPR was made before all of this 'lets be ultra realistic down to the tiniest detail' stuff came into fashion, that all started with Band of Brothers, so we shouldn't slag it off really. For its time it was great.

And this film was great, it was a real tale of real people who have been treated appaulingly. SPR basically said "War is hell, men are brave". It's a general message and its been done many times before and since. This film had more substance, i cared more about the characters and was angry when i read the info at the end. It's like what us Brits did to the Gurkhas. Because Days of Glory was telling a more specific story, and because of the people involved, it seemed like they all cared about it more. They made this film to put accross a message that needed to be heard, i don't think you can say the same about SPR (especially not if you've read the original script!)

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