Saving Private Ryan

What remains impressed is the cinematography and the sound effects, which draw you into the sensuals aspects of the war experience, as well as the fear, loneliness, homesickness, grief, bonds of brotherhood, the inurement of feeling as men fall like skittles. A profoundly aesthetic film, like a surrealistic painting set in motion. Spielberg is heir to Lean, who is said to have inspired him into film making.

To quote from Janet Jaslin:
"The film's immense dignity is its signal characteristic, and some of it is achieved though deliberate elision..... Imagine Hieronymus Bosch with a Steadicam (instead of the immensely talented Janusz Kaminski) and you have some idea of the tableaux to emerge here, as the film explodes into panoramic yet intimate visions of bloodshed..... the tranquil pause in a bombed-out French village, to the strains of Edith Piaf...."