Saving Private Ryan Essay, Research Paper
Steven Spielberg?s film ?Saving Private Ryan? attempts to recount the horror of
war and reach out to the collective social conscious of today?s society. The majority of
society have not experienced war and through the historical recollection, the medium of
film and the characters of the story, Speilberg builds a powerful film which touches us all
in the hopes that future generations will remember and not advocate war to resolve
issues. Speilberg stated, ?My hope, my purpose in doing the film this way, is somehow to
resensitize to how bad it was for the men who survived, as well as for those who
perished.?(Taylor)
Steven Spielberg?s film, ?Saving Private Ryan? is a depiction of one of the most
crucial Allied offensive in World War II, D-Day on June 6,1944. German armies under
the direction of Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Germany had already captured the European
countries of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, France,
and Italy. Hitler in his goal or achieving world dominance for Germany had his sights set
on capturing both Britain and the Soviet Union. D-Day was the Allies secretly scheduled
day to invade an 80 kilometer stretch of Normandy Beach, on the coastline of France.
The plan was to have British and Canadian troops invade the eastern shore while the
Americans were to invade the western shore of Normandy under cover from the Allied
airforce.
The Allies had regained control of Italy over the German?s and the attack of the
German army in France on D-Day took place on five beaches along the Normandy Beach,
code named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. The initial focus point of the film was
the American invasion of Normandy at Omaha Beach on D-Day. This German stronghold
was the most difficult post to overtake because the German?s held the bank overhanging
the beach to defend their position. This gave them a clear advantage as they could see all
along the beach and could shoot down at the enemy on the shore with ease as there was
very little cover. As the American?s landed on the beach they were immediately fired upon
by the German soldiers and incurred many injuries and casualties. The American army
pressed on under enormous odds and eventually took the beach with the assistance from
the American airforce bombing the German armies and the landing of thousands of
paratroopers inland behind the German lines. The Americans paid a very high price for
victory at Omaha Beach resulting in 7500 American casualties. This victory along with
four others by the British and Canadian troops along Normandy Beach on D-Day gave the
Allied Forces a much needed second front on European soil. The defeat of the German
army in Italy provided the allies with the only other European land base to liberate Europe
from German control. D-Day was a turning point for the Allies which ultimately led to the
German surrender and freedom for Europe. Spielberg creates Saving Private Ryan within
the historical significant event of D- Day to retell the horrors and sacrifices of W.W.II to
society.
Spielberg, ?wanted to show the brutalistic and shear terror of combat
without standard macho posturing and sentimental patriotism.?(Taylor)
?Boot camp for the audience,” Steven Spielberg has called Saving Private Ryan (Extra
Footage). Like a drill instructor yelling at a new recruit, Spielberg opens Saving Private
Ryan with a 25 minute D-Day invasion sequence that engages audiences with the utmost
ferocity. More realistic than any stretch of any other war movie ever made this sequence
brilliantly accomplishes a shrewd dramatic objective, to bring a fictional story to life, with
one of the most influential events of the 20th century (Extra Footage). The audience
could feel the fear on the beach under enemy fire with wounded and dead soldiers
everywhere.
Spielberg conducted thorough research and interviewed veterans of W.W.II to
make the scenes as historically accurate as possible. To make his film as realistic as
possible, Spielberg hired a retired army officer to validate the film and to conduct four
days of boot camp for the actors. This included sleeping out doors in the rain and eating
army rations so that the actors could identify with their roles (Extra footage). To help his
entire crew understand the realism of war, Spielberg iterated his first rule, “There are no
rules. As in combat, things happen fast and unexpectedly, so we cut against expectations,
against any reassuring rhythms” (www.reelreviews.net). To ensure realism and to obtain
the dramatic effect Speilberg took roughly three weeks to shoot the Omaha beach scene.
Spielberg used realism to connect with the viewer and relied on three friends and
first rate filmmakers to help him portray his vision, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski,
picture editor Michael Kahn and sound designer Gary Rydstrom. The scenes of graphic
gore was an effective tool to bring the horrors of war to the audience even though it may
have made some people cringe. For those who have never experienced war, Spielberg use
of hand held camera to film many scenes to give an intimate feel of what war was like by
being close to the action, as well as using the unsteady hand shot to portray confusion and
fear/anxiety that the soldiers would feel. For instance, the hand held camera was utilized
during the filming of the beach invasion. This allowed the viewer to feel the sense of
disarray and Spielberg used it as a metaphor for the numerous thoughts and emotions each
soldier was experiencing. The audience sees the scene through the eyes of the soldiers as
they scurry up the beach desperately trying to seek cover.
Kaminski decided, “the goal was to shoot like a bunch of actual combat
cameramen” (www.cinematographer.com). He found particular inspiration in the
photographs of Robert Capa, whose D-Day images haunted Kaminski because “you feel
that these people are already dead.” To evoke Capa’s aura, Kaminski’s team hit the beach
with shaky handheld cameras letting their focus go fuzzy by mixing the exposure levels
and lighting conditions “so there wasn’t any optical continuity. We wanted viewers to feel
completely disjointed, or confused, from image to image…like the camera is one of the
soldiers, going up and down, hiding, afraid it’s going to get shot” (www.cinematographer
.com).
Kaminski and Spielberg briefly considered filming the entire movie in black and
white but realized monochrome would blunt the impact of the blood from the casualties
and wounded soldiers. This technique helped portray realistic scenery to the audience.
By stripping the lenses of protective coatings, flattening the dark-to-light range, turning
blacks gray and blue skies white they mimicked the bleached look of actual color combat
footage shot during W.W.II . To further stifle any bright Technicolor tones film release
prints went through a chemical process that drained almost all of the color present in the
original negative. This technique helped the audience feel the drearyness and vagueness of
war. Although the soldiers were in a platoon they were lonely, far away from home, no
where to turn with death in front of them.
Speilberg wanted to portray the battle realistically without sensationalizing the war
scenes. He wanted the audience to evoke the feelings of excitement, fear, dread,
adrenaline, sadness, hope, happiness, relief a soldier would experience all at once.
Spielberg wanted the film to demonstrate the sensitivity and authenticity to give his film
credibility especially to the W.W.II veterans who had experienced it. Some of the movie’s
most appalling images of human bodies blown apart in midair required both computer
graphics and on-set stunts. For instance, a severed leg coming off one soldier involved an
animated spray of gore laid over footage of a real-life amputee stuntman. According to
Kaminski, the bulk of the computer graphic work done by George Lucas’ ILM effects
shop was to enhance gun-muzzle flares and to digitally create dozens of ships and barrage
balloons for long shots of the Allied forces massing at the shoreline. Speilberg want the
audience to be emotionally moved by the film and not just an action movie.
Spielberg also uses a blurring technique to give the viewer a better sense of what
war was like. It was utilized in the landing scene when Captain Miller was overwhelmed
by what was happening and became oblivious to everything around him. This technique
gave the audience the feeling of being engulfed in emotion because only Captain Miller
could be seen clearly with everything else being blurred. The only sounds that could be
heard during this time were the crashing waves as Miller was blocking out the killing and
was just focusing on doing a job. The movie’s unsettling shifts to jerky, stop-start speeds
when Captain Miller?s character is overcome by the carnage on the beach were fine-tuned
by Kahn and Kaminski. The editor took footage shot at half the normal speed 12 frames
per second then double-printed each still frame. The result was that the film was projected
at 24 frames per second, the pacing of the action is “normal,” but everything moves in a
strobed-out manner. This provides realism to the viewer as even though things are quickly
happening around Miller it is almost if his mind is in slow motion.
Spielberg used very little scoring throughout the film in order to achieve his vision
of realistic depiction of W.W.II. Intentionally not musically scored the beach assault
wages a full attack on the audiences auditory canals. Sounds of bullets whiz around your
head, shells shoot past and behind you, piles of slugs seem to pierce hundreds of pieces of
metal and flesh within a 360 degree sound field. Sound designer Gary Rydstrom explains
the action, “isn’t at a fixed, safe distance in front of you. You’re in it” (www.RZM.com/
PVT.Ryan). Ironically, to make the scene feel extremely loud Rydstrom uses a technique
that for every 110 decibel plus exploding shell there is a converse valley of low-volume
respite. It was by inserting such contrasts that Rydstrom created the impression of
unceasing noise. A dramatic example of this technique is the disconcerting 90 seconds of
simulated deafness when a shell goes off next to Captain Miller as he was protecting the
bridge at Romell near the end of the film. “I’ve heard of audiences thinking it’s their own
hearing they’ve lost,” says Rydstrom. Spielberg engages the viewer with realistic sounds
of war.
Rydstrom developed his sound mix from hundreds of audio tracks with a talent
that seems unmatchable drawing on an astonishingly precise library of sounds. He used the
Internet to locate sound caches of working weaponry and equipment from all over the
country and then traveled to record them. For example he recorded Browning automatic
rifle shooting rounds in Georgia, Alabama. Why did the bullets ripping into human flesh
seem so sickeningly vivid to the audience? The answer is because it was flesh, to make the
film as realistic a possible. Rydstrom recorded the sound of working W.W.II guns firing
into animal carcasses and butcher-cut slabs of pork to simulate the sound of a bullet
entering human flesh.
Spielberg was so set on not using the movie sound clich of echoing ricochets that
he “called many, many times about it,” Rydstrom says (Reference). Chasing that same
sense of authenticity, Rydstrom talked to many war veterans. “What they mentioned again
and again,” he recalls, “is that German machine guns sounded more ferocious than ours. A
German MG-42 shot 1,100 rounds per minute, about twice as many as the comparable
American gun. That sound became very distinctive and very scary to soldiers because the
bullets came so fast, they were just a blur of steel”(Reference). Heading into the Vill
Spielberg used the sound of raindrops falling and slowly converted them into echoing gun
shots in the Vill . This transition was not only interesting but it showed the elements that
the soldiers faced as well as the perpetual threat of the enemy. Spielberg ensured that the
sounds as well as the picture were authentic to portray the real horrors of the war to the
audience. As a result of some exceptional filmmaking and collaboration, audiences have
come closer to feeling what it was like to be in the crossfire of those weapons than any
civilians in history. Spielberg was successful in showing, ?the brutalistic and shear
terror of combat without standard macho posturing and sentimental
patriotism?(Taylor).
The scene where the Americans meet German soldiers inside the church is a prime
example of Spielberg?s way of building suspense. He uses the ?calm before the storm?
technique by using undertones in dialogue and music to let you know that the storm is
actually coming, the audience just doesn?t know when. Miller and Sizemore have a
conversation about the justification of war, while the medic, Wade reminisces about his
mother. The next day on the battle field the medic is killed. Also the candle lighting in the
church provides a somber feeling like preparing for a loss, even though they had just made
it through the Vill and should have been at least glad to make it.
The score to Saving Private Ryan is a good example of using music to support the
film. The theme song is slightly reminiscent of the remembrance day song giving the
viewer that somber feeling but the other songs in the film are bursting with energy and
almost give the film a certain glory.
Spielberg develops the plot and the characters in the film so that the audience can
identify with them. After over taking Omaha Beach Captain Miller and 7 soldiers next
assignment is to go behind the German lines in France and rescue Private Ryan ??. The
Army wants him rescued as three of his brothers have died in other war battle and the
General doesn?t want his mother to lose him as well. sis based on Each character
represents a unique part of everyone?s personality, while remaining believable. Cpl.
Upham represents childhood and youth, as well as being frightened. PFC Reiben
represents defiance. Medic Wade represents thoughtfulness and healing.
By allowing the viewer to connect with the each of the characters, the feelings that
they have are more strongly felt by the audience. This intensifies the message because the
individual is more involved in the storyline. In total this creates a film which has power,
and Spielberg has definitely accomplished that in the making of ?Saving Private Ryan?
Captain Miller is a human metaphor for determination in Saving Private Ryan. His
reasoning for war, combined with his drive and passion, makes him a mystery. What
profession could this man have other than the Army? It turns out that he is a school
teacher, but his family is what puts the fire in his belly. The journey that Spielberg takes us
on with Capt. Miller?s persona is uniquely interesting. During the first scene, we see him
as a iron gutted army man, yet by the third scene, we begin to see Hanks as more than a
walking weapon, and his intellectual side begins to come through. He uses his quick wits
to answer a question about what he would say ?if? he were to complain, and instead of
whining to his troops and discouraging them, he stated that he thought it was a valuable
mission, with a valuable objective. This also showed his men that he was not going to put
up with any whining from any of them, because he didn?t do it himself. Later in the movie,
he begins to talk with Cpl. Upham, and just as you think he might reveal himself, he hides
in the shadows again, waiting until the pot on him gets larger. Soon after though, when a
conflict breaks out between Sgt. Horvath and PFC Reiben, the Capt. tells the sqaud about
himself to help save face in the mission, and to get the other soldiers to consider what is
important to them, and why they joined the army in the first place. That is the first time
that the audience really sees the real Capt. Miller, and also when the audience begins to
really care what is going to happen to the characters.
At the beginning of the film Capt. Miller is portrayed as a nose to the grindstone
military man, with only the end of his present mission in sight. But as the movie
progresses, we begin to see the other side of Miller. As the pool on what he does for a
living out of the army grows, and tensions arise about a decision that he makes, we begin
to see the emotional side of him. The deep focus on the mission was not military based as
everyone had thought, but it was so that he could once again return home to see his wife