Captions at the bottom of the screen inform the audience where and when we are- 6th June D-day Omaha beach.
The camera zooms into a vessel full of men. The audience sees the men kissing religious icons and medallions knowing and fearing that they will almost certainly perish. Some of them vomit, and it is speculative whether this is the rough seas or the fear of what is to come. The men’s faces are white, fearful, and anticipatory. Youth, fear, injury, pain, death, rich, poor….all are represented here, equal in their fear of battle.
As the door to the craft is lowered an onslaught of bullets killing dozens instantly. The swiftness of the hit takes the audience by surprise, as does the sudden change in body motion as men get into the water and are dragged down by the weight of their kit, and again the swiftness of the bullets cutting through water with little or no deceleration, to a visceral bloody red hit on soldiers still struggling to catch a breath. The camera’s movements are slowed, with the sounds a muted and staccato shout of anguished voices and orders, fear, panic, confusion all around. The camera cuts to a soldier who has fled the ship by jumping overboard; under the water the sound of bullets and bombs dulled. Men struggle beneath the surface of the water to remove their heavy military packs and then… they just discontinue moving, no dramatic fallback as on land. The camera rises and dips below the surface of the water as thousands upon thousands of Nazi shells soar past into the water, the sand and human flesh. The camera shakes as we run up the beach, it stands still in mute amazement as we witness scenes that we can’t process and comprehend, it half drowns in the water with us and bobbles on the surface as we struggle for air, it almost takes deep breaths with us as we regain some control and perspective, sheltering behind the beach defences for a breather.
The camera cuts to the Nazi gunner’s men, feeding ammunition into the gun with no mercy for the struggling Americans coming up the shore. We are now in the perspective of Captain Miller, we see what he does. The sound fades and everything slows down as Miller’s mind refuses to recognize the things happening. He is stunned. In the back ground people are being killed, and disfigured. A flamethrower explodes and men run to the sea screaming, trying to put out the flames. That we see this not as a main event, but as background of horror is intended to shock the audience. Yet because of the intense death seen before, this is just a wallpaper effect. Similarly the army surgeons, battling to save life and limb amongst the paradoxical tableau of hundreds of men intent on causing death are a curious insert. The black comedy effect of the tin helmet saving the soldier’s life, who removes it in amazement, only to take an immediate bullet to the head whilst paying homage to its miraculous powers. Miller’s brain comes around with a private screaming to him: ‘What the hell do we do now?’
Miller takes control at once. The slow progress up the beach, from shelter point to shelter point brings some gradual order to the proceedings. The carnage around Captain Miller becomes more focussed and real as his brain adjusts to the task, and the camera angles are also more measured, a slower run. The views of each incident, such as the soldier still alive but with his stomach blown away are more than a confused glimpse amongst dark and dust and noise and ground shake, but a measured viewing, assessing the chances of survival and the likely impact of the medical corps stopping to help. The use of the blood on the camera lens conveys the hopelessness of this assessment, with vision blurred by blood everywhere, picking out the soldiers to help is an unenviable task, and hence the blood cannot be removed from the eye of the assessor. Whatever he does, there will be bloodshed and loss of life and limb, and the frustration of this are evident when they fail to save a colleague, with the battle raging all around them...
At the embankment, Miller being the first there looks back and returns briefly to a trance state when he sees a man dragging half a corpse along the sand. Engineers are required to ‘blow the wire’, an almighty blast of ground, metal and sand fly into the air. The chaotic camera scenes recede into an efficiently shot battle scene, as the military precision and planning takes over from bemusement and shock to take the beach and restore a warlike efficient order. The use of the mirrors to safely check position when they can’t safely raise their heads when taking the Nazi pillbox is another illustration of a growing confidence and control of the battle. The graphic ground shaking explosions no longer shake the ground quite so much, yet simply achieve their targets as part of the execution of an overall mission. We are expecting this now. This army knows what it is doing, and knows how to achieve it, as the steady camera shots and still, quieter explosions demonstrate
Spielberg then shows that the Americans aren’t all the innocents they appear as the Nazis run out from a bunker the Americans shoot them in the back. They then Ste fire to the innards of the bunker and as German soldiers jump out we hear “Don’t shoot let 'em burn”
As Germans are surrendering the Americans are aiming at them pretending not to understand. When one asks what they said the first soldier says “look we cleaned our hands for supper” They are doing this as the primal urge of revenge takes over them.
The camera cuts to Capitan Millers face this appears to be a recurring motif in the film.
As they conquer yet another trench they find a Hitler youth knife and show it to the Jewish member of the crew.
A man comes over to talk to Miller “That’s quite a view” The camera then pans along the shore with the red tide overcoming the bodies. Zooming in on one man. On his army back stencilled is Ryan.S.-will they achieve the aim of the film; to find and save Private Ryan.
