The main role was Captain Miller who was played by Tom Hanks. At the start he is a very strong man and he was quite emotional as well, but as the war goes on and when emotions run high we find out that he was a school teacher back home. We see him change when the Paramedic (Giovanni Ribisi) was killed. All of a sudden he got really angry and wanted revenge. Another main character was Sergeant Horvath who was played by Tome Sizemore. He gave the orders out to the corporals. We never really saw him being emotional he was strong and he was a patriotic man. There were many other characters in the film all of whom we see in a different way than we did at the start. They are well played and each actor takes their role very seriously and plays them well.
The first theme of the film is set in modern day and is quite emotional as is of an old man visiting the memorial plot. There is no dialogue in this scene but there is heroic music being played while he walks through the plot. We see a cross with the Jewish star on it which I think is to symbolize the number of Jews killed in WWII. When it goes back to D-Day (June 06 1994) this is when we see the war. It is exactly what I expected war to be like. The sights of people being shot, blown up and being killed make it surreal. You see people legs hanging off and people being shot in the head. The director really makes you feel as if you are in the middle of the war with all the sounds of guns shots, people crying, orders being shouted and explosions. The scenes after that are of the after effects of war, ruins and grass fields with dead bodies.
The film has many different themes to it. There are times when it is emotional, sad, angry, patriotic, scared etc. The very start of the film I find is very emotional. The man walks by him self with his family closely following. When he gets to the grave he falls and you can see the sadness in his face as the camera gets a close up of his eye, that’s when it starts the war. In this scene there are mixed emotions. Firstly when they are on the boat they are being sick with nerves and you can see the fear and terror in them. As the scene progresses you can see some people laughing at what they done by killing P.O.W’s. Then you see a corporal who has just killed a Nazi youth. He knows he was a young man and he starts crying. During the Omaha Beach scene you see people praying and trying to say others lives but when they are told to come on because you can’t save them they start getting angry and then taking it out on the Nazis. Through out the film their emotions change once they become relaxed with the situations. They start to laugh and joke and make good of a bad situation. Towards the end of the film everybody is becoming tired and just wants to go home so they become angry and inpatient. When Captain Miller tells Private Ryan a bought his brother he is saddened but refuses to go home. He wants to serve his time for his country and there for persuades the rest to stay. So as you can see there is a lot of mixed emotions in this film.
The dialogue in the film I think is fantastic. The sounds affects are amazing and give you a real fell about what being in war is like. In the Omaha Beach scene all you hear is guns going off, explosions, people screaming and orders being shouted. It made me feel as if I was in the war. When Captain Miller gets off the boat he gets shell shock. Spielberg shows this by drowning out the sound and making it very faint. Captain Miller can’t do anything he is just taking in all the scenery and when it comes back he starts giving orders right away. Each character has its own way of speaking. They all have the real American accent and talk just like real soldiers would. One of my favourite savings is ‘Fubar’ which stands for ‘F****d up beyond all recognition’. This lets us know that they are annoyed and everything is going wrong for them. I think it is a good saying which we hear through out the film. At the end of the film when they are waiting to fight the Nazis there is very little dialogue but you know what they are thinking because you can see the fear in their eyes. The only real sounds you hear is of the tanks moving closer and closer. Spielberg did this so that the audience can see and feel what the soldiers did.
This film is classified with an age limit of 15. I think this film would mostly appeal to men from the age of 18 right up to about 70. I think that a lot of older men would watch it maybe because they were in the war and could relate to it or maybe have been living during the war, all though many young men would also watch it because they might like the action of war and maybe want to join an army. A lot of Americans would buy this film because it was their country and they may be patriotic and want to know what happened in WWII.
Spielberg really makes the audience feel as if they are in the middle of the war. The usage of dialogue and scenery really made me feel as if I was there.
This would be one of my most favourite films by Spielberg. Spielberg has directed many films including Schlinders list, The color purple, Jaws and ET. Schlinders list is about the Jewish people in WWII under the control of Hitler. Spielberg in this film just as he did in Saving Private Ryan really gave the audience a feel of what it was like for the Jewish People in WWII. Saving Private Ryan also reminds me of a film called ‘We Where Soldiers’. This film was another war film a bought American soldiers in the Vietnam war. This film I felt was not as good as Saving Private Ryan as it was more focused around the killing and winning the war.
To me this is probably the best war film I have ever seen. Spielberg really made the audience feel like they where fighting in the war. By the dialogue and the scenery it made me feel as if I was there fighting in the war and I felt the anger and emotion as the soldiers. I would highly recommend this film to every one.
“My dad brought home stories of the war, and he always explained to me how unglamorous it is. What I tried to do in this film was approximate the look and the sounds and even the smells of what combat is really like” - Steven Spielberg.
