When saving private Ryan starts the music begins to play, the music is a slow and sad military music. This makes the audience feel sad and feel as if the film is serious and really means something. The first image we see is of an American flag fluttering in the wind, the flag is faded and old which brings the audience back to the war and makes Americans feel patriotic and proud of their country.
Throughout the film the director shows how the soldiers would have felt very well.
The camera angle changes and moves across past each grave.
When the camera zooms out we then know that this graveyard is a memorial graveyard of people who died in the war. This causes the audience to feel the old mans sadness and we have sympathy for him.
We then know that he was once in the war. The camera angles make the scene seem slow and sad because it moves past each grave slowly then slowly zooms out as we see hundreds of graves in line with each other as if in a military stance. These were people he had fought in the war with and people he was close too. Then we see the man falling to his knees and we see the sadness in his eyes and we feel his emotion. The crosses are lined up as if they are soldiers on parade in a straight line. This makes the audience feel sad as they think back as what the soldiers really would be like lined up as the crosses are.
The camera zooms into an extreme close up of the old mans eyes as he thinks back to the war. We can see the sadness in the man’s eyes. We can have sympathy for him and this helps us to understand how painful these experiences were for him. At the end of the first scene the director gets our attention so that we will want to watch the next scene.
In the next scene there are lots of camera cuts this gives us the information bit by bit of what is happening. It shows each craft landing using camera cuts. These camera cuts help the audience keep watching.
The camera close ups of the soldiers faces in the dark helps us to understand the fear these soldiers are going through. We then know the fear the men had; this makes us have sympathy for the soldiers. When landing craft arrives at the beach the soldiers run onto the beach and the machine gun bullets rip into the soldiers this gets the audiences attention because it’s a shocking scene. This scene shows the audience how shocking war is and how each soldier was randomly killed and they didn’t know whether they were going to live or die before they leave the craft.
This makes us respect the soldiers knowing how terrified they are and how hard war is.
There was a lot of suspense particularly at the end of the film. Where they have just rescued Private Ryan and decide to stay and fight the Germans. When they are ready and all in position you can hear the tanks coming in and you see the worry and fright on the faces of the soldiers. As the tanks got closer and closer it seemed forever and I felt very anxious and excited about it. There where a lot of other times during battle where there was a lot of suspense. The director wanted to do this to show how it must have felt for the soldiers.
Saving Private Ryan was one of Spielberg’s master pieces. In some scenes the audiences are almost crying because the film is so emotional. The sound effects in the film are truly sensational it is rarely quiet in the film and the sound effects editing is done so well.
The captain of the special unit captain miller played by tom hanks was a very strong man but near the end of the film we find out he was a school teacher back home and we begin to see how emotionally weak he was when the paramedic is killed. He began to get very angry and hungry for revenge. At the start of the film we see that the soldiers are strong and patriotic but as we get to the end of the film we see the emotional side to them all. This tells us how emotionally hard war is and we almost begin to feel like they do. During the film I was really getting into it and it felt a bit like I was in it, I felt the sadness, anger and hatred that the soldiers were feeling.
I thought this film was excellent but what I didn’t like was that it was an all American film I think it would have been better if they put some Brits or any other accents or voices among the allies. Although it is an American film I would have liked it to have other nationalities in it.
Overall it is excellent despite some stereotyping, US flag waving and the usual Spielberg love of sentimentality. Even if the actual plot is flimsy Spielberg expertly puts us as close to experiencing the horrors and the humanity within war as I hope we'll ever be.
Stevens Spielbergs father always brought home books of war and read him stories about it I think this is what inspired him to make such an amazing film.
This is the best war film I have ever watched and I would recommend it to anyone.