What images of war and soldiers does Spielberg establish in the opening of the film: "Saving Private Ryan"?

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English Essay: What images of war and soldiers does Spielberg establish in the opening of the film: “Saving Private Ryan”?

“Saving Private Ryan” was made in 1998, and was directed by Stephen Spielberg. The film stars Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore and Tom Hanks, who plays the leading role of Captain John Miller. “Saving Private Ryan” is about a squad on a dangerous mission.  Led by Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks), the unit is under orders to track down a soldier, Private Ryan (Matt Damon), so he might return home to his mother in America, where she is grieving the unimaginable loss of her three other sons to the war. Spielberg also uses actual war photographs by Robert Capa, for realism.The first unforgettable twenty minutes of   the film realistically and horrifically depicts the Normandy invasion as John Miller; his second-in-command, Sergeant Horvath (Tom Sizemore); and the others in the unit land at Omaha Beach.  They are veterans of World War II. It is D-day.

This film is similar to the book “Heroes” by Robert Cormier. Just like the book, this film is to do with war, sacrifice and heroism. They are both also about ordinary young men/soldiers who have been placed in extraordinary circumstances.  

The film’s opening scene is in the present. The film starts off with music that has quite a slow pace and is heard quietly in the background. Already we have a sense of atmosphere; respect, dignity and pride. This makes us feel calm, yet somehow there is a hint of sadness. There other effects that a visible by sound, such as the wind blowing, over the gentle music. We are then given a close up of an American flag, which fills the whole screen, moving in the wind. This scene starts off slowly but gradually unfolds and we are then able to match the images and music with the situation, and begin to understand what has happened. By these first few images of a person, we can assume that this is our main character. There is a close up of a man’s legs; they look slim, frail, weak and old. Just from this close up Spielberg has already told us a bit about what the character is going to be like. He starts walking forwards and even though we can see his weakness, he looks stable on the ground beneath him. Once again the American flag appears; this time it only fills half of the screen and is attached to a pole. The exact same shot is repeated again straight after, but with a French flag instead. This first part of the scene is mainly about symbolically conveying the allied French/ US approach. Trying to gradually explain to us what has happened in the past to cause this scene in the present.

Spielberg uses different shots on the camera to help tell us the story. Slow tracking into Close-ups of the man’s face show us his anxiety and pain in his expression; he looks as though he has suffered loss. The closeness of this image evokes the audience to empathise with his pain. The sounds of shallow breathing is in the background, from this we can sense he is getting increasingly anxious. We are slowly drawn away from this character that we can now see is at a gravestone. We are taken to a long shot of the memorial graveyard that he is in. This takes us away from the personalised image of him grieving over one person. Spielberg gives us a different perspective, as we can now see that many more people have lost their lives. This film is to do with war, and we get a great sense of the many people who took part in this, by the amount of gravestones. Once again, personalising each image by firstly showing hundreds of crosses and the Jewish Star of David. Moving in to close ups of graves, each with a difference.

I can feel what it must have been like in the war just by seeing these images of gravestones. This is what Spielberg wants; to take us wherever this man goes. Through these images we see into his mind. A sea of white graves organised orderly in rows and columns. This gives a real sense of orderly soldiers, standing in their troops.

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The lone old man goes onto his hands and knees and we can see that he is in pain emotionally, as he starts to weep on the ground. We can understand more about the character’s psychological state just by the images of his face, and his body language.

Stephen Spielberg uses colour really effectively in this first part of the film. Everything is bright, to a certain extent. The sky is a greyed blue colour, there are images of white gave stones that have a hint of greyness as well. I suppose it gives us the normality ...

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