saving private ryan essay topic

“Saving Private Ryan” by Steven Spielberg Essay

The film directed by Steven Spielberg, “Saving Private Ryan,” has been awarded five Oscars and is rightly considered one of the best pictures about the Second World War. The film is based on real events and aptly portrays the senseless brutality of war with the help of realistic footage. In it, Spielberg aims to instill the feeling of horror and abhorrence for war in the viewers.

The first footage shows the soldiers inside the amphibian a minute before landing. Some pray, others vomit. The captain gives direct instructions and the back wall of the amphibian reclines. Viewers see soldiers running down the gangplank, some falling, wounded, and killed, others jumping up, throwing grenades, and shooting. The footage shows how the entire first row of soldiers is mowed down by machine gun fire, then the second row, more and more… Soldiers fall into deep water and stain it with blood, drowned by the weight of ammunition. Someone crawls ashore to be finished off there. The first scenes of the film are profoundly realistic and portray the feelings of soldiers at the front, bewildered, terrified, and still doing their best to defeat the enemy. Instead of glorifying war, viewers feel terror and resentment at the lives lost, young people, killed before they took their first steps on the beach and the injustice of war.

The idea of war as a real horror is further developed as the film progresses. The scene of bloody chaos on Omaha Beach in Spielberg’s film lasts twenty-six minutes, but it seems that the time stops as viewers are shattered by the emotions the film generates. As for me, when I saw the film, I was so emotionally depressed I could hardly speak. I believe the film won awards not because of its rather commonplace plot but because Spielberg managed to show all the horrors of war. I genuinely believe that people who saw the film will never want to resolve problems through naked force and will seek to find compromise instead. Perhaps this would be the best tribute to the film created by Spielberg as well as to the people who fought for the nation in the Second World War.

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Saving Private Ryan Themes

By steven spielberg.

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Written by Timothy Sexton

The Justification for War

The overarching theme of the film is one which questions the justification for the sacrifices required by war. The story follows a detachment of soldiers sent into enemy lines with a single goal: to bring back a private named Ryan in order to send him home alive. Ryan’s three brothers have been killed in action and the political powers that be decide that his death would be a public relations disaster whereas saving Mrs. Ryan’s only remaining son would be just the opposite. By the time the mission is over, many lives have been sacrificed in exchange for Ryan’s survival. The story is thus a microcosm that thematically examines the justification for sacrifice during wartime which essentially places an arbitrarily higher value upon some lives than is placed upon others.

War Is Hell

The most famous sequence in the film is the harrowing depiction of the landing of Allied forces on Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion. This section of the film has been hailed by many soldiers as the most realistic battle sequence ever filmed. It is essentially twenty-four minutes of non-stop violent battle engagement that brings the phrase “war is hell” to visceral life. The rest of the movie builds steadily if less visually overpowering upon this theme. Even the mission itself comes under scrutiny by the solders tasked with risking their own lives to save a man none of them met, know, or ever even heard of. The film begins exploring this theme by tangibly putting the viewer directly in the middle of a hellish battle. The film ends by exploring how the various levels of the hellishness of war are applied on a random basis that is often strikingly unequal and unfair.

The Politics of War

The decision to send eight soldiers on an especially dangerous mission in order to save just one is based entirely on political expediency. Although justifications for going to war always revolve around patriotic calls for preserving one’s way of life against an enemy threatening to destroy those principles, the reality is the seemingly easy morality of good versus evil is always inspired by far less noble political agendas. The impact of political decisions made by men far away from the danger of the actual battle is most clearly defined when the detachment sent to save private Ryan find him only to realize that though he is a private Ryan he is not the right private Ryan. The lives of two men sharing the same name, with essentially the same kind of civilian life, doing the same thing as soldiers in the same war are revealed to be of significantly different worth. The life of one private Ryan is worth the sacrifice of eight other men while the life of the other is not. This worth is based not on any strategic or tactical advantage of one over the other but simply because political powers have deemed it to be so. By the end, the film is subtly asking the question that if saving one life during wartime is a politically-based decision, then what other decisions are driven politically rather than in the name of the national defense.

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Saving Private Ryan Questions and Answers

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Study Guide for Saving Private Ryan

Saving Private Ryan study guide contains a biography of director Steven Spielberg, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Saving Private Ryan
• Saving Private Ryan Summary
• Character List
• Director's Influence

Essays for Saving Private Ryan

Saving Private Ryan essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Saving Private Ryan, directed by Steven Spielberg.

• The Anti-War Themes of Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan

Wikipedia Entries for Saving Private Ryan

• Introduction

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Saving Private Ryan by Steven Spielberg

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Published: Jan 4, 2019

Words: 897 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

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