Saving Private Ryan is an epic war film detailing the search for a single soldier so his family can still have one son left after the war. The film focuses on the inter character dynamics of the squad from the landing at Omaha beach to the final battle at the bridge. As the group moves from place to place looking for Private Ryan, they are exposed to the various emotional horrors of war that rival the physical horror of the beach assault. Once the remaining soldiers find Private Ryan, instead of immediately going home they decide to stay and fight in order to satisfy their ultimate mission: win the war. Saving Private Ryan is a war epic that celebrates the service done by the soldiers while remaining critical of the very idea of war. There
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This makes sense considering the filmmaking praises the actions of individual soldiers while shocking images of violence undercut the patriotic fervor often associated with the Second World War. For example, none of the characters give any speeches about the grand ideas of liberty and democracy, but instead grovel about the pointlessness of their mission. Saving Private Ryan deliberately challenges the audiences’ expectations and ideas of how the Second World War should be portrayed and how it actually was fought. Fortunately, this theme is woven naturally into the narrative and not ham fistedly forced upon the …show more content…
These films like Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, and Platoon were all deconstructing the very idea of war on film and are incredibly focused on the contemplation of various aspects of war in the culture as a genre. In contrast, Saving Private Ryan takes the critiques levied at the war genre by these other films and reincorporates them into a more mainstream story reconstructing the genre. The resulting popularity of the film caused a small surge of World War 2 related productions such as Pearl Harbor, Flags of Our Fathers, and Letters from Iwo Jima. These later films take an even greater shift away from heavy inward contemplation and move towards a less critical viewpoint of the
This makes sense considering the filmmaking praises the actions of individual soldiers while shocking images of violence undercut the patriotic fervor often associated with the Second World War. For example, none of the characters give any speeches about the grand ideas of liberty and democracy, but instead grovel about the pointlessness of their mission. Saving Private Ryan deliberately challenges the audiences’ expectations and ideas of how the Second World War should be portrayed and how it actually was fought. Fortunately, this theme is woven naturally into the narrative and not ham fistedly forced upon the …show more content…
These films like Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, and Platoon were all deconstructing the very idea of war on film and are incredibly focused on the contemplation of various aspects of war in the culture as a genre. In contrast, Saving Private Ryan takes the critiques levied at the war genre by these other films and reincorporates them into a more mainstream story reconstructing the genre. The resulting popularity of the film caused a small surge of World War 2 related productions such as Pearl Harbor, Flags of Our Fathers, and Letters from Iwo Jima. These later films take an even greater shift away from heavy inward contemplation and move towards a less critical viewpoint of the