SAVING PRIVATE RYAN

US, 1998, 170 minutes,Colour.
Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Jeremy Davies, Matt Damon.
Directed by Steven Spielberg.

Six days in June, 1944.

D-Day? and the troops land on Omaha Beach in Normandy. One of the platoons is led by Captain Miller who is then asked to lead a group of his survivors on a special mission to find Private Ryan. Ryan is one of four sons in action; when the other three are killed, Washington wants one to survive and go home to his mother.

Miller and six men take on the mission. In an American occupied town they find another Private Ryan. They continue on, encountering a German guard post where a sniper kills one of the men. The translator, Corporal Upham, persuades Miller not to kill the sniper. They eventually do find Ryan in a squad defending a bridge but he refuses to leave.

During an attack, Upham cowers afraid while the sniper whom they had released shoots one of the team. Miller is also killed but US planes save the troops and the bridge is held. Upham confronts the sniper and kills him.

Decades later Ryan and his family visit Miller's grave.

With Saving Private Ryan, critics and audiences alike commented on how skilful Steven Spielberg was in recreating the 1944 Normandy invasion, a tour-de-force visualising and comment on the experience of war. The film opens with the landing and, with handheld camera, skilful editing and special effects, audiences feel as if they had experienced something of that heroic but dreadful landing.

The rest of the film is more familiar, the story of a mission, led by Tom Hanks, to find Private Ryan. The mission has quite a number of encounters with the Germans, again some brutal fights that do not shirk the violence or the aggressive moods and behaviour that war action and the death of friends brings out. But once Private Ryan has been found, the film takes another turn and immerses the audience again in the throes of battle.

The film is often very sad and quite moving in its portrayal of its characters and their dilemmas, especially Tom Hanks whose presence gives the film its strength in a character who wants integrity, even decency, in situations that seem impossible and are horrible. Spielberg has brought passion to this film. It communicates a great deal about warfare, especially war in close-up. Audiences could feel very angry with Hitler and his cohorts that their personal madness and ambitions could wreak such havoc on so many people.

But that, of course, is not the whole story - and Spielberg is providing us with a cinematic experience that involves us emotionally first so that we will give some reflection afterwards to the meaning of war, the rightness of causes or not and the destruction and loss of human life that must follow.

1.The acclaim for the film, the graphic presentation of war, explorations of war? An American perspective on war? The awards, the Oscars?

2.The work of Steven Spielberg, the range, Schindler’s List and Private Ryan as his perspectives on World War Two? The Empire of the Sun?

3.The war tradition about World War Two, D-Day?, The Longest Day? The focus on missions? The background of the American public and the support of the war, the grief at deaths?

4.The structure of the film, the six days, the scenes in the cemetery, the grove, the flashbacks, the meaning of the flashbacks in this context? For understanding, for the experience of war, the emotional impact, intellectual impact?

5.The D-Day? sequence and its fame: camerawork, editing, the restaging of the landing, the sick, the troops landing, being mown down? Captain Miller and his orders? The men, the boats, the landing on the beach, the weapons, under fire, the tanks, the slaughter, the maiming, the role of the medics, the role of the chaplains? The advance, the pipe, the bunkers, winning against the odds? Sounds and silence? The impact, the understanding of strategies, the actual experience of being under fire, death and mutilation, the achievement on the beaches of Normandy?

6.The telegram, the officers, General Marshall (and Lincoln), the decision? The arguments? Marshall’s final letter?

7.Mrs Ryan, at home, the kitchen, the priest and his visit, the family background, the sons at war, her grief? The deaths? The wanting to save Private Ryan?

8.Captain Miller, his personality, leadership of the men, the company, regrouping? His orders? His picking the range of men? Upham and his awkwardness? The arguments pro and con?

9.The mission, walking, the tanks, the fire in the field the town? The group cut in half? The French family, the girl (and the slap)? Deaths?

10.The personalities within the group (and the recognisable character actors so that audiences could identify them)? At work, the role of the sniper? Wade and the bloodletter? The arguments, the jokes?

11.Mike Horvath, character, leadership, back-ups, loyalty, the verdicts, on mission, death?

12.Upham as a central character, his background, weediness, his reactions, the ambush, the soldier and the rules, later and the execution and its effect on him?

13.Ill, going out, his death? The tension and Reiben walking away? The book about his career and using it? Reiben and his relationship with Miller, suspicious, his becoming father-figure? Letting the soldier go and its irony?

14.Searching for Private Ryan, the various detours, the false Ryans, the effect on the group? Their experience of moving through the war in the Normandy towns?

15.Finding Private Ryan, his reaction, his character? Sympathy? Admiration? His staying with the group?

16.The siege, Miller and his homely talk?

17.The strategy, the decision to stay?

18.The final twenty minutes, the battle, the towns, the tanks, the snipers, the devastation? Upham? The bridge? The deaths?

19.The framing of the film with the cemetery sequences? Miller as old? His own reflections? The effect of the war on him? Thinking about the aftermath of World War Two and the succeeding decades? Later wars?

20.The realities of war, their heroics, suffering? The criticism of warfare? The patriotism and the American flag?