Saving Private Ryan: A Visceral Experience and Spielberg's Retelling of D-Day

Saving Private Ryan is one of those films that enters your senses like a hailstorm of daggers and sticks to the very fiber of your psyche. Steven Spielberg once again returns to the historical period of World War II to open a glimpse of the horrors of war. In the tradition of Schindler’s List, he removes much of the glory and gets right down to the harrowing grit. This tale of the Allied invasion of Normandy and the days following is just about as close to war as you can get with filmmaking.

The date is June 6th, 1944. The place is Omaha Beach, the west coast of France. On this day, the largest amphibious invasion in history was to be the turning point in the war against Hitler, beating down his defenses to allow Allied entry into the European continent. In the days following the invasion, Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) and his men are sent on a new and dangerous assignment: find the last surviving brother of a Midwestern family and send him home.

From the get-go, Saving Private Ryan is one of the most intense films you will see. Entire groups of men are mowed down by German machine gun fire as they struggle from the landing crafts. Men crouch behind whatever cover they can as explosions rock every inch of ground. The screaming, the blood, and the carnage is so startlingly vivid that it seems as if someone filmed the actual invasion with a camera. All that’s missing is the smell of gunpowder and seared flesh.

Every period detail is honed to a fine point. The sets are brilliantly conceived, portraying the ruined French towns and German-occupied countryside. The landscape ripples with the sounds of war. Panzer tanks creak as they crush the rubble of the shelled streets, and explosions ripple through the screen. If Spielberg set out to make a film showing the horrors of war, he certainly succeeded.