Film Pre-AS Work

What Makes A Good Film?

Kacper Bojarski

The film I have chosen to talk about is Saving Private Ryan, a World War 2 movie from 1998. The movie’s plot revolves around Captain Miller’s 2nd Ranger Battalion after the D-Day landings, They’re assigned to find James Ryan, a paratrooper who gets sent home because his brothers died. The movie is infamous for it’s graphic D-Day landing scene with people getting mowed down and entire limbs being torn off, I think this is actually something good in the movie as the movie doesn’t try to whitewash the Normandy landings which were very gruesome. One Narrative aspect of the movie that I liked was after the landings two American soldiers see surrendering Wehrmacht soldiers who are saying “Please don’t shoot me! I am not German, I am Czech, I didn’t kill anyone! I am Czech!” in Czech to the Americans and they get shot while surrendering to the Americans, I think this was a powerful scene because it breaks away from the cliche that the Americans were good guys. During the opening scene where they get off the landing craft the camera moves in and out of the water and makes it look like it’s a first person perspective, this is a good feature as it helps immerse the viewer into the movie. A use of Mise-En-Scene that I liked was how the town of Rammel is portrayed as a war zone very clearly with the damaged buildings and debris on the floor, unlike a more recent film Dunkirk where it just looked like a abandoned seaside town. One prominent feature in the film is that the soldiers that are sent to get Ryan question if it is worth it to risk 8 people’s lives for one and whether their orders are legitimate and worthwhile. The style of the film often contrasts from the slow scenes when they are marching through the meadows and talking amongst themselves to the high action scenes like when they are defending the town of Rammel, this contrast allows people who enjoy various genres of movies to at least enjoy certain segments of the movie. Captain Miller’s death is a very moving scene because as he is dying he tells Ryan to make his life ‘worth it’ as the camera cuts to his hand, which in the movie starts shaking when he is stressed, which stops shaking and then he dies. Towards the end of the film there a is moving scene where the elderly Ryan visits the Normandy Memorial and goes to the grave of Captain Miller and breaks down in tears while asking if his life was worth it, referencing the scene with Captain Miller’s death. Overall throughout the movie the brutality of war and how whatever might seem right at the time might bite back, an example is when the squad attacks a destroyed radar station and capture one surrendering German soldier which the majority of the squad want to immediately execute. This causes conflict within the squad but they ultimately let him go, but in the attack on Rammel the very soldier that convinced them to release him sees him as a part of the unit that’s attacking. In conclusion i think that Saving Private Ryan is a good film because it challenges typical WW2 movie cliches and also that the scenery was very good even by today’s standards.