Saving Private Ryan is an Oscar-winning film written by Robert Rodat and directed by Steven Spielberg which was released to great acclaim in 1998. While the focus of most critical attention was devoted to the legendary harrowing D-Day landing sequence, that is only one small section of a film that has much to say and ask about the ultimate justification for war.
Less than halfway through the movie, it becomes quite obvious that every single major character is potentially targeted for an on-screen death. The mission of these characters is to, as the title indicates, save one Private Ryan who has recently become the last surviving member of four Ryan brothers fighting in World War II. Concerned with the potential public relations nightmare that would result from every single member of the family being killed in action, political powers in Washington decide to send a detachment of soldiers into the thick of battle with the solitary goal of bringing Private Ryan back home alive and well to his grieving mother. The story thus follows that mission which sees that detachment of soldiers chosen especially for this objective, who do not even know Ryan, picked off one by one as they make their way to the private’s position dangerously within enemy territory.
Director Steven Spielberg has gone on record as denying that this mission is justified in any way since it is basically one in which many are sacrificed simply to save a single soldier for no compelling strategic reason. The film therefore raises questions about themes related to heroism, political influence during wartime, and the whole rationalization of sending soldiers off to war in the first place. The argument over whether the mission to put multiple soldiers at risk for the sole purpose of saving one ultimately becomes the focus of this debate over the justification of war itself.
In essence, the mission which sees eight soldiers with families of their own back home sacrificing their lives to save another soldier they have never met is the entire concept of war in miniature. The film is what is any war but people sacrificing themselves for other people they don’t know and will never even meet. Private Ryan becomes a metaphor for every single soldier who ever returns home from battle alive while the members of the squad sent to save him are a metaphor for all those soldiers who are not so lucky.
At one point, the soldiers believe they have found their target only to learn that this Private Ryan is not the Private Ryan they are sent to save. This scene underscores the difficulty of justifying the mission in the movie and the idea of war in real life by asking what is the difference between the two Private Ryans. Both have people waiting for them back home so why should one gain priority over the other. That scene connects with the multiple sequences in which individual members of the detachment lose their lives as they face various encounters with the enemy. Not only is it difficult to justify the life of one Private Ryan being more important than the life of another Private Ryan, but it also impossible to justify Private Ryan’s life being more precious than those of Private Jackson or Corporal Wade or, especially, Captain Miller. If one were to justify putting eight men in danger to save just one, Captain Miller would be the most obvious choice since he has proven himself an inspirational leader whose actions in war can easily be termed more strategically essential than Private Ryan’s. If there is any justification in the sacrificing of some soldiers to save the lives of others, the comparison of Miller and Ryan would clearly be the starting point. Under any objective consideration, then, the life of Miller is most certainly not worth putting in jeopardy for the purpose of saving the life of Ryan.
It is impossible to conceive of the film ending with Miller surviving while Ryan is lost during the treacherous path back to safety. It is equally impossible to imagine them both surviving. The whole point of the film is that men like Miller die for the sake of saving men like Ryan. That is the central unfair inequity of war. Many people die whose lives would be deemed more worthy of saving than many of those who survive. The subtext, of course, is that Ryan, despite being a soldier in the battle, also represents everyone back home who never put on a uniform or spend a single day in combat. Saving Private Ryan thus becomes a metaphor for saving all the other concepts forwarded as justifications for going to war.
