The definitive stylistic signature which recurs throughout the films of Steven Spielberg is a shot of characters looking at something happening off-screen. This is usually something amazing or unusual and these shots are the stamp of Spielberg’s belief that watching a film itself is as wondrous an experience as anything happening on the screen.
The justifiably famous and lauded D-Day landing sequence in Saving Private Ryan is interesting for the way in which it reverses Spielberg’s signature stylistic element. It is not that the camera does not show Captain Miller looking at something happening off-screen. There are multiple of shots of Miller looking at the devastation taking place around him. These “Spielbergian shots of people looking” have a much different feel than usual, however. In part this is because the camera just as often takes the point of view of Miller and reveals the carnage he is seeing. The difference lies in the reaction of Capt. Miller to what he sees. The look on his face is not one of magical wonder but sheer horror at the almost inexplicable violence taking place. What Spielberg accomplishes in this sequence is something different from what he usually does with his shots of people looking. The audience very quickly identifies with Capt. Miller and what he sees flies in the face of everything that the movies have taught viewers about war.
Saving Private Ryan opens with that twenty-four minute long sequence in which every single shot systematically undoes all the illusions about the heroism of war, but not the justification for its necessity. There is no room for bravery or heroism because the only thing any soldier can possibly think about is pure survival. The shots showing Miller looking around him are directly at odds with the way in which Spielberg usually engages this stylistic motif. Watching disembodied limbs floating in the water and men being shot in the head through their helmets is not the same experience as looking at an alien spaceship making first contact with humans or even a predatory shark attacking children swimming. There is no room for appreciation of the wondrous because the only thing matters is not being one of those men losing an arm or learning that a helmet offers no protection against a bullet. What Capt. Miller is shown to be looking at is nothing less than a hellish nightmare. The audience knows that heroes will be identified afterward but in the heat of the battle heroism becomes simply another word for survival.
Spielberg has explicitly noted that the mission of the men in this movie cannot be justified under any argument. Eight men are literally chosen to be sacrificed to save the life of just one man for purely political reasons. As the story progresses, Capt. Miller and the audience both bear witness to individual acts of heroism but ultimately what both he and the audience are witnessing is a story in which none of those acts of heroism were necessary from a strategic point of view. Private Ryan’s survival will have no significant impact upon the course of the war any more than the deaths of those sent to save him. Except for Ryan himself, the movie suggests, everything that happens after that memorable opening sequence on Omaha Beach is a complete waste of time, resources, and manpower. Nothing substantial is gained by saving Private Ryan while everything is lost to those the soldiers chosen to save him.
That D-Day sequence is a cinematic tour-de-force and generally recognized as one of the highlights of Spielberg’s career. It is much more than simply a talented filmmaker showing off his considerable skills, however. By dropping the viewer directly into the middle of the invasion which ultimately turned the tide of the war for good against the Nazis, Spielberg conveys that the horrors of war can be justified as a way of sacrificing the few for the many. The rest of the film is a harsh indictment of how the politics of war often demand the sacrifice of the few for a goal that is completely underserving of being the beneficiary of such sacrifice. Like Capt. Miller, the film forces the audience to unflinchingly take a good long look at the difference between justifiable sacrifice during wartime and sacrifices that are thoroughly unjustifiable. It is not the horror of war itself which is hellish so much as the rationale for that war.
