The Justification for War
The overarching theme of the film is one which questions the justification for the sacrifices required by war. The story follows a detachment of soldiers sent into enemy lines with a single goal: to bring back a private named Ryan in order to send him home alive. Ryan’s three brothers have been killed in action and the political powers that be decide that his death would be a public relations disaster whereas saving Mrs. Ryan’s only remaining son would be just the opposite. By the time the mission is over, many lives have been sacrificed in exchange for Ryan’s survival. The story is thus a microcosm that thematically examines the justification for sacrifice during wartime which essentially places an arbitrarily higher value upon some lives than is placed upon others.
War Is Hell
The most famous sequence in the film is the harrowing depiction of the landing of Allied forces on Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion. This section of the film has been hailed by many soldiers as the most realistic battle sequence ever filmed. It is essentially twenty-four minutes of non-stop violent battle engagement that brings the phrase “war is hell” to visceral life. The rest of the movie builds steadily if less visually overpowering upon this theme. Even the mission itself comes under scrutiny by the solders tasked with risking their own lives to save a man none of them met, know, or ever even heard of. The film begins exploring this theme by tangibly putting the viewer directly in the middle of a hellish battle. The film ends by exploring how the various levels of the hellishness of war are applied on a random basis that is often strikingly unequal and unfair.
The Politics of War
The decision to send eight soldiers on an especially dangerous mission in order to save just one is based entirely on political expediency. Although justifications for going to war always revolve around patriotic calls for preserving one’s way of life against an enemy threatening to destroy those principles, the reality is the seemingly easy morality of good versus evil is always inspired by far less noble political agendas. The impact of political decisions made by men far away from the danger of the actual battle is most clearly defined when the detachment sent to save private Ryan find him only to realize that though he is a private Ryan he is not the right private Ryan. The lives of two men sharing the same name, with essentially the same kind of civilian life, doing the same thing as soldiers in the same war are revealed to be of significantly different worth. The life of one private Ryan is worth the sacrifice of eight other men while the life of the other is not. This worth is based not on any strategic or tactical advantage of one over the other but simply because political powers have deemed it to be so. By the end, the film is subtly asking the question that if saving one life during wartime is a politically-based decision, then what other decisions are driven politically rather than in the name of the national defense.
