Latest Essays

Not just another dead soldier: Subjectivity in Saving Private Ryan

In Saving Private Ryan, ‘focalisation’ forms a major part of the narrative as it ‘shapes our perception of the fabula [story]’[1]. The way in which it does this is by omitting story information in the plot to create a focal point for the narrative. As we are introduced to Captain Miller, the main character of the film, we are immediately focused on his part of the overall story. This is only a minor part of the focalisation that the narrative creates, because through the suppression of gaps we are quickly told who is on the side of the ‘bad’, and who is on the side of the ‘good’. In the initial battle sequence we know German soldiers must be dying. We see them shooting, yet this is all we see. This suppression of gaps helps focalise the story on Miller and the Americans while delineating a divide between what the plot believes are the good and bad. The gap however is temporary, as we see dead German bodies being searched and/or moved. We fill in the gap that other German soldiers must have died in the firefight previous. Although the gap is suppressed, ‘surprise’ is not its goal which is usually a major use of the suppressed gap. In this case, the gap (which we can imagine would be German soldiers screaming in pain, and dying in much the same way as the Americans) localises our attention on the American soldier’s deaths. It creates a causal relationship in that the ‘barbaric’ German bullets kill the ‘helpless but heroic’ Americans. Therefore when, in this case, we fill in the gap, through the subjective view presented to us, the dead German soldiers are mere trophies of the ‘heroic’ American’s who have survived this long. Because of this set-up, when American soldiers later kill surrendering Germans there is less a sense of reversed-barbarism more an awful feeling of payback. The cause and effect of the events presented in the first battle work on the audiences generic expectations of a war movie, and reinforce the ‘good’ and ‘evil’ divides. As mentioned, it is very subjective as we are told who is ‘good’ and who is ‘bad’. (READ FULL ESSAY - CLICK HERE)