The film begins with a short sequence in modern-day France that shows one man visiting a particular grave in the sea of white crosses that marks the memorial to those who died liberating the country. From there, the film slips more than five decades back in time, to the second world war and June the 6th - 1944. The D-Day invasion at "Bloody Omaha" beach forms a prologue to the main story. Following this half-hour opening sequence, we learn that two of the four Ryan brothers died in this action, while a third perished elsewhere. Now when the U.S. army chief of staff, General George C. Marshall hears of this and that the mother is receiving all three telegrams on the same day, he decides to send a group of men into the Frensh countryside to find and rescue the fourth son, paratrooper Private James Ryan.
For Spielberg, war isn't about heroic action, although Saving Private Ryan arguably contains several war heroes. Foremost, it's a movie about regular men and what they are capable of accomplishing in extraordinary times. Instead of giving us larger-than-life characters, Spielberg gives us characters who are disturbed by what they've seen on the battlefield. They're tired, wet, and confused. Most of them haven't been able to sleep for several days. They just want to go home, but they have jobs to do. Instead of giving us war as a tactical maneuver, Spielberg gives us war as human experience. .
Saving Private Ryan quickly and brutally dispels the notion that war is anything but vicious, demoralizing violence that makes a cruel joke out of the human body and spirit. Although the film is only loosely based on a true incident, it's hard not to accept these characters and events as real and this is one very important aspect when looking at the representation of war in Saving Private Ryan, tghe realism of the representation of war.
In making this film work, Spielberg seems to have realized that he had to recreate the reality of war to make us experience it for what it really is.
