Not just another dead soldier: Subjectivity in Saving Private Ryan April 19, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Artfully Deranged, Audience , trackbackSaving Private Ryan is a very subjective film that paints a glorious view of heroic American soldiers sent to save the world from evil. Whether this is a problem or not is for the audience to decide but it has continually split critics over the merits of the film. However, to examine how the film uses its subjectivity within the narrative, it is possible to look at its focalisation, narrative point of view, and the careful construction and control of spectatorial knowledge.
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’.
‘Retardation’, as David Bordwell describes as a factor of the ‘gap’ in story information, occurs when the plot postpones revealing certain items of fibula information. In this respect, we arrive at the ‘point of view’ of the narrative in Saving Private Ryan. The constant throughout the film is a clear delineation between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, and this is reinforced through retardation. For example, in the initial first battle scene we are given key expositional details. Firstly, the shots of the American flag followed by an old man visiting graves. This is then followed by shots of an empty beach covered in debris, before centering on Miller in the boat. He is wearing U.S army uniform sporting a clearly defined U.S flag. This visual clue alone ties the soldiers in with the opening shot of an old man visiting graves via the flags prominence. Finally, the non-diegetic title of ‘Normandy, 1944 – D-Day’ delineates not only a flashback, but uses audience ideology and their prior expectations to set the scene of America going to war. Our initial belief is that Miller is the old man in the first scene, but as I will discuss later, this is not the case. However, that is a minor detail in that whoever the soldier is, he represents the U.S and quickly it is established that the narrative point of view is on the side of the Americans.
As mentioned earlier when discussing the narrative focalisation through distributed exposition, the audience is continually presented with the ‘heroic Americans’ and ‘barbaric Germans’. Examples include the eventual introduction of the Nazi soldiers as they stare down the barrels of their guns killing U.S soldiers. Additionally, in a later scene Miller and his men decide to secure a Nazi outpost. We are given the information that they go to fight but we only hear the gun battle, we don’t see it. Then the guns stop firing, and we are introduced to a German soldier held at gun point, with one U.S soldier shouting at him, ‘Why did you kill him’, referring to a U.S comrade who had just been shot dead. If we take this as the ‘initial’ scene (the audience hearing the bullets being fired as prior plot events), we are presented with the question of why are we, through Miller and his men, in remorse over the death of one U.S soldier, while two dead German soldiers lie dead in the background? The fact is we don’t ask the question because we are not allowed to – if the narrative hadn’t taken its point of view with Miller, and from the U.S perspective, then such remorse wouldn’t have been so easily centralised with the U.S soldier. A prime example of the point of view being reversed is in Wolfgang Peterson’s Das Boot, where our remorse if firmly centered on German navy soldiers.
Retardation also affects the film’s point of view in a more conventional sense. Before it highlighted the plight of good versus evil - the Americans versus the German’s - the film opens with the old man viewing gravestones, then we are established in flashback and our attention is brought to Captain Miller, a much younger man. This suggests, in story terms, that Miller is the old man, and he is recalling the events of the time he took part in D-Day where many of his friends and countrymen were to die. Therefore, the ‘initial’ scene or as drama theorists call it, the ‘point of attack’ is set up, and our immediate belief is that the following information simply confirms our belief the old man is Miller. Unlike the way in which the Germans are interweaved in the story via distributed exposition, the narrative utilises what the audience believes in order to create a shock or surprise by the end, much like a mystery film. This concentrated exposition is delayed until the end in order to maintain the highest possible level of surprise. As Miller dies we wonder how he can be by the graves, but through a dissolve from the young Private Ryan’s face (a character we meet much later in the story) to the old man’s – (they both have the same forlorn facial expression) – confirms that our understanding of the old man was wrong. Sternberg calls this ‘the rise and fall of first impressions’[2] Bordwell claims that ‘concentrated exposition supplies a strong primacy effect, solid grounds for confident hypotheses’[3], so in using this narrative technique at the end, it could be argued that it attempts to leave the audience with a solidified view on the events portrayed, and that you take away the subjective view expressed throughout. For instance, this could be a technique of not allowing the audience to ask too many questions about a point of view that is excessively subjective and essentially biased. It could be seen as taking the audience’s attention off such elements as the German’s portrayal, as you think about how the plot fooled you into thinking the two characters were one and the same. The narrative acts much like a magician: he/she has you looking at one hand, while he/she hides the playing card in the other. A much more extreme example would be The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer 1995), yet Saving Private Ryan still uses the technique. In holding back information, then releasing it at the end, the filmmakers have the ability to cause shock and surprise. Not only this, when re-watching the film a now knowledgeable audience would look at it in a different way providing a differing insight, and via the suppression of gaps already discussed, and the ‘surprise’ exposition at the end, the film manages to almost pull the wool over our eyes and centre us on its point of view.
Additionally, like most narratives, the plot repeats to ‘reinforce assumptions, inferences, and hypotheses about story information’.[4] A simple example of this in terms of Saving Private Ryan is the non-diegetic title of ‘Normandy’ telling us where we are. After the main battle, one of Miller’s men puts soil into a small tin marked ‘France’. He places it in his bag next to other similar tins with country names written on in the same handwriting, and with the same blue pen. This suggests he takes soil from each country he visits as a souvenir, and with him taking soil and putting it in a tin marked ‘France’, this infers he is now in Normandy, France. It could also help the audience know that Normandy is in France, for those who did not know. Whereas this sort of repetition reinforces story information, we can relate the repetition of plot information to the narrative point of view. The subjective view of the German’s is repeated because according to Bordwell, by ‘repeating its own commentary’ it adheres ‘to a consistent point of view’.[5] For example, the shot of a German soldier constantly shooting an automatic rifle is shown several times. Later we are presented with the ‘barbaric’ Nazi soldier who swears he did not shoot Miller’s medic. Remorse is shown for the one dead American soldier while two dead German’s lie as mere objects in the background. The ‘heroic’ American’s allow the ‘barbaric’ German to go, however, his ‘barbarism’ is reinforced when he returns in the final battle seen shooting American soldiers dead. Eventually, a ‘heroic’ American soldier kills the ‘barbaric’ German. While we continually see the American’s discussing the morality of war throughout the film, no attention of the plot is given to the story of that particular soldier when he is not interacting with Miller and his men. The soldier could just have easily been discussing the same subjects: why he didn’t want to fight, or whether he actually agreed with the Nazis motives, or whether he was so scared of being killed if he didn’t fight, he just had to do as he was ordered. Therefore, the plot not only repeats information to make it easy to follow the story, but it repeats information to maintain its own point of view.
Finally, in terms of the control of spectatorial knowledge, you have to look for the optical and aditory clues. As already mentioned, we are presented with a very subjective view on the allies involvement during World War II, and our range of knowledge is restricted to the character of Miller (or Private Ryan, if he is recalling what Miller tells him before he dies). In the initial battle scene, we follow Miller’s movements – when he stops, we stop; when he hides, we hide with him. It is our interpretation of what he sees and hears that forms our own judgement. The use of muffled/distorted sound centralises on him, in that we can imagine that is what he is hearing either because his ears have been injured, hence the distorted sound, or an inference to his psychological state in that he is trying to block out the noise. This gives the audience a direct indication that our knowledge of the story is based on and around him.
In terms of the narrative’s communicativeness, Miller may see German soldiers scream out in pain, get blown up, die etc., yet we only see his countrymen get hurt. This subjective view allows us to centralise our attention on him, with the story information of German soldiers dying, being restricted in the plot. This restriction of knowledge forces the audience to stay loyal to the character of Miller. He’s fighting the ‘enemy’ (clearly delineated in the ‘focalisation’ of the narrative), we fight the enemy; he hates to see his countrymen die, but doesn’t care about German deaths – so do we, and so on…
The film however, ‘deviates from its internal norm of communicativeness which becomes a mark of suppressiveness’[6] by showing German soldiers from behind staring down the barrel of a gun, firing continuously looking through the gun’s viewfinder. This, for a slight moment on several occasions, takes us out of Miller’s subjective view and into an objective, yet restricted view of the German soldier. This works on two levels, the first being the objective view which shows us American soldiers getting killed, but it also gives us an obvious reason for their deaths - the German sniper’s bullet. Typical ideology and conventional moral value suggests that killing/murder is wrong so this objective view only reinforces the subjective view of Miller. Secondly, it is still restricted in that all we see is a German killing machine; there are no German deaths, so this again reinforces the main character’s subjective view.
The film uses uncommunicativeness to create tension much like a mystery film hides/chooses not to divulge story information in the plot, in order to create tension when enigmas are revealed. For example, in the final stages of the film, as we have throughout the film, we follow Miller’s men on their mission. The initial quest is complete, however, after a new conflict arises for the protagonist, Miller and his men have to defend a bridge from German attack. The concealment of story information comes in the form of not knowing where the German’s are. We know from character discourse that they are close; we also know they will come close to the bridge. The plot provides us with auditory clues in that we hear German soldier’s talking, and a German general on a loud speaker commanding troops. We are also given optical clues in that we see dust from German vehicles being created near by, and one American soldier looking from a clock tower sees German soldiers mobilising. By not showing us what the German’s are doing exactly, and not allowing us to understand the German’s discourse (for a non-German speaking audience), tension is built – will they find the Americans, will there be a battle, who will survive? This again delineates the narrative’s point of view, because the only reason the tension is not reversed (for example, we feel tension for the Germans), is because we know everything, in terms of the story, that we need to know about the Americans - we know where they are, we know who they are; we know their motives etc.
Bibliography:
David Bordwell - Narration In The Fiction Film
[1] Narration In The Fiction Film – David Bordwell – University of Wisconsin Press 1985. Pg. 54-61
[2] Narration In The Fiction Film – David Bordwell – University of Wisconsin Press 1985. Pg. 54-61
[3] Narration In The Fiction Film – David Bordwell – University of Wisconsin Press 1985. Pg. 54-61
[4] Narration In The Fiction Film – David Bordwell – University of Wisconsin Press 1985. Pg. 54-61
[5] Narration In The Fiction Film – David Bordwell – University of Wisconsin Press 1985. Pg. 54-61
[6] Narration In The Fiction Film – David Bordwell – University of Wisconsin Press 1985. Pg. 54-61
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