In focus

Rating: 10/10 (10 August 1998)

When I think of D-Day, a picture comes to mind. In Life magazine, Robert Capa the famous war photographer, had a picture he took at D-Day. He landed with the men at Normandy on June 6, 1944 and was nearly killed. "The water was very cold, and the beach still more than 100 yards away. The bullets tore holes in the water around me, and I made for the nearest steal obstacle...it was still very early and very gray for good pictures, but the gray water and gray sky made the little men, dodging under the surrealistic designs of Hitler's anti-invasion braintrust, very effective.", he said later of the day. The photograph is very grainy. You can see the steal barricades and a soldier, blurry in the foreground gritting his teeth, swimming towards his destiny. Clearly Capa was afraid while taking the picture. Speilberg has filled in Capa's grainy, blurry photo for me. I can see Speilberg's Capt. Miller scared, crawling towards his destiny; the destiny of many. I always thought that these men were brave, but it seems more real knowing the specific horrors the endured. It is no longer a blurred and grainy Life Magazine photo.