There are flashbacks of Ryan's home, a farm in Iowa with its rolling fields and big sky, which contrast with the bombed out ruins of a quaint French village about to be the theatre for a bloody battle between the Allies and the Nazis. It is the key to unlocking memory's images. With hand-held camera and sometimes the point of view from just behind a Nazi gunner's shoulder, these opening shots at once demythologize and redefine the war movie. War is hell. War is tide turning blood red.
War is dismembered limbs.
War is men lying in agony beyond relief or saving. War is life one moment and death the next. After that battle, Capt. Miller is ordered to recruit a small platoon to find and save Private Ryan. But even the initial 30-minute battle sequence is set within a broader context.