Mood and Tone of a Scene
Saving Private Ryan
One particular scene in the film “Saving Private Ryan” that gives an unsettling, queasy mood, is a scene where two soldiers are shot after trying to surrender. After the Allied forces take over the Normandy Coast, they move farther into the country of Normandy and begin to wipe out German defense areas. After invading an area, two soldiers hop out of the trenches with their hands up pleading for their lives in a foreign language. Two U.S soldiers walk up to them and ask, “What? What was that?” and shoot them in the head a moment later. After shooting them, one of the soldiers says in a jokingly tone, “What was he trying to say?”, and the other soldier replies, “Look I washed for supper,” in a jokingly tone as well. Even though the two foreign soldiers were enemies, I felt it was uncalled for and quite foul for the two U.S. soldiers to kill them, despite them trying to surrender. The fact someone could take a life, especially someone trying to surrender, and laugh about it, really made me think how cruel people in this world can be.
After researching this scene a bit further, I found that the two soldiers coming out of the trenches surrendering were speaking Czech. The two foreign soldiers were trying to say, “Please don’t shoot me, I am not German, I am Czech, I did not kill anyone!” In addition from my research, I found that Czechoslovakia was conquered by Germany in 1939, and as a result Czechoslovakian soldiers and citizens were forced to fight for Germany. Just as in the film, other countries that were conquered by Germany were forced to aid and fight for Germany as well. Many lives that wanted no part of Nazi Germany’s reign of terror were forced to support them, or faced death, but ironically enough, either way these people were not safe. No matter what these people who were forced to aid did, they still faced death from Allied forces because they could not explain that they were being forced to help.
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