Analyzing and Comparing the Mise-en-scene of David O'Russel's Three Kings to Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan - Essay Example

Analyzing and Comparing the Mise-en-scene of David O'Russel's Three Kings to Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan War films have existed in the world since their inception. Since 1915, movies such as The Birth of a Nation, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, and Platoon, have been developed to show man’s ability to demolish one another and the impacts of those actions in the world history. David O’Russell knew the power of setting a story during the time of war, thus he came up with the most finely tuned, eccentrically conventional film Three Kings. Both Saving Private Ryan and Three Kings have effectively shown war in a resolute way that serves similar aims but achieves this in different manners. O’Russell’s Three Kings clearly uses the narrative device of an ethical story to relate the Gulf War’s moral lessons as well as to rewrite America’s ethical position over the people of Iraq through revising what was viewed as a moral defeat. The film tells a narrative of a gang of four U.S fighters on operations at the Gulf at the end of the dispute as they find out a map to one of the secrete bunkers of Saddam Hussein, containing huge amounts of Kuwait gold, and plan to steal it for their own gains. On the other hand, Steven Spielberg has been criticized for failing to employ narrative action basing on the moral and national purpose in his film Saving Private Ryan. This criticism can be understood in the perspective of the constraints placed on modern cinematic stories of war by the Vietnam syndrome (Andersen 193). Even though Three Kings is developed around a definitely American-based fictional plot, this film typically aims to bring in issues concerning Iraq and addresses it to a certain extent as the film develops. On the other hand, Saving Private Ryan tries to reillusion American national distinctiveness in the wake of Vietnam by presenting a more distant past. The specific ethical justification for starting war and admitting its sacrifices and horrors is found in ethical campaigns against the Nazi plot of Holocaust. Through stitching the Holocaust into the movie, the film takes part in ‘Americanization’ of a memory of Holocaust, avoids Vietnam as a source of distressing memory, produces a redemptive national uniqueness, and constructs a moral usable past in the present. In both films, the use of imagery has been clearly utilized. Saving Private Ryan starts and ends with a shot of a flag that is faded and desaturated of color. The red colors have turned to pink, white to gray, and the blue colors have lost their color completely. The flag is transparent, moving forth and back in the centre of a cool dusk as the sunlight penetrates straight through it. The reason behind this is that the flag symbolizes a lost time and a fading generation. The American elites who fought to keep such banners were gone and the film was developed for their sake. Such features show that Saving Private Ryan may be the greatest film ever produced about horror and heroism in war situations. It shows how heroic conduct can be unusually difficult, impulsive, lucky, instinctive, and deliberate, all at once. In contrast, Three Kings had mixed receptions on its release. In general, reviews involved praise for technical elements of the film as well as criticism of the way the Gulf War was presented. In the Washington Post, Stephen Hunter claimed the style of the film had the feeling second to none, as it re-imagines the past war movie post-modernly. He further concludes that the film was ideologically unremarkable. Similarly, Three Kings uses some sort of imagery in the storyline. At the start of the scene, a discussion goes on between Major Gates and his Staff Sergeant, standing near a helicopter. The image of a helicopter was used as an icon in this film, though not frequently used outside the scene (Andersen 194). At the beginning, when a shot cuts through, it is obvious that the positioning of the characters is to enable the blade to remain at the heart of the screen, right between the two conversing figures. The dialogue supports the connection with the Vietnam War. The Staff Sergeant takes off in the helicopter outside the shot. In this context, the scene illustrates the control of the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ in the American involvement in the Gulf War. As the helicopter flies, the Vietnam imagery takes off with it and is never to be seen again in the remaining part of the film. It is a clear indication that Three Kings uses solely the Gulf War imagery in its portrayal. It also suggests that the ethical issue raised in the film specifically refers to the Gulf. Though Three Kings may infer and address these aspects in the same way as Saving Private Ryan, it frames the issues in the context of the Gulf War. Spielberg uses his storyline wisely to give some hidden meanings, which a viewer must interpret logically to get a clear understanding. By use of a proper technique of character traits, he illustrates that of those who succeed; few feel any true sense of triumph, only shaking relief at being alive. The sequence, too, illustrates some of the key issues of the film. Men scream out to safety or endure a glancing shot, only to be cut down a few minutes afterwards. Later, viewers learn of the perspective that the whole production of the framing tool is already suspicious or outright terrible. Through the beginning with a heroic scuffle, Spielberg achieves the need to develop characters from the onset; he creates a place and time for character motivation and carries this through the whole film. Three Kings does not give this kind of explanatory technique. Instead, the film presents the characters as realizing later that the U.S. has failed to destroy Hussein’s government and save Iraq. In the film, the U.S. is wrong, not because of intervening in the affairs of the Middle East but because it does not follow up to accomplish its mission to protect the good Arabs and strike the bad ones – a mission that resembles neocolonialism. The heroes in this film, in terms of its logic, make right the faults of America by saving a small grouping of civilians in Iraq, thus perpetuating the neocolonialism structure of heroic relation to the narrative to address the problems of those who cannot tackle them on their own. An important aspect of Saving Private Ryan is the ridiculous concept of its realism – a fact that could not be a big issue if the film shows itself as a representation of war as it really is. The whole series at Neuville represents a wash representing the ridiculous view of Caparzo griping a French lady given by her parents to seek for safety – an act he performs despite the Germans’ presence in the village. The exchange of gunfire demolishes the nearby wall to disclose Germans idling around, resulting in a standoff, at ease. It is all a way too calculated, empty tension, feeling like manipulation throughout the film (Andersen 200). On his part, O’Russell gives a distinct appearance of the film by using a music video. This is especially emphasized in the introduction credits where a party atmosphere is portrayed as the troops dance, play, sunbathe, and work out. Short cuts, loud music, and motion distortion such as slow-motion photography give a sense of modern MTV video feeling of the film and present the outlook of the Gulf War as a crisis with little effort, little suffering, and a significant amount of fun. This is a mirror to the television style, which is an associate of the war and ruled American war reports. In conclusion, these two fictional American war films analyze much information by use of the narrative of conflict to describe a study of beliefs and attitudes surrounding military operations. The main features in both were to show a collective proof of public trauma of defeat, efforts to restore the public self-image, and expression of guilt for the impacts of failed American policies. However, each film producer utilizes various and sometimes similar techniques to arrive at these aims. Works Cited Andersen, Robin. A Century of Media, a Century of War. New York: Peter Lang, 2006. Print. Read More