Notes 2 & 3

Note 2:

In the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan, a sheer American flag is violently waving in the wind with trumpets replacing the silence which expresses a patriotic tone for the rest of the sequence. As the movie proceeds, soldiers are being shown shaking, vomiting, and saying prayers out loud expecting death to be knocking on their door at any moment. The struggle to be the men they were trained to be slowly begins to get the best of them resulting in tears flooding down their cheeks producing a desperate way of grasping their current situation. Not only are the soldiers struggling for survival but alongside them is the camera who appears to even be drowning in the water after arriving in Normandy and also periodically is having blood being splattered onto the lens. With the shadows in each scene being a more contrasted than in other movies, a vicious and  bleak tone are showing their colors, or lack of colors in this case. While the film is generally in muted colors, such as army green, beige, and gray, the ocean is a bright read in result from the number of casualties being killed showcasing a violent battle currently underway. 

Note 3:

VIETNAMESE MORNING
by: Curt Bennett

Before war starts
In early morning
The land is breath taking.
The low, blazing, ruby sun
Melts the night-shadow pools
Creating an ethereal appearance.

Each miniature house and tree
Sprouts its, long, thin shadow
Stretching long on dewy ground.
The countryside is panoramic maze,
Jungle, hamlets, hills and waterways,
Bomb-craters, paddies, broken-backed bridges.

Rice fields glow sky-sheens,
Flat, calm, mirrored lakes
Reflect the morning peace.
The patchwork quilted earth,
Slashed by snaking tree-lines,
Slumbers in dawn's blue light.

Sharp, rugged mountain peaks
Sleep  in a soft rolling blanket
Of clinging, slippery, misty fog.
Effortlessly, languidly, it flows
Shyly spreading wispy tentacles out
To embrace the earth with velvet arms.

In Curt Bennett's poem "Vietnamese Morning," it takes a different approach to war by not describing the brutality of war but rather how peaceful it is just before it. It backs up the quote that there's always a "calm before the storm" describing the fog as it begins to "embrace the earth with velvet arms" producing a gentle and caring personification of the fog. This poem as a whole exudes a peaceful tone with the even thought of war being ignored aside from the first line.