I saw that and literally paused the movie to go “holy shit, those guys are getting recycled” It’s disturbing in a weird way, really stuck with me more than anything else
“There’s no such thing as an anti-war film” when I heard this quote I immediately thought of Full Metal Jacket because it was meant to be anti-war but a lot of people ended up joining the marines.
As much as I tend to see Apocalypse Now as anti-war, I wouldn’t be surprised if the same happened. It’s definitely an adventure with a lot of room for misinterpretation.
R Lee Ermey's Gunny Hartman and the sniper are supposed to show you how much being in the Marines actually sucks, but kids see it and are like, "man, that's awesome, where do I sign up?"
@@IzunaSlap I remember a period of time in high school where pretty much the entire fucking student body of the JROTC program were just going OOON about Full Metal jacket. Constantly quoting its more memorable lines and laughing about it and making jokes. It was a HUGE fad. Looking back its sick how a film designed to open peoples eyes to the outrageous brutality of the marine corps Vietnam era training regime and to drive home the horrors of the military machine and the horrors of a questionably unnecessary war became the subject of alarming adulation and reverence by over a 175 young impressionable boys. Hard to imagine how many millions more did thee exact same. Alot of those boys went on to join the Marines and the Army. A good handful of them are actually dead now ironically...most of them to suicide though, not combat.
“If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie.” _Tim O’Brien_
OMG the things they carried 😭I could tell it from the first clause 😭I never had a genuine, deep feeling about wars and massive deaths and this book completely changed me
@重生成为比格 For me it was this book and Slaughterhouse-5. Slaughterhouse 5 was the first book I'd read in school that I read multiple times again after finishing it because it was just so good.
My favourite line was by the representative of the social democrats. "Mein Sohn ist im Krieg gefallen, er verspürt keinen Stolz." "My son died in the war and he feels no pride." We try to give their deaths meaning by calling them honorable, but thats the point. They're dead. Neither their mother nor their wife will care how much pride the rotting corpse of their loved one would feel.
I love the line in Dave van ronks song Luang prabang about the vietnam war "in luang prabang there is a spot where the corpses of your brothers rot, and every corpse is a patriot, every corpse is a hero" its so angry and raw and pointless.
i read a book as a child called Stepping on the Cracks, it was about 2 girls who ended up helping a peer who grew up with problems in his home life hide his older brother. there was a pivotal scene where she's fighting with her mom and screams that she wished she had done that with _her_ brother (even though he was 'more cut out for it') because he would still be alive. her mom slapped her _hard_
i truly appreciate how my history teacher taught us about the two world wars. he had been drafted into the army himself and later became a teacher and i think that really shaped the way he views war. he told us "many young men were eager to join the army. they thought it was honorable to fight. that's what they were told. that's how they were tricked into being taken to their deaths. to the superiors, soldiers were replaceable. if you didn't die on that front, you were taken to another to die there."
I know many people who watched anti war films and were inspired to join the military and still enjoy being in or enjoyed it and are onto other things. Can imagine it varies from person to person but if those people fought for what they love and believe in were they really tricked?
@@anniejewkes5506 my great uncle killed himself before I really got to know him, he was in WW2 and my dad said he was kind of shell shocked and he had been that way even since my dad was a kid. I remember being very young and his face actually being haunting. Something about the first time you see someone’s eyes having sort of a blank look about them is scary asf.
Is it just me or does it seem kinda old making "war is horrible" movies? It's basically all the movie industry have been producing the last many decades. Would be nice for a change with some war epics that show the glory of war, as something cool and exciting. Like Enemy at the Gates or 300 etc
I definitely think it helps that the source material is written by a WW1 soldier. As the author (Erich Maria Remarque) states in the very beginning of the book with the same name: "This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war." This man did not write a book to say that "war is bad", he wrote an honest book about war. An honest depiction of war will always be "anti-war", because all wars are horrible.
@@pancakes8670they executed his sister because they couldn’t get to him. It’s brushed over but WW1 veterans and people who saw it’s destruction were one of the bigger opponents to the Nazis rise to power, as the Nazis were obviously very pro war.
It's an anti-war story, not a memoir. It often uses lies to this end. For example, with brothels, in reality, you would be shot for engaging with prostitutes. The goal of the book was to paint an anti-war story, and part of this was convincing people that the events in the story could have actually happened (some people go as far as thinking it actually did). When compared to an actual memoir of WW1, it becomes apparent that truth was tampered with to make the story more interesting, and more purposeful than it would have actually been. (Turns out actual memoirs are incredibly boring reads for most of them) This isn't to say that all quiet isn't an important piece of literature or that its message is of ill-intent, only that it isn't reality, or honest, but it is anti-war
@@Kowslayer You're the first person I've ever seen that's speaks of being shot if they engaged with prostitutes... Where as pretty much most contemporary research suggests the military damn well encouraged them...the brothels anyway. They certainly aren't going to shoot their fodder for it.
Another aspect that takes away the hopefulness from All Quiet is that we have the retrospect of knowing that Germany lost, so you know that whatever happens in the movie, no matter how good things may look (points already few and far between), the protagonist is fighting a losing war. This gave me a persistent feeling that all the friends lost through the conflict were sacrificed for nothing, and with the brutality of some or the deaths, it took away any idea of an honorable and glorious death.
i never thought of that while watching the movie, i think that a small part of me was almost hoping for the germans to win almost as if i didnt know how the war ended (btw im from a country who was in the entente so it definitely wasnt patriotism or something like that, even thought i always thought my country shoulve joined the central powers instead but im digressing)
I totally agree with knowing you are watching a loosing battle. But then the tanks and the flame throwers came and I thought, ”my god, this is hell. how could it have been even worse a few years later in world war II”.
@@carag3921 absolutely, the tank and flamethrower scene is what got me as well. I guess because everyone always talks about the honor in fighting for one's country, I never really thought about the barbarism that never really went away, but became automated. It's amazing and terrifying that destructive force of weaponry increased exponentially around the turn of the century, can you imagine telling an American Civil War veteran that in just around 80 years we would graduate from Gattling Guns to bombs that could decimate entire cities?
Tbh, everybody lost in this war. Germany was a bit of a sucker together with Russia. But not that much as people made it out to be. The treaty between Russia and Germany was harsher than the treaty of Versailles (Russia lost to Germany on the Eastern front, they tried to win the war that way). It was a peoples' shared Traumata. Mostly of European peoples, sure. (Or western states). France was so harsh on Germany about the Reparations because they were sucked dry by the war as well.
Actually a lot of this sentiment that the entire Great War was “pointless” and that all these German men and their friends had fought and died for nothing only for Germany to be cut apart and put into debt for 70 years greatly contributed to WW2
A moment that always sticks with me is from Saving Private Ryan. 2:16 shows a medic treating wounded and their canteen being shot without them noticing. It starts leaking water before turning into blood. A small detail and tiny story on that beach that we can only assume the ending to.
I'm pretty sure he notices it the scene shows the medic takewhat seems to be cloth or smth and put it in under his clothes around the area where he would of got shot
Well my brother is a teenager and we watched many war films. After watching this one he was completely horrified and he said “I used to think wars were cool, but I don’t think that anymore”. So I’m thankful for that tbh
I really hope that one day my younger brother will come to that realization. I doubt that he ever will, but I can still hope. He watched 1917 AND All Quiet and its almost like the violence makes him even more enthused. I pray for him.
My grandfather taught me that when I was a kid. He was a German WWII veteran (he didn't want to join the military but the alternative was being sentenced to death) and a pacifist . He never met his father how died in the trenches of WWI in France. Like in the movie, which I don't think I can watch.
@@tailstechvideos2327 hes already watched many of those in his free time, not even joking, it don’t know what he’s think while he’s watching it, but he seems to find it very interesting. I know hes watched them because he asked me to come check it out with him. He’s 15
Gallipoli (1981) is in my opinion the greatest anti-war movie. You follow the protagonist, a young boy named Archie, as he lives an idyllic life in turn-of-the-century Australia. He's a track and field star who begins the movie winning a race against his bully where he's on foot and the bully is on a horse. He even has the little trait of running barefoot to add a little extra character. He goes on to enter an athletics contest where he meets his rival, Frank, and they have a brief but bitter rivalry running against each other. They end up becoming friends and decide to put their physical prowess to use by enlisting in the Just War to fight the Germans. They end up stranded in the desert and run on foot several hundred miles to Perth to enlist for glory and advancement of their careers. Then they end up mucking around in the desert of Egypt for some time, not even getting to fight the Germans. Finally, in the final few moments of the film, they get deployed to invade Gallipoli and are unceremoniously cut down by gunfire. The final shot of the movie is a freeze-frame of Archie running barefoot through bloody soil, his head flung back by the bullet that struck and killed him, posed as if he's breaking the finish line in a footrace. It lingers on this shot for several seconds then cuts to black, with every single thing we learned about Archie and his entire hero's journey, his athleticism, his bright future as a runner, his friendly rivalry with Frank, and his life in Australia ultimately meaning nothing more than catching a single enemy bullet.
@@mrchow3177 The Greeks, the French, the Serbs...?! C'mon. Facts straight get you! Mmmm?! It was an aggressive war on the part of Austro-Hungarian, Turks, and Germans. Fought justly? The Turks and Austro-Hungarians had been limping along and the people they oppressed rightly found a way to liberate themselves.
The ending also really hits on the cannon fodder/cog in the machine idea since it's evident to everyone involved that the plan is not going to work because the timing is off (the plan having been bomb the enemy trenches to force evacuation and then overtake those trenches by sending soldiers across no-man's land), and yet the man in charge sends countless soldiers out to die anyway because that was the plan and he has to stick to the plan. Every single one of those soldiers died because the machine believed it needed to keep turning.
I think it's important to note how insanely well the soundtrack of All Quiet At The Western front is at conveying the idea of a war machine. The soundtrack is mechanical and calculated, cold, and treats the soldiers with disdain.
Dunno, "Remains" is the one you're talking about and while i liked it's idea it definitely overstayed it's welcome by the end for the movie. There are plenty of purely emotional tracks, like "Comrades" and "Paul" scattered all trhoughout
@@storytellers1 there is also a movie called "Johnny Got his gun" and it shows the horrors of an injured man during ww1 and what it truly felt like to be injured and mutilated
My great grandfather was a veteran of the Candadian Expeditionary Force during the 1st world war. He joined in 1915 at the age of 17 alongside his 18 year old brother. I never met him, as he died when my dad was 6, but my grandmother told me something he had told her and it stuck with me. When he was on the front lines some time during 1917, he had went to the latrine to use it but found it was occupied by a British soldier who was hiding. He had decided not to argue with the guy and went to find another latrine to use. Not a minute after he walked away an artillery shell fell where that latrine was, killing the hiding man and likely several others. He had said that despite the random nature of his survival, he had to believe that someone was looking out for him, otherwise he would have lost hope of making it home. That really stuck with me, as it goes to show the random and pointless nature of death in wartime, but also the lies we have to tell ourselves in order to keep going. RIP Percy MacLeod Taylor (1898-1968), 115th Nova Scotia Rifles, 6th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1915-1919
I sobbed at the end. I kept waiting for him to open his eyes; just like he did to Kat... "He's unconcius..." Many reviews note the characters in All Quiet on the Western Front as lacking; that there's not enough human drama... but thats kind of the point. Its not an enjoyable film, and we're not used to that. It hurt without redemption.
any critic that says the characters in this movie are lacking are brainlet clowns that should stick to marvel movies or the godfather or some other delusional sensationalized nonsense.
It's ironic they say the characters are lacking. Most of the time in Hollywood I see a movie and I'm like "Oh that's Dwayne Johnson playing a character". But when I saw AQOTWF, I thought "That's Paul, he's a German kid who was tricked into joining the military."
I watched "Come And See" the other day, and despite the ultra-serious and sad tone it was so unbelievably refreshing and really made me realise just how much glorification of war there is in these other war movies with their heroes and heroes' journey.
'Come and See' is a film I'm very glad to have seen, but could never watch again. I was thinking of it, all through this video, as perhaps the epitome of an 'anti-war' film. 'Gallipoli' is another, ending as it does, although I've never seen anything to equal the horror of 'Come and See'.
Yeah I was talking about this video yesterday with Thomas Flight & Like Stories of Old and they recommended Come and See, which I saw today but never again.
@@storytellers1 I have family that came from and escaped that region, so to watch it knowing just how real it all was and could have been my family in another life hit very very close to home. I'll never be able to watch another war film without seeing it through the lens of what a true anti-war film looks like. And I'm glad more people seem to be coming aware of "Come And See" it's just as you say these hero based war films have a genuine effect on our culture and psyche and thus our relationship with war, not putting enough emphasis on the true absolute horror of war.
@@storytellers1 I've seen only one short scene from Come and See, that alone left a mark in my heart. I am still waiting for my local art-house to play it; I dare not watch it on a computer screen or a TV.
Come and See is special because it is not just a war movie, but a testament to the barbarity of those who often use it as an excuse to commit heinous atrocities.
My father who fought in New Guinea in WW2 said he would have gone mad if he thought he had a chance of survival. It was easier to think he was a dead man walking. That is impossible to empathise with.
It’s a way to accept the most likely outcome from such a war. Ww2 was such a meat grinder that a lot of those soldiers really were dead men walking. The amount of people that walked right into their death is enough to justify a loss of hope for your own survival.
I was thinking through the entirety of the final battle, from the moment the solider remarks that there are only 15 minutes left if the war, that if the movie had any guts, it’d kill Paul. And it did. I could not believe it, but at the same time, its the only way to truly drive home the point of the movie. From the moment Paul put on that patched-up uniform, it was decided. His wound is even in the exact same spot as the previous owner on the uniform’s. Absolutely heart wrenching symmetry.
I think what's so sad too is as he charges we see him finally switch off and just be the killing machine war keeps trying to make him be. He loses his humanity moments before losing his life.
it is actually better that paul was killed. He would have probably suicided or lived the rest of his life with depression or even enlisting in the ww2 wermacht as a cold blooded soldier seeking for revenge on france. After all he saw and experienced, continuing living would be the worst outcome. Thats why stanley kubrick chose to keep joker alive in the end of Full Metal Jacket. The other directors and writers wanted him to die, but stanley said that after all he have passed through it would be worse if he lived, so he mantained him alive during the end to make the movie even more horrifying
The book which inspires the movie also has Paul die at the end. That is the point of the name "All Quiet on the Western Front". It is the field report on the day he dies, saying that there was nothing to comment on that day, nothing important to report back to command. Our main character dies and it is simply ignored when update is sent to command. That is the point of the story, that Paul is just a normal guy with nothing protecting him from death, he had to die to prove that point.
I've always thought Grave of the Fireflies was an amazing anti war movie. I think centering it on civilians rather than any soldiers benefitted it in that regard, and showed aspects of war outside of outright conflict. It's easy for people to misconstrue movies that try to be anti war with sheer violence and spectacle, but I think it would be virtually impossible to do that while watching an innocent family slowly die off through means outside of their control.
For me, Grave of the Fireflies shows that even civilians who are on the “enemy” side are also negatively affected by war. Why “enemy” is because the Japanese are trying to dominate the Asian continent during that time. One of the worst things they did is the comfort women issue and they hardly addressed it afterwards. Seeing that movie, it’s clear to me that the decisions of those in power don’t necessarily benefitted their own civilians.
@@corycianangel6321 You need media to show you that? Just think about your own goverment. Does it represent you and your beliefs? Does it have your best interest at heart? If your answer is yes, you're pretty lucky. Or misguided. Maybe both.
@@kuzumi920 Yes, I needed media to show me that, along with context. The problem with privileged people like me is that we would have a narrow view of the world, thinking that all goes well eventually. Sometimes, I would use media to compare & contrast with real life. And of course, it also depends on the type of media one is exposed to. Some people are ignorant enough not to think much of their own government. Some are either bought in by propaganda or are too tired to think of noble beliefs in order to survive. I was already thinking of my government’s actions when I watched it before. I know how corrupt they are, and they’re quite similar to the society shown in the film.
I read the book "Im Westen nichts Neues" (all quiet on the western front) a few years back and it was absolute terror. I have never felt so moved by a book in my entire life. you want to stop reading because everyone you meet in the book and learn to love dies, but you just can't because you want to follow Bäumer, hoping that he, as the last one of his friends survives, but no, of course he doesnt. personally the scene with the french man in the trench was the most gut wrenching scene ive ever read about. i havent seen the new movie yet, but if anyone wants to read a truly anti war book, this is the one. the book was banned in germany by the nazis because of its anti war message and has since grown to be one of the most important books about WW1 here.
Sadly if you have read the book the new movie about it is trash, it changes/skips some in my opinion very important moments and the movie title doesn’t even make sense anymore because of the changes, it is just a “ww1 movie” inspired by the book and the main characters have the same names but the plot is different (and the background music is really destroying the vibe most of the time, because idk who had the idea to put electronic bass music, which repeated itself before every “dramatic” moment, it was super annoying), I just watched this movie today and was super hyped before but now just disappointed:(
@@delfink4333 yeah i think they should have had more scenes in the hospital, those would have been really disturbing in movie form. I think the ending in the movie works better for a film adaptation though, and still gets a similar message across
@@delfink4333 I completely agree, especially the decision to make the most of the movie take place in the last days of the war was jarring and dumb, the book handled the character development and the ending so well that the movie ending felt insulting to me
To not discourage you, I didn't read the book but watched the movie first, and it's cool to see that I get something to read now. It's a common cliche that movies fail to capture what is in the books but I hope it can still be appreciated if not as its own thing or something to be watched without the book too much in mind. I can tell the movie focused less on the characters, barely keeping up with their names, and more on what they went through among other tragedies of war and back-and-fourths between that and the rich pigs eating and grumbling together. I think it did really well as an anti-war movie, so I hope the many here who disliked it because it didn't compare to the book, could at least see it for that.
@@Stellar_Politics I agree completely. I read the book for my finals in school (We had to read different books about different european wars). Because I was of the same age as the characters at the time I read it, it moved me in an incredible way as I realised that I most likely wouldn't have lasted even a month in their situation. It is one of the only books that I finished and it had an large impact on how I pictured war in general. I was extremely excited for the film and must say I thought it was a horrible adaptation, however, if one can put that to the side, I think it did it's job as an anti-war film very well.
My favorite part was definitely when Paul stabbed the crap out of that Frenchman until the dude's slow death was too much for him to witness, and he tried to reverse the damage he'd done, even apologizing. For me that was when I realized how similar France and Germany are, how close those two may have been born to each other, and therefore how horrible and manipulative war is. Being made to kill someone just because you were born in different places. Second to this scene was when the flamethrowers came out. Horrifying. But from a ruler's POV it is merely practical cuz it disables a shooter before killing him
The death of the French soldier really stuck with me as well. Especially since Paul was so keen on killing a Frenchman at the beginning of the movie. It showed the reality of murder and how that's not for "heroes", but for psychos. And Paul definitely wasn't one.
I personally think "Come and See" by Elem Klimov is the most 'anti-war' movie I've ever seen. No one wins in that movie-everything and everyone is destroyed by the end, along with the viewer. One of the darkest, most devastating films I've ever seen. They also use real bullets and a lot of the people in it are WWII survivors (including the director).
I've tried to watch it but can't get through the first 25 minutes. It's just so jarring to watch a film where the audio doesn't seem to sync up and the cinematography is terrible. I may give it a shot one day but the opening scene alone put me off
I've found the most influential anti-war messaging in media being the depiction of the life outside the war: veterans returning or not returning from the front, the effects of living in fear of bombings, food and medicine shortages etc... because very few of us can really (or want to) relate to being on the battlefront, but we can relate to the fear having peace in our own home disturbed.
Kinda a weird one but Disney's Peter Pan 2: Return To Neverland starts with our beloved Wendy from the first movie desperately trying to protect her children from a German air raid during World War II. Wendy's daughter, Jane, is so scarred from growing up during wartime that she basically has no childhood and has to grow up super fast. It's really only brought up in the first few minutes of the film, but it becomes such a defining trait of Jane's character (to the point where she almost kills Tinkerbell because she doesn't believe in fairies) that it has to be mentioned. And that's in a 2002 children's animated feature that I grew up with.
AQWF was heart breaking, seeing Paul go from an energetic, vivacious young man in the beginning of the movie and throughout the movie you see him slowly becominh more and more numb like his soul had died way before his physical body had died. There is a picture of a WW2 Soviet Soldier named Evgeny Stepanovich Kobytev. There is a side by side picture of him, 1. Right before he got sent to war (in 1941), and the 2. Is a picture of him was taken shortly after returning home from fighting (in 1945). It reminds me of Paul's character towards the end of the movie in AQWF, his eyes just... empty.
Sadly, that is a sentiment that will never come to fruition. Evil is everywhere and will always try to increase its grasp, we saw what happened when Chamberlin believed Hitler. It’s a depressing and cynical perspective but wars will always be fought (for the right reason? Probably not) and good men and women will die on sides, military and civilian. He’s spot on about the people at the top though. The currency of war is lives and the disgusting part is how quickly those at the top are willing to spend them. I am absolutely a military supporter though, anyone willing to die for another is someone to be grateful for.
Not sure it's the speech itself, which many would find hard to disagree with, but the political leanings of many in entertainment...still today. th-cam.com/video/289HLIqQtVw/w-d-xo.html
@@natewasserman2559 that doesn't mean we are doomed. Apathy or gullibility in the face of aggressors certainly won't bring peace, you're right. That said we just need to look deeper. Hitler, like most violent demagogues, gained influence because of the desperation and anger shared by his audience. If we want to create enduring peace, we have to work to rid the world of such suffering so that evil dictators will have no audience. If you ignore the suffering of your neighbor, you have already made them your enemy. Obviously more complicated in real life application, but it's the mentality needed to create enduring peace imho
The tank scene in “All Quiet on the Western Front” was the most brutal thing I’ve ever watched. You feel the terror and confusion of the soldiers at seeing this weird machine they’ve never encountered before, the absolute horror and desperation as they try to bring down the tanks only to get crushed like they’re nothing and the helplessness as the few that manage to escape get chased down and burned alive. That scene single-handedly made me feel all the chaotic terror, confusion and powerlessness war movies attempt to portray and (in my opinion) often fail at. Just for that scene alone, this film will always hold a special place in my personal list of favourite movies. I’ll definitely try and get my hands on the novel in the future.
I agree about the emotional potency of the tank scene. I remember how shaken I was by reading the novel when I was younger, and the film did a great job of putting that sense of terror and uselessness onto the screen. Absolutely brilliant.
i think part of what made that scene so impactful is that it’s a german movie. it portrays the french as monsters, in contrast with most world war movies that portray german soldiers in that same way. it flips the script
I remember from school when we had a listening comprehension exercise. It was about the Ireland/UK Conflict and the main character was a young man becoming a soldier in the UK. He was sent to Ireland and patrolling with his company. He was shot dead all of a sudden and with this the story ended. No hero's death, no action, no funeral, nothing. Just a random shot and the main character was death. I still remember how I thought "Wow, this is totally different to the movies etc. I saw." And to this day, this is still my thought on war. You are just a random character who survives or dies by chance.
@@MrCmon113 War is altruistic? I'm very much against war especially when it's about political ego psycho fuckers deploying innocent young kids to areas they essentially don't know or give a flying fuck about. I think stuff like ridding the third reich during WW2 to put an end to the holocaust and tyranny was an altruistic act though. But more often than not, war is nothing but political spin and games of power. Sorry for the profanity btw, it's not directed at you.
@@MrKarlozz When a "political ego psycho fucker" sends his "young innocent kids" your way, what do you do? Let the "political ego psycho fucker" have his way? Or do you give up the anti-war stance? How many wars have you reviewed to arrive at the conclusion that there were no legitimate grievances or interests on any side of the conflict and that the only ones motivating the fighting were some small minority in the leadership?
I've watched many war movies but this one did it for me. I just could not get a suitable reaction out, almost as if something was stuck in my throat and till this day, I feel it. That tank passing from on top of that soldier and the flamethrower scenes are especially haunting so is the nonchalance with which the soldiers tackle the enemies.
I suggest having a look at All quiet from the western front from the 70s as I personally found that movie much better. While I noticed that the new movie is a much better anti-war movie than many others it still sucked compared to the 70s one. You barely connect with the soldiers in the new one and it mainly goes by the cruelity through visuals and peole being followed dying and a set up horrified face. The old movie however does not work in that way, it works by showing much more that those soldiers are regular people, as it for example has much more scenes of interaction between the soldiers in times of calm and before the war, showing them to be actual peole with hopes and dreams and how they interact and not just an unknown schoolboy being a soldier now. The euphemism is also shown much more realistic. Having the teacher hold an epic speech in front of the whole school and everyone screaming YEEEAAAHHH is pretty damn unrealistic, while during the old movie we have a lot of time focused on showing how they are all influenced by their normal everyday surrounding like teacher, policemen, friends,... and the teacher holds subtle speeches being more of unnoticed nature. This is how people are actually influenced to be ready for war, not epic speeches. Overall the old movie also packs much more content in the time it has, as the new movie is just a few minutes of before the war and then straight up just fighting, it went over in like 5 minutes while watching it. The old movie however shows a lot of before the war, much fighting and also going home of vacation from the frontline as it sometimes happend and also short moments of peace on the front but behind the frontline. Additionally I really missed one scene from the old movie in the new one and that was the one where he was at home and had to go back to the front. He writes a letter for his mom stating that he doesnt feel at home anymore, that the frontline has become his new home and his fellow soldiers his family and that he can not escape the horrors anymore cause he has gotten used to them and they are a vital part of his soon to end life now and that he thus returns home to the frontline. After rereading his letter he burns it to spare his mother. This was such an important key scene from the old movie which the new one just completely forgot about and it is an great example of what I meant with that the old movie goes much more into depth on the actual psychological horror. Also the stabbing the french guy scene has been much more personal. The new movie just shows him being traumatised after stabbing someone. The old movie goes into depth how he reads through his ID who he was and shows how he suffers and how the main character struggles with his own action
I think Grave of fireflies was a great anti-war film. no real battles, just the saddest most heartbreaking film I think I’ve ever seen as a result of WWII.
"1942" is also a candidate. It's about the great famine during the war in a Chinese province when the Japanese invaded, ans the Chinese government abandoned the province for political reasons.
this is exactly what I thought! I first watch Grave of the Fireflies at the age of ten. It greatly shaped me and my perspective of war, and is one of my favourite movies ever, even though I go through an entire box of tissues every time lol
As a German now living in the US I always cringe when someone stops me to tell me "WWII was my favorite war, I think the Germans had such a great airforce, and the tanks were awesome!" I usually stand there saying things like "Well we see it a bit differently" or "I don't think there is such a thing as a great war". Obviously I was fed with horrific pictures from the moment I entered school which is also debatable, but I honestly prefer that to thinking war is something heroic that needs to be supported at all costs.
As an American, I can confirm that there are indeed people who think this way. In high school, there was a kid in one of my classes who was obsessed with WWll as well as the weapons and tanks used in warfare. I understand researching a topic that you are interested in and want to educate yourself on, but this specific kid treated it like it was a fun and lighthearted thing. Also, though I’m from a Northern state, I live in a rural area where people actively defend the confederate side of the civil war as well. It’s absolutely disgusting. I lived in Japan for a little while too, and similar to America, I saw a few people who were incredibly nationalistic and think that the nation was at its peak before 1945. Obviously this doesn’t apply to a large portion of the population, as many are aware of the horrible crimes committed during that time, but the ignorance, glorification and miseducation did remind me of the way some people view war in the US. Also sorry for any typos and if this was long. I tend to ramble and I’m writing this on my phone
As someone who since a teen has been fascinated by WWII from the German point of view, the one thing that kept me, and still keeps me, from fethisizing it is the thought of all those young men dying or just disappearing into the russian hinterland while their moms, lovers and wives, possibly died during the bombing raids. It's almost impossible for me to watch the any old footage on YT of people in the 1910's and 1920s, especially the children, and not wonder whether they died at Stalingrad or in the bombings of the cities.
@@oceanmango _"but this specific kid treated it like it was a fun and lighthearted thing."_ Given the fact the closest that kid would ever get to WW2 is playing it in a video game, I think this attitude is entirely understandable. The war is long since over, and is now an historical event good for nothing but speculation and entertainment. We don't tear our hair out over the Civil War anymore either, we just dress up in costumes and re-enact it for fun. Get over it. You too Mr. German, GET OVER IT!
@@GeneralJackRipper i feel like “get over it” is a lot easier said than done. War has caused centuries of generational trauma for so many people, and just because it was in the past, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t harm in viewing real life war and other tragic events like a video game. Just because some people view it this way doesn’t mean that it’s suddenly okay and we should just forget about it to move on. When I visited the peace memorial and museum in Hiroshima, i read and heard various stories not only about the people who died from being vaporized or from radiation poisoning, but also about how their children were born with mental and physical birth defects, relatives had to watch their loved ones die from issues like leukemia years later from the event, and there’s still people alive right now whose grandparents were affected. There are Jewish people who have relatives that were victims of the Holocaust, and there continues to be neo nazis who look up to hitler and his goals of eugenics. Anti semitism has existed long before world war 2, but that event caused and still will continue to cause pain for people today. There’s so many more examples of how war has killed, traumatized and impacted soldiers, innocent civilians and marginalized groups. I understand the perspective that all we can really do is speculate and reflect upon the past. However, to say “get over it” is incredibly ignorant and disrespectful in my opinion. Also sorry for any typos, I’m on my phone atm
@@GeneralJackRipper You had me in the first half, as imo it's completely understandable for teens/kids to not fully understand the ramifications of war and the suffering it brings- but the attitude that war is just something you "get over" is the most ignorant take about war, in general. War has a multi-generational effect on the lives of people. Veterans get PTSD, the next generation may have to suffer through the damage it inflicted to their country/family members that it took, and not to mention the racism that crops up as a result. If I had a nickel for every anti-German middle schooler I've met I'd be rich, and vice versa. People almost fetishize the SS and Whermacht sometimes. It's sickening. Families have been torn apart; countries destroyed, people murdered and cultures eradicated just because humans love to kill each other. War is history, but it's *relevant,* ever-applicable history.
I'm reminded of a lesser known Russian series called "The Dawns Are Quiet Here". One of the most shocking themes of that series for me is how nearly every important character, after we get to know them and their pasts and reasons for enlisting, most of them die unceremoniously, unwitnessed. One girl drowns alone trying to get reinforcements in a swamp, another has a panic attack and gets shot in the back during a gunfight, another gets killed randomly while fetching supplies. Only 2 of them get heroic deaths, and the main character who survives. It was jarring how their stories just suddenly came to an abrupt and violent end. Especially since the characters were just kids barely into adulthood. At the start you thought, they have training, they have comraderie, they have spirit, they're bright and full of youth, so they'll make it out alright. But none of them do. And they don't even get dignified deaths. That is the reality. Wars are not stories of hardship and triumph. Wars END stories. There is rarely consolation.
@@ulharr WWII, well, we call this side of the war the Great Patriotic War. "Come and see" is another great example. It's haunting and hard to watch. When it came out, many middle schoolers were taken to the cinema to see the film for education. I heard a lot of stories about how traumatized they were by it.
You can see at 2:18 the Medic hit through his drinking bag but he didnt recognized it due to his adrenaline. The bag dropped its water followed by his blood. What a detailed movie scene.
I feel like a medieval siege would be a perfect setting for an anti-war movie. Just two sides waiting each other out, the defenders hoping that reinforcements will arrive, the attackers trying to undermine the opponents' defenses to speed up their victory. Seeing the men wither away from hunger, freeze in ditches and makeshift shelters, the ever-present risk of disease spreading across the encampment. After months of combatting these invisible yet ever present threats, one side surrenders, no spectacle, no climactic battle, just two groups putting each other through all sorts of misery, where every man killed in 'glorious combat' is matched by dozens who died to comparatively mundane dangers. If it's done well enough, we would get a story like 'the terror', it wouldn't be fun, that's not the point, but we see a story about people being worn down until they are shadows of their former selves.
Since its medieval I think its for the best that we've been shown the worst of what the both sides encounter on the war of attrition, the attackers cave in and on desperation, charges for their very lives. No glorious battles no battle cries, just desperate, starving men having no choice but to do or die, ending with the victory of the few attackers that remained committing atrocities to the losing side while glorifying their efforts. Showing that despite how desperate the attacking side was, they were not saints either. We must not forget what they came for and what we do to raise morale on a conflict that's very much real since the dawn of humanity, a fight for resources of any form.
This... sounds brilliant. Go my friend, now. Write a script or get somebody who can write a script. Pitch it and insist on it. Sleep on the streets if necessary. This is a movie that needs to be made. Maybe based on the siege of Kenilworth Castle?
I do like the idea, but to my limited knowmedge, medieval people tended to be kind of cicilised and meet somewhere where they could fight out ownership over whatever they were fighting over due to strict conceos of honour.
The scene where he rested his head on the stomach of the French soldier who he had just killed was one of the most gutting parts of the entire movie for me
Yeah, it was a great scene to show how such a war is absolutely meaningless and there are men of the same kind on both sides who just want to love and being loved, not to kill others.
What marscaleb said. Going into this movie I yearned to see how they would adapt that scene from the book. Both versions, absolutely gut-wrenching. If there is one thing I'll remember from All Quiet through the years, it's that scene.
read the book in high school… still my favorite and the scene you mentioned has stayed with me ever since. i think that teacher and her choice of literature turned the entire classroom into pacifists (and me into a German lit student)
I have not watched this movie but read the book back in 2007. I was deployed to Iraq in 08 and Afghanistan in '10-11. I was airborne infantry with 101st. I appreciate the time I served with my brothers but the truth is that many died for nothing. Life goes on and the machine makes more money. I am not homeless but I am not rich or famous. Everyone around me never served and never will. I lived a lie. Thank you for sharing this review.
The army is just a tool for people who want to get something of value through the other hands. If people thought not about the fact that war is bad, but about why it happens, perhaps there would be no wars in the world at all. There is always someone who gives orders. Each trouble has a name, surname and position.
@@PK-zo9vx Why would you thank him for that? I thank J. M. for having the clarity to through the illusion, the Iraq war served neither Americans nor Iraqis, only the American political elite who maintained their popularity through the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and the American oil industry, who pillaged the country once the dust settled.
The problem is precisely what you said at the end: "Everyone around me never served and never will. I lived a lie." You fought in a war which was both started and supported by men who had no stake in it, and for a country whose own people don't really believe in it anymore.
This was a beautiful and moving video. It's truly sick how we send young, often poor men to war. My dad was one of those young, poor men sent to war and he lives with that everyday. He was a field medic who saw fellow soldier literally cut in half, mowed down by friendly fire when communications went down and two units attacked each other by mistake. As a medic, he saw all that gore and death even closer than others. Thats the only story he has EVER told me and it was only because he was drunk and spiraling from carrying that. War is what started his problems with drinking and it's another struggle he has on top of everything else On a less heavy note, I have a lot of movies i need to watch now. Thank you for this video
I am consistently surprised to see nicotine showed like that now, in 2020s. A cigarette in cinema is still not a trademark of a loser addict but of a cool guy or a nonconformist girl. Even such positive and progressive shows like Sex Education, present nicotine addiction as a trait of a cool kid.
@@robertchmielecki2580 True, Hollywood made an effort in the 80s --at behest of the Reagan administration or conservatives if I recall--to reduce smoking and drug use and it downplayed it for a while. But I think cinematographers will always like smoking because of how it appears on the screen, it's basically cheap easy special effects.
@@robertchmielecki2580 it dosent have to be a loser, like bad ass people smoke, but it shouldnt be glorofied when the charcters they make smoke, have no buisness smoking
Narrative film is a bit of a double edged sword in this regard. Seeing war through narrative film risks the unintentional "glorification" of war (though I think that statement is hyperbolic). But WITHOUT narrative film, no one will have an idea or CARE that these things happened. Narrative films have the power to get entire societies to care about things they would otherwise would not! For most people, they need *personal* stories to help them understand the grandeur, importance, loss, or horror of such events.
I find it painfully ironic (and just plain sad, really) that All Quiet on the Western Front and Top Gun were movies released in the same year and were even being considered for the same awards - both nominated for Best Picture at the Oscar's, for one. All the work done by All Quiet in regards to deterring people from joining could conceivably be undone by Top Gun, especially seeing as it was sponsored/influenced by the DoD/US Navy..
The greatest barrier to the anti-war film is that we cannot truly take the point of view of the dead. The camera always survives, and if it doesn't, the movie is over and our life goes on. We can't experience the end of experience.
Another comment mentions the movie Gallipoli, and how it is filmed and shown.. and I think it comes closest to exactly what you describe can't happen, because it ends when the main character dies, very suddenly.
@@guard13007 A great point! Also a fun fact; that particular ending was inspired by a photo of a Spanish soldier being shot during the Spanish civil war.
Terrific video. Good points. I'm in my 60s. No one talked as much about the total randomness of war until the past few years. It's a good sign. Even those of us who were strongly anti war still held on to the myths that except for bad luck, if were were 'well trained,' and 'smart' we'd survive. Something else that was in none of the hundreds of history books and biographies of war I've read over the years, 60% of casualties are from artillery. This means that even if you dig the deepest hole, your chance of being wounded or killed is still totally random. The book Jarhead about the first Gulf War, Desert Storm: the young Marine sniper writes that to them all war movies were pro war. That's how they saw them, that's what they got out of them.
I've watched countless war movies over the last 25 years and All Quiet on the Western Front really moved me, it was hard to watch and really showed how cold and harsh WWI was. All those young men's lives just thrown away like they were nothing. Truly a masterpiece of a film.
if seen all 3 versions of the film (1930, 1979 and 2022) and all of them are done very well for their time and manage to capture the spirit of the book beautifully.
They should make a war film where instead of the protagonist being a person, the protagonist is a piece of equipment or uniform as it passes from soldier to soldier. UPDATE: 2K Likes! This is the most interaction I've ever had on social media, Thank You!
A protagonist is a character who drives the action of a story. If the equipment isn’t sentient or something, it can’t be a protagonist. You could say that a story follows a piece of equipment as it’s passed down.
i mean they kinda did that with heinrich's jacket, but they only really did it for the intro someone could try to do something similar for the entirety of a film as a recurring motif
All Quiet on The Western Front is truly an anti-war film with the absolute helplessness you feel throughout it. The scenes where the soldier lives long enough to go home, only to be confronted with the general who encouraged him and his friends to join the war, and being pushed with war talk when all he wanted to do was get away from the war almost made me cry. There’s such a disconnect between those who get shipped to war and those who stay in the homeland, away from the carnage. Its the closest thing to hell on earth, I think
It was an anti-German war film. I dont know if there exists a film about Belgian resistance during WW1, but I can assure you that it would be comparable to the French WW2 resistance films which honor the practice of defending against those seeking to oppress you.
8:48 I respectfully disagree with you. 1917 is not an anti war film, it is a war action thriller. These are two completely separate movies with completely different themes, 1917 could have never been similar to All Quiet on the Western Front. The only correlating factor between the two is that they take place during WW1. 1917 made war feel suspenseful and made us feel in awe, AQWF was almost a horror film. I agree that the later is how war films should be, but 1917 wasnt really a “war” film, it was an action thriller where the setting was WW1. That doesn’t make it a bad film, but to compare it to a real war film is unfair.
I just finished All Quiet On The Western Front and I have just been left in silence, with tears literally streaming down my face. This film is truly heartbreaking.
this is exactly what the movie wants, exploit your emotions rather then enlighten you, the movie talks to our reptilian brain rather than the upper parts
@@Papi_Buzz I don't personally remember a cat dying, but if one did, its probably because cats died. Imagine you're 17 years old and are dragged into a hell like WWII, you wouldn't care much about the cats, would you. Although I doubt imagining that is even possible for most.
@@CrunchRosey I mean kat, he was such a good role model and mentor to Paul and his friends. I remember when he died, my classmates were swearing towards the farm boy who killed kat
As a german I really like to see that this film makes international waves, I think german literature in the theme of war is completely different than english one so its nice to see this. I also like that the film breaks the stigma that there has to be a hero, also sth that is frequently done in german literature, maybe it has sth to do with our culture that we dont have heroic heros, or that we lost two ww idk
Maybe we have just realized that every heroe tale is just another step to a new war. Just look at the Ukraine War and how Russia is using WW2 to justify it. Young Russians go there to be a part of the "hero" generation they have been heard stories hundrets of times before.
The Fact that Germany has no Heroes is coming from Psychological Warfare from the Outside. A Nation without any Heroes is just depressed and in fact has a sickening effect on the psychology of its People. It only leads to self-hatred. And if you talk with Germans its everywhere. They doom and demonize their ancestors and talk themselfs down as if they are and were the worst people ever and German History in General is "Nothing to be proud of, it was always bad" or even worse some people even going as far as saying "what german history ? there is none besides starting both world wars" and all of this is serious and not some unfunny ironic bullshit.
Tbf, "All quiet on the western front" always made waves outside Germany, starting with the Book. Arguably, even more so than in Germany : After all, the first adaptations as movies/TV series were American and it's only now that the Germans finally tackled it (and well, it's from Netflix so still with americans involved) I'm not German, but I think there's a bit of a taboo that made it impossible for any German filmmaker to do it until now I think it's because Germans didn't want to face that, while foreigners could examine it in a more detached manner. The harshest reaction would be the ban by the Nazis and book burnings (it was one of the first book on their "degenerate" list), but even regular Germans probably had no real taste for it.
@@Baamthe25th it was very controversial at the time, yes. Basically, Germans fell into one of two categories: those who liked All Quiet On the Western Front and those who liked Storm of Steel. Nowadays, with the exception of the usual ultra-right segment of society, I would say that All Quiet On the Western Front is the view that has prevailed in German society.
@@lisaw150 you are referring to Ernst Jüngers "In Stahlgewittern", right? That's a fascinating book, with such a strange and, to us nowadays, exotic and uncanny view on war and what it does to the individual. Ernst Jünger became an officer during the war, so unlike Paul, he was more in a position of the soldier as a profession. The book was time and time again rewritten by him, which shows that he still processed the whole horrible war
The reason why that guy made the book a few years after ww1 was because he wanted to show people and explain the true horrors of war and that it's not all about glory and medals
This notion is common and shared by all German war literature of the 1920s, even the affirmative ones. However, there are actual blind spots, for instance technology.
Our history teacher had us watch Dunkirk to show why war is so tragic and unnecessary. I just can't get over how that movie is clearly "propaganda" directed to showcase the heroism of the English volunteers and soldiers who fought to get home. To me that movie was like watching a Marvel movie, not an anti-war movie. All the glorious moments of defeating the enemy while outnumbered and on their last bullet. Even the ending was cheerful with the England celebrating the return of thousands of soldiers as if they had won the Olympics.
The book ”All quiet on the western front” is one of the best book I’ve read. During Hitlers mass book burnings before/during WW2 this was one of the books that were ordered to be thrown in the pile all over the country. It completely worked against Germanys propaganda by depicting war in its true essence and the deaths truly meaningless. A powerful read.
@@SmashingCapital well i figure what would be the worse case scenario; get station on an aircraft carrier and be at sea for months or infantry duty in Afghanistan? I prefer to be out at sea. Far as joining the military in general. College just sounded like a terrible idea. After you spent 13 years in public school. The idea of spending more time in school but paying for it now, nah i am good. Wanted an adventure and I sure did find one.
@@lupea8079 So a combination of your ignorance and selfishness, and pragmatic calculation of where you could find a biggest comfort and safety while still granting you associated social status made you join the military, not the book.
The bit that got to me was when one of the boys said, "my mum just said watch what you eat". That really put into perspective how unaware of the brutality some of the boys and their families were.
@The Christian Oubliette but there was never a war like ww1, ww1 was the start of modern day combat mixed with the old ways of combat where each side would line up and run at each other, nobody knew that they was going to end up with trench foot or living with rats the size of of a house cat that you would see eating dead bodies, same for ww2 nobody thought there would be another world war but there was and it was more gruesome than the last which no one expected
@@D-A-A-honestly I think even the commanders, generals, politicians and kings didn't knew how much more brutal WW1 was gonna be. Not even the engineers and scientist that made the weapons knew the new effect it Will have on warfare. Everyone is making it up as they go. I am sure once they realize how horrendous war was. They resign to the fact they started something horrendously bigger than themselves as it spiralled out of control. Ah the sins of our grandfather's.
@@D-A-A- Not entirely true. The operational headquarters *should* have known what it could and probably would end up being like. Maybe not until the offensive in French ground to a halt, but certainly after that. The American Civil War or the Russo-Japanese War were great examples of what war had become that it hadn't been in the last great European war -- if you want to be so cynical to call the French-German War 'great'. The simple fact is that army command on *all sides* disregarded human life, were grossly out of touch with reality, and put ideology above reason and pragmatism. Look at Gallipoli, look at Verdun, look at people like Hotzendorf, Enver Pasha -- heck -- even Churchill fumbled around like a bumbling baboon. It was hell. And what made it hell were the people at the top abusing the glorified illusions of the youth. They betrayed their own countrymen. They were despicable, lazy, unimaginative, and half-witted bastards with a claim to office often more reliant on the inbreeding of their family than the measure of their achievements. And I hope history will remember them as that.
@@D-A-A- It was not the start of modern day combat, not even close. However it was the biggest display of it soo far. (No wonder, since its a world war lmao) - The first war that had modern day combat was the thirty years war, under the reign of Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus (Also called "Father of modern warfare") sweden revolutionized the combat of the era and used modern tactics during the thirty years war which he ultimately won, defeating the Holy Roman empire, German states, The catholic league, Denmark-Norway, and the Spanish empire. Sweden basically invented a new way of combat and ALL nations in the world have adopted this general doctrine and after the war, atleast the West, transitioned into modern warfare, some slower, and some faster than others. Sweden practically won the entire war alone under his rule and with the help of superior tactics and strategy. - Now ofcourse he didnt invent every single detail of modern warfare as we today know it, that would be ridiculous for one man to do. But he laid the entire foundation and invented the general strategy for the tactics still used today.
There was that scene where some soldiers (who couldn't control their emotions) tried to rebel by refusing to go back to the front line, were simply lined up and shot right there and then. It was quick business and a slap in the face which drove home Charlie's point (for me) that they simply don't care.
When I first watched this I was waiting for that epic battle scene cause every I watched always had one either in the form of fighting and beating the enemy or surviving against great odds and escaping to safety. And yet all I got were scenes that remind me of horror movie survivors trying to survive the killer. All i got was the protagonist trying to survive the horrors of war, doing very little to impact the battle at all. I adored this movie, so very refreshing
as a kid i glorified being a soldier and played soldier all the time but seeing this movie, especially the tank scene, killed any remaining feeling of wanting to be a soldier, this movie did great with its portrayal of combat
Man, you must watch the original 1930 version. That turn off all my glorifications of war. Not the carnage but the shellings and how shitty life in general is in the front. It is boring, saddening, and depressing life in general. When the action arrive you may already break from various sickness or shell shocked. If you still in one piece, then the enemy will try to break you too. If you see past western narrative of Russo Ukraine war and reached the middle ground, you will see that war also echoed WW1. Many people volunteered for an adventure only to live shitty life in trenches, dissolutioned by glory of warfare. People from both side die in bulk for their politicians. The difference is that now drones and tanks also trying to kill you from longer range.
@@comradeblin256 Most of the international volunteers saw combat before they showed up, they at least knew what it was like to be in the military and get shot at already. What they are not used to is fighting a often-static artillery war.
I watched plenty of anti-war films and still joined the Marines. Low and behold, here I am. I did lose friends in Iraq, but we all would do it again if we could.
My uncle is a US veteran that served in Iraq. He suffers severe PTSD from it and he went to watch All Quiet on the Western Front, and couldn’t even handle the first couple minutes of action.
As somebody who is friends with a veteran who deals with PTSD and survivors guilt, that was a BAD idea, bruv. . . . . Like, taking him out for Barbecue on the 4th of July would have been a bit much.
Breaks my heart, knowing that there are people still dying on a war like that. Just because somebody told you so, you go and kill you neighbours, with unimaginable cruelty and hate.
"All quiet on the western front", "Come and see" and "Grave of the fireflies" are my top three picks for anti-war films. All hit SO deep. A close contender is of course the finnish film Tuntematon Sotilas (the unknown soldier), it truly shows how horrific the winter war was, especially in the later stages.
Our dad made us watch a documentary on war when I was quite young. It focused on the victims of war. I will never forget that scenne of a mother, who was not able to talk anymore, only making those unnerving sounds and screams because she had witnessed her son die a horrific death. It made me a pacifist for life.
I realized watching the movie in the beginning that this was going to be a sad movie, when he was handed the uniform that was in someone else’s name, it indicated that the person that had that uniform had died but the movie perfectly portrayed the young mind of a person to not realize and the innocents he possessed not realizing what hes getting into. It was at that point i felt sad how these young men were brainwashed into war.
I think the most anti-war film ever made is Come and See. I don't think any other film in the world can make you feel as if you were there and make you truly feel the horror the same way it does
No, it's not. Since the bad guys in the film are the Nazis, its message is easy to misinterpret as "Nazis are bad" instead of "war is bad". Don't get me wrong, the Soviets made a few great films about war, including this one, which show the horror that comes with it. And yet look at what Russia is doing right now, with at least a significant part of population supporting it. And you know who supports it the most? People in the 45+ age category, exactly the ones who have seen all those films, the ones who you would expect to have the least militaristic zeal. Art doesn't change people's minds. They just interpret it the way it suits their already held beliefs, and if it doesn't, they just discard it entirely.
@@olgap218 Did you even watch Come and See? The Russians are just as bad as the Nazis. They steal from each other, murder prisoners, leave each other behind, rape their own civilians, its chaos and murder. Everyone is a bad guy. The only innocent people are the two kids, who by the end, are also bad guys. War turns everything into hell and everyone into demons. Hard disagree from me. Art absolutely imitates life, but life absolutely also imitates art.
Thank you for this amazing video, I find that many people seem to miss the point of these movies. All Quiet on the Western Front is an amazing movie that left a strong impact on me. It reminded me of a book I read called "Refus d'obéissance" by Jean Giono, a WW1 veteran. This book goes beyond anti-war sentiments and blames the system that creates and depends on war. I highly recommend it; a truly powerful and insightful read.
One of the most striking things about this movie for me was how it depicted the cycle. We start by following a boy who dies meaninglessly, we follow a character who dies meaninglessly and then in the end we follow yet another boy following in footsteps of those who came before. There will always be another casualty of war to mourn.
I really liked 1917, while it was a hero's journey, it also used to its one take approach to show that everything that happend in the movie happend in the space of about a day. All the death, tragedy, horror was just a tiny little timeframe in a tiny little section of a global war. In that way, 1917 is both a hero's journey and antiwar.
I disagree with the idea that 1917 is meant to be a hero's journey, maybe on a surface level (in the sense that the protagonist has an immediate goal that is ultimately mostly achieved), but when he finally delivers the letter to the Colonel and "saves" the men, the last words from the Colonel are "That's it for now, but next week command will send a different message: attack at dawn. There is only one way this war ends... Last. Man. Standing." In the end, all of the struggle and sacrifice, everything that happened in the entire movie, was for nothing, merely a short delay of the inevitable. As soon as next week these same men would be sent over the top to their pointless deaths, there was no hero because almost nothing was actually accomplished
@@Mysteryums yes, but it's one thing to have a throwaway line, and it's another thing to actually show it 1917 does seem to pull its punches with regards to being anti-war, maybe it doesn't pull them completely, but the anti-war message isn't nearly as strongly depicted as it is in AQOTWF
@@Mysteryums I agree with you. I most definitely felt that was shown well in the movie. He "saved" those guys so that they could die the next day or week. The heroism was essentially lost as proven by the end seen with the overflowing field hospital after a completely pointless offensive that was then cancelled. Sometimes i wonder if people fail to appreciate the subtleties in a film instead preferring to be bludgeoned over the head with a film makers ideas/ideals.
When I watched this movie I remember thinking “best picture” in the first few minutes, I truly hope this movie pulls a ‘Parasite’ at the Oscars because it is extraordinary Edit: Now it’s been nominated for 9 Oscar’s including best picture! It’s what it deserves. Edit 2: BEST FILM AT THE BAFTAS ALONG WITH A BUNCH OF OTHER AWARDS!!! AWW YEAH!! Edit 3: AND ITS ALLLLL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, it might not have won best picture but it did win FOUR OSCARS INCLUDING BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE! YEAH BABY THATS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!
I am not sure if it will win this year, but the first adaptation from the US from 1930 did win two back in the day. The story is really important and special, and the 1930-version also is really something to watch if you haven't done that.
I finished reading All Quiet on the Western Front a few months ago and I was stunned the last line of the book just drives home the entire book up until that point it was a truly fantastic anti war novel. This version of the movie included some scenes that weren’t in the book but for example the flame thrower scene was so well done. The actors had real fear represented on their faces and you could feel the hopelessness.
"Survival is dependent on sheer luck, depending on where your superior puts you." I've always wondered how many wars would be fought if the modus operandi had been making the leaders duel.
Modern or pre-modern? Might reduce the risk of modern wars, but historically, plenty of rulers were also battlefield leaders. Start with Alexander the Great, add every Roman consul ever elected, every medieval king, quite a few Dukes . . .
There was a nominal tradition of medieval battles being settled by having champions (or a group of them) from each side fight. Of course, whichever side lost would generally fabricate a reason why it didn't count, and then fight anyway.
i mean, for most of human history commanders were generally present on the battlefield. the same men who led armies usually perished alongside them, or returned home in disgrace.
When I was watching „All quiet on the western front“ I had to take a few days break in between, meaning I watched it in two parts. It was so emotionally taxing on me, even though I‘ve read the book many many times and watched quite a few war movies. All quiet on the western front is a true masterpiece in my opinion, because it left me speechless and feeling quite down for the better part of a week.
I watched it in one go, it was the third time I ever cried because of a movie/series/book, and it made me cry twice, in the french soldier on the crater scene and in the suicide scene
@@mysteriumxarxes3990 Absolutely understandable. The scene with the french soldier was hard to swallow in the book, but in the movie it was so much worse. Thank you for sharing your feelings on this!
@@starexcelsior I'm not sure what your angry against? He's not commenting on their quality, just their themes. They are pro war films. That doesn't make them bad ones.
@@starexcelsior Everything is objectively horrible and the worst in combat and at no point should it be glorified in any way. Try not to make too deep of a terrible take about something serious like war when you have a hollow knight profile pic bud
@@starexcelsior tbh Pro-War film shouldn't be a genre. Everything about war is horrible and the worst, there's nothing positive about millions of people trying to slaughter eachother. But i guess Nationalism sells and of course Hollywood will keep doing what sells.
I haven’t seen the movie, but I have read the book. It is devastating. And also in my homeland’s national school reading list, meant for teens to understand the true horror of war. One scene that has stuck with me is when Paul describes the war horses he sees. Their riders dead, the horses attempt to run but are stopped by their own guts falling out as death slowly claims them. There are many such moments, as graphic or more as this one, but I cannot forget it for some reason. Man, while soldiers are not the instigators and their deaths meaningless, can think. The war horses were truly, truly innocent, meant for roaming the wild fields. A sad, but great book
On a cinematic perspective, I love that the first and last shot are of the exact same place, but shot in different times of the day. It shows that despite all that carnage, the world continued on and their sacrifices actively changed nothing.
It also makes you realize, that behind every dead body is a whole human life full of experiences. You cannot empethize with dead bodys that much, the end of the movie makes you though. This movie basicly showed a life and death of an extra, what you normaly don't see.
The big thing that made me realize that AQOTWF was different from the other war movies I watched was that it made me sick to my stomach. At multiple points I became nauseous and had to step away from the movie, and I've never had to do that before. The pointlessness of the fighting, the deaths, the politicians and general delaying the surrender and insisting they keep fighting, it all made me feel very different than other war films had.
I teared up watching the ending of this video. I don't think I understood what war is until it came into my life. War is horrific, and the death of a soldier is truly meaningless. Men in my country are mobilized, many of them are already dead and many of them soon will be dead. They will be dead for nothing, they are being lied to and they are bringing death to others as well. Absolutely heartbreaking video. Thank you for spreading the good message
The war entered into the life of Ukrainians, the war that russians brought. russians don't hide in the bombshelters, don't hear explosions, aren't afraid for their lives and their families. Stop talking like you're witnessing it. Isn't it strange that country that made an anti-war film "Come and see" is openly waging a war now?
@@anninna118 you don't know me, you don't know where I live and what I am witnessing. Also I don't think that deaths of Ukrainian soldiers are meaningless, they are protecting their homeland, their families and they are fighting evil.
@@DianeOBCD I don't need to know who you are and where you are, to say that russian soldiers are not in the position of mindless puppets who don't know what they're doing.
@@anninna118 mate I'm on the ukrainian side all the way but the russians are also in a really shitty position. A lot of them don't even want to fight but their famillies are in danger if they desert or don't go into the army. Slava Ukraina!
@Cong Quach So I should wait for russian soldiers to come, terrorize and kill, because that poor soldiers can go to the military court if they disobey? So heartless and selfish from side to blame them, indeed.
Some of the best anti war works of cinema are the ones that show you the people on both sides. Because that's when you realize that they are all people. And there are many among them you don't want to see die. One mans hero killed another mans family.
Brilliant movie in Australia called Gallipoli (1981) that was a kick in the gut to my history class as we watched it as 15 year olds. 2 best friends join the war together and the entire movie is them excited to go on an epic adventure, it really drags the audience in, makes it feel like it is a fun advanture, but the ending is harrowing. Eventually the plot turns into basically 1917, one character is delivering a message destined to stop the other charging into death. Only difference is he fails, the final shot of the movie is his friend being cut down. Fade to black. Nothingness. Credits. The sense of dread I got watching that and realising that these characters I'd come to enjoy and respect was just over, no explanation, no joy, no victory. Just cut short. Genuinely harrowing.
I watched that one during highschool, and the film went out of its way to show how different their lives and personal skills were too. Then it's all for nothing when the end happens...
@@charlieharrington9555 Same here, I watched it too long ago to remember much, but that core is there. That kind of story just feels unfair, and for good reason. It helps you feel like something was lost and taken from you in some way, even when it truly wasn’t. Just painful really I might be off-target since it’s been so long though ofc. Maybe that wasn’t the exact feeling.
Yes. Starring a young Mel Gibson early in his career. Despite that fact, it was a very good movie. One of the worst disasters for the allies during WWI.
I remember reading _All Quiet On the Western Front_ in high school, and yeah, you can't get much more anti-war than that. I had no idea there was a film adaptation out; I'll have to give it a watch.
There are three film adaptations! One from 1930, one from 1979 and now also 2022. All of which are incredible, definitely worth a watch. Especially the 1930 version.
The 1930 version absolutely broke me. It could just be the way that it's shot due to it's technical limitations but it's insanely brutal. The way the camera captures them there one moment and gone the next, how the audio has the grainy side effect of peaking yet haunted. It's like your watching someone's past life and that's all that's left of them.
the 1930 Version hits a lot harder to me because of the fact, that a lot of people in the movie might have experienced the first Word War themself... like imagine acting in a scenario you recently had to be in for real.
Nobody likes old movies anymore-it’s a Gen Y/Z thing that I don’t totally get-but the original movie adaptation won the Best Picture Oscar and was long considered one of the greatest films of all time.
@@mymangodfrey That isn't really a new thing. People just have an irrational aversion to older content. It's actually one of the (several) reasons copyright dates are in Roman numerals instead of plain digits; it was a tricky little way to obscure just when something came out to a general audience, so a viewer in MCMLXIV wouldn't balk seeing that the film they were watching was made in MCMXLVI. Especially since re-releasing older movies in cinemas was a common practice at the time (since, you know, VHS wasn't invented yet). Maybe it's gotten a bit more noticeable now because of advancements in film equipment - a 1964 viewer could be forgiven for not being able to tell a 1946 film hidden among contemporary ones at a glance, but a 2023 viewer who couldn't spot a 1964 film probably isn't paying attention - but that doesn't mean the phenomenon is exclusive to us.
I think the genius of 1917 is it focuses on the scars around a battle than the battles itself. The sequence of the protag running as so many men charge out of frame into nothingness, all gone, is more apocalyptic to me then any visual of men being mowed down by machine guns. The bodies in the river. The final song to the worn down faces. The empty German bunkers. The flares in the ruined city. That said its not solely an anti-war movie, its a man's odyssey through a horrible war.
This is the exact comment I was looking for. The storyline didn't allow for the film to be explicitly anti-war, I think it would have changed the movie too much. It's a beautifully heart-wrenching story that shows just one perspective of war out of many. One of the few war films I've ever actually enjoyed, it gets its point across well.
“Come and see” 1985 is by far the best anti war film I’ve seen. It does everything all quiet on the western front does but better and more graphic. It’s one of those movies that I saw years ago and still randomly think of to this day. If you like war movies it’s a must watch.
@@Grace-gm5id considering a lot of countries have forced recruitment into their militaries its not farfetched to say that the young generation is forced or spoonfed propaganda to join in wars
What’s funny is that when I first learned about the First World War and how it ended, I too thought it was a very symbolic and poetic ending to a brutal conflict. What I didn’t realize up until very recently was that it was all done intentionally to satisfy uncaring people. I still think it’s a fascinating war to study, but I would never want someone to go through that kind of hell.
Ah ja...? Well, then look at the origins of this war. That's what's really fascinating. Check out the wiki about a certain Jean Jaures. And then use your brain to add 1 and 1 together. But think outside the box and think about everything you've been told to date about WWI guilt. If you're really interested in this, then I'll give you more facts...
@@r0e404 Okay... If we want to look at that, we have to look at how France is acting and its strategic situation. The pact with Russia alone would not be enough to wage a revenge war against Germany. France had therefore begun to gnaw at the weakest pillar of the German defensive alliance at an early stage. Germany's alliance strategy was defensive in nature, for as Bismarck put it: "Germany is territorially satisfied..." And that's where Italy comes into the picture. Italy, had border conflicts with Austria and was eyeing areas in the Adriatic Sea and Greece. France recognized the starting point and first used fiscal funds and covertly bought up Italian government bonds on a large scale. Then another means of pressure developed, rather by accident. A stream of Italian guest workers poured into France. At its peak, it must have been over 1 million. The French could easily make life hell for them. Then there were such political favors as free hands for Italy, from France and England when they wanted to grab Libya. This made italien a more than insecure cantonist. For France, this success was more than important, because it was only now that France could wage a war at all. Because, as Clemenceau put it so aptly: "The problem with the Germans is that there are 20 million too many of them..." If you were malicious, you could also see that as a call to genocide. Now France no longer had to cover its Alpine front, which enabled the use of at least 8 more divisions in the north. Half an army. At the same time, Germany was additionally weakened, since the legendary Schlieffen plan provided for about 6-8 Italian divisions to be used defensively in the southern Vosges mountains up to the Swiss border. This task now had to be taken over by German units. That was the strategic aspect. Then the cooperation with the Serbs came into play. As far as I know, there wasn't any research done on the cooperation between French and Serbian intelligence before the war, but it might be worth trying to dig a little. What is certain is that France never missed a chance when it was able to act covertly against Germany and its allies. I don't want to go into more detail here about political cooperation between the Russians and the French. That goes beyond the scope. But if we look at the direct governance, the French President Poincare, as a native of Lorraine, was directly personally involved in the conflict over Alsace. When he visited the tsar in July, he only added fuel to the fire. Because the tsar didn't want to go to war. France was also keen to be only the 4th nation to be caught up in a dangerous development, so it seemed like others had been sucked into the maelstrom of events. Under no circumstances should you fire the first shot. Because the Entente, too, had an uncertain partner in England. This would be especially so if France were to open hostilities. The British Cabinet met on July 24 (!), for the first time this month. Almost 4 weeks after the assassination in Sarajevo. The British, while aware of the matter, were by no means concerned. And also in this cabinet meeting, it was mainly about domestic politics, about Irish autonomy issues. There was only a brief discussion at the end about the situation on the continent Grey, the Foreign Minister informs his colleagues about the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. At the same session, the Chancellor of the Exchequer expressed his delight at the results of the Anglo-German naval negotiations which were nearing completion and which would end the naval arms race. Relations with Germany are currently better than they have been for many years and it would be possible to save enormous sums on the fleet in the future. British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith wrote in a letter on this Friday evening: "It seems that on the continent the lights go out. Luckily, there doesn't seem to be any reason why we should be anything but spectators..." This explains very clearly how much France needed the first shot from the other side! I already mentioned the Jean Jaures thing. I have no doubt that France's government had the leader of the Socialists assassinated in order to prevent a general strike, first in France (only then could the German comrades follow without being branded traitors by the Kaiser) and then in Germany, the outbreak of war would prevent. France wanted its revenge war. It got this war and paid a heavy price for it, despite winning...
Honestly, WWI fascinates me far more than WWII. The media and politicians love to bring up WWII, and how the next war will be like that, but the reality is that the next war will almost certainly be more akin to WWI. Maybe not in the direct style of war sense (trench warfare and all), but in the futility and absolute worthlessness of the war. A war where young men are forced off to their deaths to help a politician line his pockets. Not to say this makes me anti-war, as I would still gladly pick up arms to do my duty for my brothers when the time inevitably comes, but I am not stupid. I know that whatever our next war may be, it will be a war fought at the expense of the young, to cater for the old.
A fabulous film. Paul's transformation, from a young fresh-faced youth to a haunted cipher with a thousand-yard stare spoke volumes. For sheer brutality, this was in another league. No film has captured the horror of the First World War so brilliantly.
Uh, the other two versions of the movie? From '30 and '79? That actually respect the source material and its focus on the soldiers dissociation with normal life?
If you want to get the full experience of All Quiet on the Western Front I highly recommend watching the original from 1929. It was the first true anti-war movie and features actual German WWI veterans as extras and apparently who taught the film directors how to accurately portray their environment, training, etc. It also features the most “gore” for it’s time which rendered is highly controversial (I only put gore in quotes because it’s nowhere near as bloody as it would be today but it does feature a gruesome hand scene if you know you know). Pretty good watch if you have the time and patience for it.
The fact that hurted me the more is that they all died... Their story was never heard by their families, their items were never bringed back. Their names were forgotten and their life were thrown away without acomplishing anything, without being nothing more than flesh, useless meaningless flesh...
And the fact that such fate befell millions of men, a few thousands of even hundred of thousands who were never found, and lay in the Tomb of the Unnamed Soldier…
Yeah this is what he talks about in the video essay, war is a pointless churning of death, it eats lives and gives nothing in return, if a film gives narrative purpose to the deaths of its soldiers, they give meaning to the otherwise meaningless violence of war, in reality many people go to war and kill many others who never get remembered or commemorated and they themselves are not commemorated in turn,
I don't think any movies can ever be antiwar. Growing up in the late 90s/early 2000s, I watched them all: Blackhawk Down, Saving Pvt Ryan, Thin Red Line, etc. and some of those could be argued as war porn, fair enough. With those movies as motivation and in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I turned 17 and enlisted to become a rifleman so I could prove to my "tribe" that I was one of their "warriors". I went to Iraq, and got what I wanted plus 15+ years of PTSD (survivors guilt, alcoholism, relationship issues, etc.) before getting any effective treatment for it. I still have an angry hatred for much of our foreign policy, patriotism/nationalism, and that naïve 17 year old. I don't even like telling people I'm a vet. And while the treatment has been life changing for me, the PTSD still lingers in the same way back pains lingers from an old injury despite physical therapy. Since then, I've watched various war movies/shows like the Pacific and Journey's End and feel a sort of kinship with the characters who are trying to come to terms with what they've seen and done, it's oddly therapeutic and reaffirms my current views on war, even if some are necessary. ....and yet, these movies also reveal an itch that still wants to be scratched: my desire to be back there. I watch these movies and fantasize about being in whatever battle scene I am watching. I have dreams where I'm back in war, only to wake up disappointed when realizing it was just a dream. Mundane aspects of every day life lead to day dreaming. AQOTWF was as horrific a war movie as one can be, and yet despite it's message it too revealed that itch I still have. So no matter how antiwar a war movie is and despite knowing the personal cost of war, I'll still get that desire to be back there. So it makes even more sense to me why a naïve 17 year old would watch this and want to be a part of it.
There is a continuation to the book called The Road Back dealing with the survivors of WWI and their return to a civilian life. It's way overshadowed by All Quiet to the point that I do not expect the vast majority to know about it so I'm bringing this up to you, especially given what you said and your choice of words - for you it seems to me as though its worth to be read. Best of luck to you.
@@melanieroberson1683 Well yeah but sometimes justified. Imagine if youre country get attacked and youre men dont wanna fight cause they dont have their country in their hearts. And yes that will happen with no nationalism/patriotism. I dont think nationalism/patriotism has to lead to war. If you keep youre morals then you can be peacefull, nationalistic and strong.
i am a german soldier, recently got moved to an elite unit. one of the first things they told me was: „when its starts you are dead“ i asked what and they proceeded to explain to me what i have to survive through on a mission and i realized the odds of survival no matter how good you are are 0. Your skill just determines how much damage you can do before dying
Dad showed us "The Great Escape", "Kelley's Heroes", and "Band of Brothers" when we were kids, to name a few. I always hoped I would join the army, and by the time I was 14, I assumed I would join the marines at 18 and die in a foreign country by age 24. Chance and fate (mostly in the form of a smart wife) took me in a different direction, and all I can see in these movies are my young sons. All our sons, on every side. And a few evil people at the top. Awful, awful stuff. I read the book in college and it shook me.
@@jonathanj.4561 You just can't relate to the civilian world anymore. However I can tell you that salvation doesn't come from human kind, but from the Bible and Jesus. I will pray for you brother. Pray in the name of Jesus, and you will see everything change. He can lead you to the way out. If you follow his path, if you believe in the eternal king Jesus Christ. I pray you will find your way home soon. In Jesus Name Amen.
The book is truly excellent. I read it in High School twenty years ago. One scene that always stuck with me is how reluctant the old guard is to meet the new guys, because they're aware of how many of them are going to die until they learn the rules of the trench. Then, a bit later on, an artillery bombardment hits and the vets all hunker down and know what to do, and the new guys are freaking out. One guy literally sh--s his pants in fear, and he's horrified and embarrassed, and the vets are like, "Yeah, that'll happen. Just wad it up and throw it over the barricades." They are SO ACCUSTOMED to the endless horrors of this all that someone completely crapping themselves with fear is completely normal, standard policy.
I'm missing 'Come and See' and that was a truly harrowing experience. No other even came close. And 'Gallipoli' does exactly what you say about 1917. A soldier trying to prevent a meaningless death of his comrades comes too late, and many die meaningless, with a famous last shot. That hit home too.
1917 does end on a dour note. Cumberbatch's officer explains they'll only order the attack tomorrow, or later in the week. It has delayed the inevitable.
What do you consider a movie that doesn't necessarily show war as totally vain, but absolutely hell to people living in it? That is what the 1951 film Force of Arms basically is. The main character of the story, Pete, is an American GI fighting in the Italian Campaign of World War II. He is just fed up with the killing, fed up with losing friends and companions, fed up with seeing Italian civilians being hurt by the Germans' attacks and just questions what in the world is worth caring about anymore. Nonetheless, he never just gives up on the whole thing. Partially what keeps him going is that he encounters a US Army WAC (female noncombat soldier) named Ellie who similarly is heartbroken, hurt by the war (apparently her fiancé was killed) and she is likewise angry and questioning what's worth trying or caring about. The two bond and fall in love due to their shared pains and longings, and Pete at the end survives the battles, but is not any big hero (rather he is captured by the Germans and later liberated). It's honestly unlike almost any other American-made World War II film I've ever seen. Is this some kind of anti-war film? The message seemed to be "Don't do this people, it destroys human beings inside even if they don't die. Don't do this war stuff unless it's absolutely necessary".
@@hawkeyeten2450 Seems also like a great message. But then sadly 'leaders' keep thinking it's all for the good of the country, eh, or, as Putin in Ukraine, or the US in Iraq, perhaps more for natural resources. What kind of 'leaders' let their own people die for their interests? Criminals, thugs, tyrants.
Your note about 1917 avoiding an ending where efforts by a single man to save people were fruitless was done very well by an Australian film called gallipoli starring mel gibson. It has exactly the ending you describe, where a rush by one man to prevent an attack is ignored and many men die as a result. Definitely worth a watch.
Also the general in 1917 tells that it does not matter if they don't attack today, tomorrow or some other day the orders will change and they will die anyway.
"The cause can be worth fighting for, but not worth the loss of lives tricked into fighting for it" is something that sticks in my mind when I think of world war 2.
I rewatched All quiet on the western front 3-4 times and everytime it breaks my heart... For me it's the best WW1 Movie whit all the happy, sad, desperate, hopeful yet hopeless feelings you see in front of you.. No bias to one or the other site... You just see what war really is.. Fellow humans killing each other so people can push their will on other...
One of the moments that broke some of the myths about war I grew up with was seeing an interview with one of the few surviving men awarded the Victoria Cross in WW2. They asked him to describe what he did in his own words. His response and I am paraphrasing a bit here was to the effect of "I did something very very stupid, and it just happened to work out."
My mom gave me this book and for whom the bell tolls to read when I was 8. Even though I was too young to really fully get them, they sparked a lifelong commitment to pacifism
Then you weren't paying attention. Hemingway believed that "the world is a fine place, and worth fighting for." That some things are worth fighting for even if we fail is the message of that book
As a military veteran, I don't view 1917 as a spectacle at all. The film is very true to life and captures the experience of a young enlisted soldier very well. They go from being volunteered for what they consider to be some mundane logistical task like carrying some mail or supplies to a life or death situation in an instant. By the end, fuck man, I was almost in tears. That movie breaks my heart just thinking about it. All Quiet is fantastic in its own right.
@@stereowired the ending does drive home the point though. Colonel McKenzie straight up says that stopping the attack won't make a difference in the long run. The men saved by stopping the attack that day would still be killed or wounded in a matter of days or weeks later when they inevitability resumed offensive operations with better intelligence about the Germans. The fact that he goes through all of that, but is reminded of the reality is what makes it an anti-war film. The fact that is a beautiful film to look at doesn't glorify anything.
@@6tuf85dyfu I fully agree. I’d even say that the fact that there is a hero’s journey and a tremendous success against impossible odds supports the point. This is all the heroism any man could hope for, and this is all the good it could ever do: That a few hundred men were killed later rather than sooner. Nothing more.
“All Quiet on the Western Front” was a film that really got to me. All the happy moments could go away so easily and my god the ending… All the characters were so close and I always got emotional when one of them left. This movie is really a piece
The Armistice delay is a little detail I never knew, and hurts so much to learn. How heartless to not have it be something that is cried out continuously, as fast as one can run? Every life lost beyond the moment that signature is started is a tragedy, and it could've been as few as a handful if there was any sense of urgency.
Really really awesome how much France really hated Germans by this point. Germany had humiliated France in 1871, taken an entire region from its core and then more less masterminded the Great War itself. Dragging France through 4 years of the most brutal war in human history until that point, fought almost entirely in French and Belgian territory. Of course they were gonna get every last kill they could. In the interwar anti-German sentiments were popular and they still wanted to keep kicking the Weimar Republic on the ground.
@@goswaldthegoose It's really really great how little you know about the history of the origins of the First World War and above all about the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. But I'd be happy to give you a tutoring session so you don't have to die stupid...
war is definitely still glamorized all over the world in films, books or series. even in history classes it sometimes feels like teachers rather speak positively about these past wars instead of getting the horror and immense unnecessary looses across. i didn’t watch this film yet because everytime i watched or had to watch a war movie i felt really uncomfortable because a lot of scenes felt really romanticized but I might give this one a chance now. great video!
@@tangow371 naive? You're the one being naive if you believe war is just a pointless bloodshed that goes nowhere. War is in our Blood, War brought us new inventions, go and do a research on how many inventions we use even today were created for Wars/during Wars. Since the beggining of mankind humans have fought each other -no matter the cause the war was human's close friend. War is humanity, there is no humanity without conflict
@@PolishGod1234 ROFL you're literally proving my point. While people have died for "greater good" like you mention do you not understand that theres such thing as dying for absolutely nothing? And the only technology which has evolved during wars, while alot of them have civilian use, they are ultimately the ones used by humans to destroy each other. Like you said, since the beginning of humanity, not only humans have fought each other but we've constantly found new ways to destroy each other. And we came so far, we reached a point where we're now very much capable of bringing about our own demise once and for all. But you're right, for as long as humanity wanders the earth, we are doomed to forever be in conflict with one another.
One moment from the book that I really wished was in the film somehow was when Paul goes back home. Damn its brutal when you realize that even if they do somehow survive there isn't a place for them in that world anymore.
@@handle25 I think they wanted to provide some context for the insanity of the fictional last day's attack and foreshadowing of what would happen a generation later.
That scene always pisses me off, seeing how disillusioned Paul was when he goes home and becomes even more so when the kids and his teacher call him a coward, and I believe it was his father and some dudes in a bar saying, "the final push to Paris is coming" without even listening to what Paul says or what he thinks (I remember Paul saying the food they get is almost nothing yet the men say, "No, only the best for our soldiers")... A part of me is glad it wasn't shown in the 2022 film, I always skip the classroom scene when I watch the original 30s film I doubt I could watch it again.
💸 Support the channel & get access to non-advertiser friendly videos: th-cam.com/channels/bphDfwSJmxk1Ny_3Oicrng.htmljoin
I think showing the turnover of the dead soldiers equipment was the best thing any warmovie ever did
Yeah that hit me really hard.
I saw that and literally paused the movie to go “holy shit, those guys are getting recycled”
It’s disturbing in a weird way, really stuck with me more than anything else
Its so sick that he also says; ‘Oh there’s someones name on here’ and he just tips it off
@@Loesoemanthe face of that officer when he says “oh must have been to small, happens all the time”.
The guy put his name on it and it was to small??
and the ominus sound that periodicaly played was the icing on a horible cake
“There’s no such thing as an anti-war film” when I heard this quote I immediately thought of Full Metal Jacket because it was meant to be anti-war but a lot of people ended up joining the marines.
As much as I tend to see Apocalypse Now as anti-war, I wouldn’t be surprised if the same happened. It’s definitely an adventure with a lot of room for misinterpretation.
"I wanted to be the first kid on my block with a confirmed kill."
R Lee Ermey's Gunny Hartman and the sniper are supposed to show you how much being in the Marines actually sucks, but kids see it and are like, "man, that's awesome, where do I sign up?"
That's insane that people would want to join the marines after watching full metal jacket. I believe you, but it's still insane lol
@@IzunaSlap I remember a period of time in high school where pretty much the entire fucking student body of the JROTC program were just going OOON about Full Metal jacket. Constantly quoting its more memorable lines and laughing about it and making jokes. It was a HUGE fad.
Looking back its sick how a film designed to open peoples eyes to the outrageous brutality of the marine corps Vietnam era training regime and to drive home the horrors of the military machine and the horrors of a questionably unnecessary war became the subject of alarming adulation and reverence by over a 175 young impressionable boys.
Hard to imagine how many millions more did thee exact same.
Alot of those boys went on to join the Marines and the Army.
A good handful of them are actually dead now ironically...most of them to suicide though, not combat.
“If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie.”
_Tim O’Brien_
OMG the things they carried 😭I could tell it from the first clause 😭I never had a genuine, deep feeling about wars and massive deaths and this book completely changed me
solid book
amazing book
@重生成为比格 For me it was this book and Slaughterhouse-5. Slaughterhouse 5 was the first book I'd read in school that I read multiple times again after finishing it because it was just so good.
'Dance you hippie, dance' - Tim O'Brien
My favourite line was by the representative of the social democrats.
"Mein Sohn ist im Krieg gefallen, er verspürt keinen Stolz."
"My son died in the war and he feels no pride."
We try to give their deaths meaning by calling them honorable, but thats the point. They're dead. Neither their mother nor their wife will care how much pride the rotting corpse of their loved one would feel.
I love the line in Dave van ronks song Luang prabang about the vietnam war "in luang prabang there is a spot where the corpses of your brothers rot, and every corpse is a patriot, every corpse is a hero" its so angry and raw and pointless.
i read a book as a child called Stepping on the Cracks, it was about 2 girls who ended up helping a peer who grew up with problems in his home life hide his older brother. there was a pivotal scene where she's fighting with her mom and screams that she wished she had done that with _her_ brother (even though he was 'more cut out for it') because he would still be alive. her mom slapped her _hard_
Now tell this to Russia
@@issabeganovic8822 Brainwash
@@issabeganovic8822 The Russian leadership is entirely to blame for the war.
i truly appreciate how my history teacher taught us about the two world wars. he had been drafted into the army himself and later became a teacher and i think that really shaped the way he views war. he told us "many young men were eager to join the army. they thought it was honorable to fight. that's what they were told. that's how they were tricked into being taken to their deaths. to the superiors, soldiers were replaceable. if you didn't die on that front, you were taken to another to die there."
Thank God or fate for your good teacher
I know many people who watched anti war films and were inspired to join the military and still enjoy being in or enjoyed it and are onto other things. Can imagine it varies from person to person but if those people fought for what they love and believe in were they really tricked?
@@breadm8101
They were just incredibly lucky to survive. My brother survived Vietnam but he was never the same.
@@anniejewkes5506 my great uncle killed himself before I really got to know him, he was in WW2 and my dad said he was kind of shell shocked and he had been that way even since my dad was a kid. I remember being very young and his face actually being haunting. Something about the first time you see someone’s eyes having sort of a blank look about them is scary asf.
Is it just me or does it seem kinda old making "war is horrible" movies? It's basically all the movie industry have been producing the last many decades. Would be nice for a change with some war epics that show the glory of war, as something cool and exciting. Like Enemy at the Gates or 300 etc
I definitely think it helps that the source material is written by a WW1 soldier. As the author (Erich Maria Remarque) states in the very beginning of the book with the same name: "This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war." This man did not write a book to say that "war is bad", he wrote an honest book about war. An honest depiction of war will always be "anti-war", because all wars are horrible.
Tell that to Ernst Junger...
If I'm not mistaken, he was also persecuted by the Nazis when they took power.
@@pancakes8670they executed his sister because they couldn’t get to him. It’s brushed over but WW1 veterans and people who saw it’s destruction were one of the bigger opponents to the Nazis rise to power, as the Nazis were obviously very pro war.
It's an anti-war story, not a memoir. It often uses lies to this end. For example, with brothels, in reality, you would be shot for engaging with prostitutes. The goal of the book was to paint an anti-war story, and part of this was convincing people that the events in the story could have actually happened (some people go as far as thinking it actually did). When compared to an actual memoir of WW1, it becomes apparent that truth was tampered with to make the story more interesting, and more purposeful than it would have actually been. (Turns out actual memoirs are incredibly boring reads for most of them) This isn't to say that all quiet isn't an important piece of literature or that its message is of ill-intent, only that it isn't reality, or honest, but it is anti-war
@@Kowslayer You're the first person I've ever seen that's speaks of being shot if they engaged with prostitutes... Where as pretty much most contemporary research suggests the military damn well encouraged them...the brothels anyway. They certainly aren't going to shoot their fodder for it.
Another aspect that takes away the hopefulness from All Quiet is that we have the retrospect of knowing that Germany lost, so you know that whatever happens in the movie, no matter how good things may look (points already few and far between), the protagonist is fighting a losing war. This gave me a persistent feeling that all the friends lost through the conflict were sacrificed for nothing, and with the brutality of some or the deaths, it took away any idea of an honorable and glorious death.
i never thought of that while watching the movie, i think that a small part of me was almost hoping for the germans to win almost as if i didnt know how the war ended (btw im from a country who was in the entente so it definitely wasnt patriotism or something like that, even thought i always thought my country shoulve joined the central powers instead but im digressing)
I totally agree with knowing you are watching a loosing battle. But then the tanks and the flame throwers came and I thought, ”my god, this is hell. how could it have been even worse a few years later in world war II”.
@@carag3921 absolutely, the tank and flamethrower scene is what got me as well. I guess because everyone always talks about the honor in fighting for one's country, I never really thought about the barbarism that never really went away, but became automated. It's amazing and terrifying that destructive force of weaponry increased exponentially around the turn of the century, can you imagine telling an American Civil War veteran that in just around 80 years we would graduate from Gattling Guns to bombs that could decimate entire cities?
Tbh, everybody lost in this war.
Germany was a bit of a sucker together with Russia.
But not that much as people made it out to be. The treaty between Russia and Germany was harsher than the treaty of Versailles (Russia lost to Germany on the Eastern front, they tried to win the war that way).
It was a peoples' shared Traumata. Mostly of European peoples, sure. (Or western states).
France was so harsh on Germany about the Reparations because they were sucked dry by the war as well.
Actually a lot of this sentiment that the entire Great War was “pointless” and that all these German men and their friends had fought and died for nothing only for Germany to be cut apart and put into debt for 70 years greatly contributed to WW2
A moment that always sticks with me is from Saving Private Ryan. 2:16 shows a medic treating wounded and their canteen being shot without them noticing. It starts leaking water before turning into blood. A small detail and tiny story on that beach that we can only assume the ending to.
I'm pretty sure he notices it the scene shows the medic takewhat seems to be cloth or smth and put it in under his clothes around the area where he would of got shot
Pretty sure it hit his flesh, nothing else, as he didn't drop dead. Didn't hit a bone.
I found the medics on the beach hard to watch , their screaming out just to be able to save a single person is heartbreaking
Well my brother is a teenager and we watched many war films. After watching this one he was completely horrified and he said “I used to think wars were cool, but I don’t think that anymore”. So I’m thankful for that tbh
I really hope that one day my younger brother will come to that realization. I doubt that he ever will, but I can still hope. He watched 1917 AND All Quiet and its almost like the violence makes him even more enthused. I pray for him.
My grandfather taught me that when I was a kid. He was a German WWII veteran (he didn't want to join the military but the alternative was being sentenced to death) and a pacifist . He never met his father how died in the trenches of WWI in France. Like in the movie, which I don't think I can watch.
@@mochi4miles he'll understand one day
@@mochi4miles Introduce yourself and him to Johnny Got His Gun. It’s bar I hold all other supposedly “great” films to.
@@tailstechvideos2327 hes already watched many of those in his free time, not even joking, it don’t know what he’s think while he’s watching it, but he seems to find it very interesting. I know hes watched them because he asked me to come check it out with him. He’s 15
Gallipoli (1981) is in my opinion the greatest anti-war movie. You follow the protagonist, a young boy named Archie, as he lives an idyllic life in turn-of-the-century Australia. He's a track and field star who begins the movie winning a race against his bully where he's on foot and the bully is on a horse. He even has the little trait of running barefoot to add a little extra character. He goes on to enter an athletics contest where he meets his rival, Frank, and they have a brief but bitter rivalry running against each other. They end up becoming friends and decide to put their physical prowess to use by enlisting in the Just War to fight the Germans. They end up stranded in the desert and run on foot several hundred miles to Perth to enlist for glory and advancement of their careers. Then they end up mucking around in the desert of Egypt for some time, not even getting to fight the Germans. Finally, in the final few moments of the film, they get deployed to invade Gallipoli and are unceremoniously cut down by gunfire. The final shot of the movie is a freeze-frame of Archie running barefoot through bloody soil, his head flung back by the bullet that struck and killed him, posed as if he's breaking the finish line in a footrace. It lingers on this shot for several seconds then cuts to black, with every single thing we learned about Archie and his entire hero's journey, his athleticism, his bright future as a runner, his friendly rivalry with Frank, and his life in Australia ultimately meaning nothing more than catching a single enemy bullet.
I love that film. No more he'll go waltzing Matilda...
Not to mention Mel Gibson is fantastic in it
WWI was not fought justly by anyone.
@@mrchow3177 The Greeks, the French, the Serbs...?! C'mon. Facts straight get you! Mmmm?! It was an aggressive war on the part of Austro-Hungarian, Turks, and Germans. Fought justly? The Turks and Austro-Hungarians had been limping along and the people they oppressed rightly found a way to liberate themselves.
The ending also really hits on the cannon fodder/cog in the machine idea since it's evident to everyone involved that the plan is not going to work because the timing is off (the plan having been bomb the enemy trenches to force evacuation and then overtake those trenches by sending soldiers across no-man's land), and yet the man in charge sends countless soldiers out to die anyway because that was the plan and he has to stick to the plan. Every single one of those soldiers died because the machine believed it needed to keep turning.
I think it's important to note how insanely well the soundtrack of All Quiet At The Western front is at conveying the idea of a war machine.
The soundtrack is mechanical and calculated, cold, and treats the soldiers with disdain.
Yeah I absolutely loved the sountrack. Weirdly Thomas (who co-founded this channel) did not like it, still have to discuss it with him haha
Dunno, "Remains" is the one you're talking about and while i liked it's idea it definitely overstayed it's welcome by the end for the movie. There are plenty of purely emotional tracks, like "Comrades" and "Paul" scattered all trhoughout
@@storytellers1 there is also a movie called "Johnny Got his gun" and it shows the horrors of an injured man during ww1 and what it truly felt like to be injured and mutilated
@@_E_Pluribus_Unum_ to each their own dude
100% the haunting soundtrack will stick with me
My great grandfather was a veteran of the Candadian Expeditionary Force during the 1st world war. He joined in 1915 at the age of 17 alongside his 18 year old brother. I never met him, as he died when my dad was 6, but my grandmother told me something he had told her and it stuck with me. When he was on the front lines some time during 1917, he had went to the latrine to use it but found it was occupied by a British soldier who was hiding. He had decided not to argue with the guy and went to find another latrine to use. Not a minute after he walked away an artillery shell fell where that latrine was, killing the hiding man and likely several others. He had said that despite the random nature of his survival, he had to believe that someone was looking out for him, otherwise he would have lost hope of making it home. That really stuck with me, as it goes to show the random and pointless nature of death in wartime, but also the lies we have to tell ourselves in order to keep going.
RIP Percy MacLeod Taylor (1898-1968), 115th Nova Scotia Rifles, 6th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1915-1919
I sobbed at the end. I kept waiting for him to open his eyes; just like he did to Kat... "He's unconcius..."
Many reviews note the characters in All Quiet on the Western Front as lacking; that there's not enough human drama... but thats kind of the point. Its not an enjoyable film, and we're not used to that. It hurt without redemption.
And that is the reality of war that most of the population do not want to acknowledge
Thats War. And War never changes
any critic that says the characters in this movie are lacking are brainlet clowns that should stick to marvel movies or the godfather or some other delusional sensationalized nonsense.
Exactly, we don't need human drama or love triangles and betrayal and all that dramatic stuff in a war movie...
It's ironic they say the characters are lacking. Most of the time in Hollywood I see a movie and I'm like "Oh that's Dwayne Johnson playing a character". But when I saw AQOTWF, I thought "That's Paul, he's a German kid who was tricked into joining the military."
I watched "Come And See" the other day, and despite the ultra-serious and sad tone it was so unbelievably refreshing and really made me realise just how much glorification of war there is in these other war movies with their heroes and heroes' journey.
'Come and See' is a film I'm very glad to have seen, but could never watch again. I was thinking of it, all through this video, as perhaps the epitome of an 'anti-war' film. 'Gallipoli' is another, ending as it does, although I've never seen anything to equal the horror of 'Come and See'.
Yeah I was talking about this video yesterday with Thomas Flight & Like Stories of Old and they recommended Come and See, which I saw today but never again.
@@storytellers1 I have family that came from and escaped that region, so to watch it knowing just how real it all was and could have been my family in another life hit very very close to home. I'll never be able to watch another war film without seeing it through the lens of what a true anti-war film looks like. And I'm glad more people seem to be coming aware of "Come And See" it's just as you say these hero based war films have a genuine effect on our culture and psyche and thus our relationship with war, not putting enough emphasis on the true absolute horror of war.
@@storytellers1 I've seen only one short scene from Come and See, that alone left a mark in my heart. I am still waiting for my local art-house to play it; I dare not watch it on a computer screen or a TV.
Come and See is special because it is not just a war movie, but a testament to the barbarity of those who often use it as an excuse to commit heinous atrocities.
My father who fought in New Guinea in WW2 said he would have gone mad if he thought he had a chance of survival. It was easier to think he was a dead man walking. That is impossible to empathise with.
my father told all those ppl are a son of every 1
It’s a way to accept the most likely outcome from such a war. Ww2 was such a meat grinder that a lot of those soldiers really were dead men walking. The amount of people that walked right into their death is enough to justify a loss of hope for your own survival.
Ye
That’s insane wow. The things he must’ve seen
Its healthier for a Christian warrior to put emphasis on the promise of Resurrection, “I may be already dead but I’ll live again”.
Another very important point is that all quiet on the western front shows the losing side of the war and not the winning one
"loosing"?
@@michaelhorning6014 huh? Germany lost ww1
@@silasmerzenich "loosing" is the opposite of "tightening"
@@michaelhorning6014 🤓
@@Bob-from-Animal-Crossing no "loosing" is a SYNONYM for "releasing". Go away or I will loose the hounds.
I was thinking through the entirety of the final battle, from the moment the solider remarks that there are only 15 minutes left if the war, that if the movie had any guts, it’d kill Paul. And it did. I could not believe it, but at the same time, its the only way to truly drive home the point of the movie. From the moment Paul put on that patched-up uniform, it was decided. His wound is even in the exact same spot as the previous owner on the uniform’s. Absolutely heart wrenching symmetry.
I think what's so sad too is as he charges we see him finally switch off and just be the killing machine war keeps trying to make him be. He loses his humanity moments before losing his life.
it is actually better that paul was killed. He would have probably suicided or lived the rest of his life with depression or even enlisting in the ww2 wermacht as a cold blooded soldier seeking for revenge on france. After all he saw and experienced, continuing living would be the worst outcome. Thats why stanley kubrick chose to keep joker alive in the end of Full Metal Jacket. The other directors and writers wanted him to die, but stanley said that after all he have passed through it would be worse if he lived, so he mantained him alive during the end to make the movie even more horrifying
I just knew he would die as soon as the general said they would finish the war with a victory.
@@ClavisRa you just made my jaw drop.
The book which inspires the movie also has Paul die at the end. That is the point of the name "All Quiet on the Western Front". It is the field report on the day he dies, saying that there was nothing to comment on that day, nothing important to report back to command. Our main character dies and it is simply ignored when update is sent to command. That is the point of the story, that Paul is just a normal guy with nothing protecting him from death, he had to die to prove that point.
I've always thought Grave of the Fireflies was an amazing anti war movie. I think centering it on civilians rather than any soldiers benefitted it in that regard, and showed aspects of war outside of outright conflict. It's easy for people to misconstrue movies that try to be anti war with sheer violence and spectacle, but I think it would be virtually impossible to do that while watching an innocent family slowly die off through means outside of their control.
That movie made me stop casually studying japanese lol.
Probably the saddest movie I've ever seen. Their lessons feels too much real and cruel.
For me, Grave of the Fireflies shows that even civilians who are on the “enemy” side are also negatively affected by war. Why “enemy” is because the Japanese are trying to dominate the Asian continent during that time. One of the worst things they did is the comfort women issue and they hardly addressed it afterwards. Seeing that movie, it’s clear to me that the decisions of those in power don’t necessarily benefitted their own civilians.
@@corycianangel6321 You need media to show you that? Just think about your own goverment. Does it represent you and your beliefs? Does it have your best interest at heart? If your answer is yes, you're pretty lucky. Or misguided. Maybe both.
@@kuzumi920 Yes, I needed media to show me that, along with context. The problem with privileged people like me is that we would have a narrow view of the world, thinking that all goes well eventually. Sometimes, I would use media to compare & contrast with real life. And of course, it also depends on the type of media one is exposed to.
Some people are ignorant enough not to think much of their own government. Some are either bought in by propaganda or are too tired to think of noble beliefs in order to survive. I was already thinking of my government’s actions when I watched it before. I know how corrupt they are, and they’re quite similar to the society shown in the film.
I read the book "Im Westen nichts Neues" (all quiet on the western front) a few years back and it was absolute terror. I have never felt so moved by a book in my entire life. you want to stop reading because everyone you meet in the book and learn to love dies, but you just can't because you want to follow Bäumer, hoping that he, as the last one of his friends survives, but no, of course he doesnt.
personally the scene with the french man in the trench was the most gut wrenching scene ive ever read about.
i havent seen the new movie yet, but if anyone wants to read a truly anti war book, this is the one.
the book was banned in germany by the nazis because of its anti war message and has since grown to be one of the most important books about WW1 here.
Sadly if you have read the book the new movie about it is trash, it changes/skips some in my opinion very important moments and the movie title doesn’t even make sense anymore because of the changes, it is just a “ww1 movie” inspired by the book and the main characters have the same names but the plot is different (and the background music is really destroying the vibe most of the time, because idk who had the idea to put electronic bass music, which repeated itself before every “dramatic” moment, it was super annoying), I just watched this movie today and was super hyped before but now just disappointed:(
@@delfink4333 yeah i think they should have had more scenes in the hospital, those would have been really disturbing in movie form. I think the ending in the movie works better for a film adaptation though, and still gets a similar message across
@@delfink4333 I completely agree, especially the decision to make the most of the movie take place in the last days of the war was jarring and dumb, the book handled the character development and the ending so well that the movie ending felt insulting to me
To not discourage you, I didn't read the book but watched the movie first, and it's cool to see that I get something to read now. It's a common cliche that movies fail to capture what is in the books but I hope it can still be appreciated if not as its own thing or something to be watched without the book too much in mind.
I can tell the movie focused less on the characters, barely keeping up with their names, and more on what they went through among other tragedies of war and back-and-fourths between that and the rich pigs eating and grumbling together. I think it did really well as an anti-war movie, so I hope the many here who disliked it because it didn't compare to the book, could at least see it for that.
@@Stellar_Politics I agree completely. I read the book for my finals in school (We had to read different books about different european wars). Because I was of the same age as the characters at the time I read it, it moved me in an incredible way as I realised that I most likely wouldn't have lasted even a month in their situation. It is one of the only books that I finished and it had an large impact on how I pictured war in general. I was extremely excited for the film and must say I thought it was a horrible adaptation, however, if one can put that to the side, I think it did it's job as an anti-war film very well.
With a budget of only 40m it’s insane that it’s so good and one of the few movies to make me weep and cry more than once
That's the budget? Really impressive!
My favorite part was definitely when Paul stabbed the crap out of that Frenchman until the dude's slow death was too much for him to witness, and he tried to reverse the damage he'd done, even apologizing. For me that was when I realized how similar France and Germany are, how close those two may have been born to each other, and therefore how horrible and manipulative war is. Being made to kill someone just because you were born in different places. Second to this scene was when the flamethrowers came out. Horrifying. But from a ruler's POV it is merely practical cuz it disables a shooter before killing him
The flamethrower part was really terrifying
The death of the French soldier really stuck with me as well. Especially since Paul was so keen on killing a Frenchman at the beginning of the movie. It showed the reality of murder and how that's not for "heroes", but for psychos. And Paul definitely wasn't one.
Yes,a very moving moment.
Listening to German in casual conversation made me realize the similarities between the two languages.
@@jjvillalobos1244 exactly. it’s horrible how some imaginary lines on a map mean so much
I personally think "Come and See" by Elem Klimov is the most 'anti-war' movie I've ever seen. No one wins in that movie-everything and everyone is destroyed by the end, along with the viewer. One of the darkest, most devastating films I've ever seen. They also use real bullets and a lot of the people in it are WWII survivors (including the director).
This is the only antiwar movie
I've tried to watch it but can't get through the first 25 minutes. It's just so jarring to watch a film where the audio doesn't seem to sync up and the cinematography is terrible. I may give it a shot one day but the opening scene alone put me off
@@matchress3832 ok spielberg
@@kumarkanishka5562 you dont have to be a chef to know what good food tastes like same for knowing if the movie was good its called opinion bro
Johnny got his gun
I've found the most influential anti-war messaging in media being the depiction of the life outside the war: veterans returning or not returning from the front, the effects of living in fear of bombings, food and medicine shortages etc... because very few of us can really (or want to) relate to being on the battlefront, but we can relate to the fear having peace in our own home disturbed.
Kinda a weird one but Disney's Peter Pan 2: Return To Neverland starts with our beloved Wendy from the first movie desperately trying to protect her children from a German air raid during World War II. Wendy's daughter, Jane, is so scarred from growing up during wartime that she basically has no childhood and has to grow up super fast. It's really only brought up in the first few minutes of the film, but it becomes such a defining trait of Jane's character (to the point where she almost kills Tinkerbell because she doesn't believe in fairies) that it has to be mentioned. And that's in a 2002 children's animated feature that I grew up with.
Vietnam chemical
Wmd accusation
Making kill machines with no empathy and then send them back into society… ffs
The first Rambo movie
Waltz in Bashir, kind of an animated documentary about war in the Lebanon
AQWF was heart breaking, seeing Paul go from an energetic, vivacious young man in the beginning of the movie and throughout the movie you see him slowly becominh more and more numb like his soul had died way before his physical body had died. There is a picture of a WW2 Soviet Soldier named Evgeny Stepanovich Kobytev. There is a side by side picture of him, 1. Right before he got sent to war (in 1941), and the 2. Is a picture of him was taken shortly after returning home from fighting (in 1945). It reminds me of Paul's character towards the end of the movie in AQWF, his eyes just... empty.
It's crazy how Chaplain faced a mountain of backlash for that ending speech, and it's one of the best speeches ever made
Sadly, that is a sentiment that will never come to fruition. Evil is everywhere and will always try to increase its grasp, we saw what happened when Chamberlin believed Hitler. It’s a depressing and cynical perspective but wars will always be fought (for the right reason? Probably not) and good men and women will die on sides, military and civilian. He’s spot on about the people at the top though. The currency of war is lives and the disgusting part is how quickly those at the top are willing to spend them. I am absolutely a military supporter though, anyone willing to die for another is someone to be grateful for.
Not sure it's the speech itself, which many would find hard to disagree with, but the political leanings of many in entertainment...still today.
th-cam.com/video/289HLIqQtVw/w-d-xo.html
@@natewasserman2559 that doesn't mean we are doomed. Apathy or gullibility in the face of aggressors certainly won't bring peace, you're right. That said we just need to look deeper. Hitler, like most violent demagogues, gained influence because of the desperation and anger shared by his audience. If we want to create enduring peace, we have to work to rid the world of such suffering so that evil dictators will have no audience.
If you ignore the suffering of your neighbor, you have already made them your enemy.
Obviously more complicated in real life application, but it's the mentality needed to create enduring peace imho
Chaplin is such a talented, hardworking, humble and humane genius.
It was a non-interventionist speech made at the time of the Hitler-Stalin pact. Chaplin was a useful idiot.
The tank scene in “All Quiet on the Western Front” was the most brutal thing I’ve ever watched. You feel the terror and confusion of the soldiers at seeing this weird machine they’ve never encountered before, the absolute horror and desperation as they try to bring down the tanks only to get crushed like they’re nothing and the helplessness as the few that manage to escape get chased down and burned alive. That scene single-handedly made me feel all the chaotic terror, confusion and powerlessness war movies attempt to portray and (in my opinion) often fail at. Just for that scene alone, this film will always hold a special place in my personal list of favourite movies. I’ll definitely try and get my hands on the novel in the future.
The film butchers the novel.
@@truereaper4572 books are always better than the movies they base them on
I agree about the emotional potency of the tank scene. I remember how shaken I was by reading the novel when I was younger, and the film did a great job of putting that sense of terror and uselessness onto the screen. Absolutely brilliant.
i think part of what made that scene so impactful is that it’s a german movie. it portrays the french as monsters, in contrast with most world war movies that portray german soldiers in that same way. it flips the script
@@truereaper4572 yeah it does, but that’s the point of an adaptation. it’s not a dramatization
I remember from school when we had a listening comprehension exercise. It was about the Ireland/UK Conflict and the main character was a young man becoming a soldier in the UK. He was sent to Ireland and patrolling with his company. He was shot dead all of a sudden and with this the story ended. No hero's death, no action, no funeral, nothing. Just a random shot and the main character was death. I still remember how I thought "Wow, this is totally different to the movies etc. I saw." And to this day, this is still my thought on war. You are just a random character who survives or dies by chance.
Exactly. Every soldier is a just a chess piece in a sick political game.
Did the story in your listening comprehension exercise have a name? Can it be found online?
@@MrKarlozz
If self-concern is all you know then yes, any kind of altruism whatsoever is a sickness.
@@MrCmon113
War is altruistic?
I'm very much against war especially when it's about political ego psycho fuckers deploying innocent young kids to areas they essentially don't know or give a flying fuck about. I think stuff like ridding the third reich during WW2 to put an end to the holocaust and tyranny was an altruistic act though. But more often than not, war is nothing but political spin and games of power.
Sorry for the profanity btw, it's not directed at you.
@@MrKarlozz
When a "political ego psycho fucker" sends his "young innocent kids" your way, what do you do? Let the "political ego psycho fucker" have his way? Or do you give up the anti-war stance?
How many wars have you reviewed to arrive at the conclusion that there were no legitimate grievances or interests on any side of the conflict and that the only ones motivating the fighting were some small minority in the leadership?
I've watched many war movies but this one did it for me. I just could not get a suitable reaction out, almost as if something was stuck in my throat and till this day, I feel it.
That tank passing from on top of that soldier and the flamethrower scenes are especially haunting so is the nonchalance with which the soldiers tackle the enemies.
You should also check out paths of glory. It's not a lot of spectacle, but it's an absolute masterpiece.
We watched it in class and universally the tank running over those soldiers made us all 1000x more horrified than them getting shot
I suggest having a look at All quiet from the western front from the 70s as I personally found that movie much better. While I noticed that the new movie is a much better anti-war movie than many others it still sucked compared to the 70s one. You barely connect with the soldiers in the new one and it mainly goes by the cruelity through visuals and peole being followed dying and a set up horrified face. The old movie however does not work in that way, it works by showing much more that those soldiers are regular people, as it for example has much more scenes of interaction between the soldiers in times of calm and before the war, showing them to be actual peole with hopes and dreams and how they interact and not just an unknown schoolboy being a soldier now. The euphemism is also shown much more realistic. Having the teacher hold an epic speech in front of the whole school and everyone screaming YEEEAAAHHH is pretty damn unrealistic, while during the old movie we have a lot of time focused on showing how they are all influenced by their normal everyday surrounding like teacher, policemen, friends,... and the teacher holds subtle speeches being more of unnoticed nature. This is how people are actually influenced to be ready for war, not epic speeches. Overall the old movie also packs much more content in the time it has, as the new movie is just a few minutes of before the war and then straight up just fighting, it went over in like 5 minutes while watching it. The old movie however shows a lot of before the war, much fighting and also going home of vacation from the frontline as it sometimes happend and also short moments of peace on the front but behind the frontline. Additionally I really missed one scene from the old movie in the new one and that was the one where he was at home and had to go back to the front. He writes a letter for his mom stating that he doesnt feel at home anymore, that the frontline has become his new home and his fellow soldiers his family and that he can not escape the horrors anymore cause he has gotten used to them and they are a vital part of his soon to end life now and that he thus returns home to the frontline. After rereading his letter he burns it to spare his mother. This was such an important key scene from the old movie which the new one just completely forgot about and it is an great example of what I meant with that the old movie goes much more into depth on the actual psychological horror. Also the stabbing the french guy scene has been much more personal. The new movie just shows him being traumatised after stabbing someone. The old movie goes into depth how he reads through his ID who he was and shows how he suffers and how the main character struggles with his own action
I think Grave of fireflies was a great anti-war film. no real battles, just the saddest most heartbreaking film I think I’ve ever seen as a result of WWII.
Yes. I watched it as a child and it shaped my consciousness to this date.
@@kingstonsteele7820 Now you definetly should watch "Penguin's Memory: Shiawase Monogatari"
"1942" is also a candidate. It's about the great famine during the war in a Chinese province when the Japanese invaded, ans the Chinese government abandoned the province for political reasons.
Also barefoot gen
this is exactly what I thought! I first watch Grave of the Fireflies at the age of ten. It greatly shaped me and my perspective of war, and is one of my favourite movies ever, even though I go through an entire box of tissues every time lol
As a German now living in the US I always cringe when someone stops me to tell me "WWII was my favorite war, I think the Germans had such a great airforce, and the tanks were awesome!" I usually stand there saying things like "Well we see it a bit differently" or "I don't think there is such a thing as a great war". Obviously I was fed with horrific pictures from the moment I entered school which is also debatable, but I honestly prefer that to thinking war is something heroic that needs to be supported at all costs.
As an American, I can confirm that there are indeed people who think this way. In high school, there was a kid in one of my classes who was obsessed with WWll as well as the weapons and tanks used in warfare. I understand researching a topic that you are interested in and want to educate yourself on, but this specific kid treated it like it was a fun and lighthearted thing. Also, though I’m from a Northern state, I live in a rural area where people actively defend the confederate side of the civil war as well. It’s absolutely disgusting.
I lived in Japan for a little while too, and similar to America, I saw a few people who were incredibly nationalistic and think that the nation was at its peak before 1945. Obviously this doesn’t apply to a large portion of the population, as many are aware of the horrible crimes committed during that time, but the ignorance, glorification and miseducation did remind me of the way some people view war in the US.
Also sorry for any typos and if this was long. I tend to ramble and I’m writing this on my phone
As someone who since a teen has been fascinated by WWII from the German point of view, the one thing that kept me, and still keeps me, from fethisizing it is the thought of all those young men dying or just disappearing into the russian hinterland while their moms, lovers and wives, possibly died during the bombing raids. It's almost impossible for me to watch the any old footage on YT of people in the 1910's and 1920s, especially the children, and not wonder whether they died at Stalingrad or in the bombings of the cities.
@@oceanmango _"but this specific kid treated it like it was a fun and lighthearted thing."_
Given the fact the closest that kid would ever get to WW2 is playing it in a video game, I think this attitude is entirely understandable.
The war is long since over, and is now an historical event good for nothing but speculation and entertainment.
We don't tear our hair out over the Civil War anymore either, we just dress up in costumes and re-enact it for fun.
Get over it. You too Mr. German, GET OVER IT!
@@GeneralJackRipper i feel like “get over it” is a lot easier said than done. War has caused centuries of generational trauma for so many people, and just because it was in the past, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t harm in viewing real life war and other tragic events like a video game. Just because some people view it this way doesn’t mean that it’s suddenly okay and we should just forget about it to move on.
When I visited the peace memorial and museum in Hiroshima, i read and heard various stories not only about the people who died from being vaporized or from radiation poisoning, but also about how their children were born with mental and physical birth defects, relatives had to watch their loved ones die from issues like leukemia years later from the event, and there’s still people alive right now whose grandparents were affected.
There are Jewish people who have relatives that were victims of the Holocaust, and there continues to be neo nazis who look up to hitler and his goals of eugenics. Anti semitism has existed long before world war 2, but that event caused and still will continue to cause pain for people today.
There’s so many more examples of how war has killed, traumatized and impacted soldiers, innocent civilians and marginalized groups.
I understand the perspective that all we can really do is speculate and reflect upon the past. However, to say “get over it” is incredibly ignorant and disrespectful in my opinion.
Also sorry for any typos, I’m on my phone atm
@@GeneralJackRipper You had me in the first half, as imo it's completely understandable for teens/kids to not fully understand the ramifications of war and the suffering it brings- but the attitude that war is just something you "get over" is the most ignorant take about war, in general. War has a multi-generational effect on the lives of people. Veterans get PTSD, the next generation may have to suffer through the damage it inflicted to their country/family members that it took, and not to mention the racism that crops up as a result. If I had a nickel for every anti-German middle schooler I've met I'd be rich, and vice versa. People almost fetishize the SS and Whermacht sometimes. It's sickening. Families have been torn apart; countries destroyed, people murdered and cultures eradicated just because humans love to kill each other. War is history, but it's *relevant,* ever-applicable history.
I'm reminded of a lesser known Russian series called "The Dawns Are Quiet Here". One of the most shocking themes of that series for me is how nearly every important character, after we get to know them and their pasts and reasons for enlisting, most of them die unceremoniously, unwitnessed. One girl drowns alone trying to get reinforcements in a swamp, another has a panic attack and gets shot in the back during a gunfight, another gets killed randomly while fetching supplies. Only 2 of them get heroic deaths, and the main character who survives.
It was jarring how their stories just suddenly came to an abrupt and violent end. Especially since the characters were just kids barely into adulthood. At the start you thought, they have training, they have comraderie, they have spirit, they're bright and full of youth, so they'll make it out alright. But none of them do. And they don't even get dignified deaths.
That is the reality. Wars are not stories of hardship and triumph. Wars END stories. There is rarely consolation.
That is a very well known story in China I can say that, there’s even a Chinese version of the series
That sounds very interesting. Which war is that about?
Goosebumps.
@@ulharr WWII, well, we call this side of the war the Great Patriotic War.
"Come and see" is another great example. It's haunting and hard to watch. When it came out, many middle schoolers were taken to the cinema to see the film for education. I heard a lot of stories about how traumatized they were by it.
I'm very interested in this but I definitely can't take it
You can see at 2:18 the Medic hit through his drinking bag but he didnt recognized it due to his adrenaline. The bag dropped its water followed by his blood. What a detailed movie scene.
what a gnarly detail
I feel like a medieval siege would be a perfect setting for an anti-war movie. Just two sides waiting each other out, the defenders hoping that reinforcements will arrive, the attackers trying to undermine the opponents' defenses to speed up their victory. Seeing the men wither away from hunger, freeze in ditches and makeshift shelters, the ever-present risk of disease spreading across the encampment. After months of combatting these invisible yet ever present threats, one side surrenders, no spectacle, no climactic battle, just two groups putting each other through all sorts of misery, where every man killed in 'glorious combat' is matched by dozens who died to comparatively mundane dangers. If it's done well enough, we would get a story like 'the terror', it wouldn't be fun, that's not the point, but we see a story about people being worn down until they are shadows of their former selves.
Since its medieval I think its for the best that we've been shown the worst of what the both sides encounter on the war of attrition, the attackers cave in and on desperation, charges for their very lives. No glorious battles no battle cries, just desperate, starving men having no choice but to do or die, ending with the victory of the few attackers that remained committing atrocities to the losing side while glorifying their efforts. Showing that despite how desperate the attacking side was, they were not saints either. We must not forget what they came for and what we do to raise morale on a conflict that's very much real since the dawn of humanity, a fight for resources of any form.
This... sounds brilliant.
Go my friend, now. Write a script or get somebody who can write a script. Pitch it and insist on it. Sleep on the streets if necessary. This is a movie that needs to be made. Maybe based on the siege of Kenilworth Castle?
Good idea… I love the medieval period.
I do like the idea, but to my limited knowmedge, medieval people tended to be kind of cicilised and meet somewhere where they could fight out ownership over whatever they were fighting over due to strict conceos of honour.
@@julecaesara482 yeah I think I went back a bit further to vikings, medieval is more on power struggles incest, witch hunts and plagues
The scene where he rested his head on the stomach of the French soldier who he had just killed was one of the most gutting parts of the entire movie for me
Yeah, it was a great scene to show how such a war is absolutely meaningless and there are men of the same kind on both sides who just want to love and being loved, not to kill others.
I didn't see the movie, but it was the most memorable chapter from the book. Completely unforgetable.
What marscaleb said. Going into this movie I yearned to see how they would adapt that scene from the book. Both versions, absolutely gut-wrenching. If there is one thing I'll remember from All Quiet through the years, it's that scene.
That scene was so sad
read the book in high school… still my favorite and the scene you mentioned has stayed with me ever since. i think that teacher and her choice of literature turned the entire classroom into pacifists (and me into a German lit student)
I have not watched this movie but read the book back in 2007.
I was deployed to Iraq in 08 and Afghanistan in '10-11. I was airborne infantry with 101st.
I appreciate the time I served with my brothers but the truth is that many died for nothing. Life goes on and the machine makes more money. I am not homeless but I am not rich or famous. Everyone around me never served and never will. I lived a lie.
Thank you for sharing this review.
Thank you for your service.
The army is just a tool for people who want to get something of value through the other hands. If people thought not about the fact that war is bad, but about why it happens, perhaps there would be no wars in the world at all. There is always someone who gives orders. Each trouble has a name, surname and position.
@@PK-zo9vx Why would you thank him for that? I thank J. M. for having the clarity to through the illusion, the Iraq war served neither Americans nor Iraqis, only the American political elite who maintained their popularity through the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and the American oil industry, who pillaged the country once the dust settled.
The problem is precisely what you said at the end: "Everyone around me never served and never will. I lived a lie." You fought in a war which was both started and supported by men who had no stake in it, and for a country whose own people don't really believe in it anymore.
You get what you deserve joining up to fight an illegal war
This was a beautiful and moving video. It's truly sick how we send young, often poor men to war. My dad was one of those young, poor men sent to war and he lives with that everyday. He was a field medic who saw fellow soldier literally cut in half, mowed down by friendly fire when communications went down and two units attacked each other by mistake. As a medic, he saw all that gore and death even closer than others. Thats the only story he has EVER told me and it was only because he was drunk and spiraling from carrying that. War is what started his problems with drinking and it's another struggle he has on top of everything else
On a less heavy note, I have a lot of movies i need to watch now. Thank you for this video
"The problem is that narrative film is better at enchantment than disenchantment." True with both war, smoking & drugs on screen. Great essay.🎬
But a better film will be better at entrenchment. Sometimes, I feel like I never left the army.
I am consistently surprised to see nicotine showed like that now, in 2020s. A cigarette in cinema is still not a trademark of a loser addict but of a cool guy or a nonconformist girl. Even such positive and progressive shows like Sex Education, present nicotine addiction as a trait of a cool kid.
@@robertchmielecki2580 True, Hollywood made an effort in the 80s --at behest of the Reagan administration or conservatives if I recall--to reduce smoking and drug use and it downplayed it for a while. But I think cinematographers will always like smoking because of how it appears on the screen, it's basically cheap easy special effects.
@@robertchmielecki2580 it dosent have to be a loser, like bad ass people smoke, but it shouldnt be glorofied when the charcters they make smoke, have no buisness smoking
Narrative film is a bit of a double edged sword in this regard. Seeing war through narrative film risks the unintentional "glorification" of war (though I think that statement is hyperbolic). But WITHOUT narrative film, no one will have an idea or CARE that these things happened. Narrative films have the power to get entire societies to care about things they would otherwise would not!
For most people, they need *personal* stories to help them understand the grandeur, importance, loss, or horror of such events.
I find it painfully ironic (and just plain sad, really) that All Quiet on the Western Front and Top Gun were movies released in the same year and were even being considered for the same awards - both nominated for Best Picture at the Oscar's, for one. All the work done by All Quiet in regards to deterring people from joining could conceivably be undone by Top Gun, especially seeing as it was sponsored/influenced by the DoD/US Navy..
Top Gun was a cash grab, not a film. I agree w you completely. And banshees got snubbed too! I can't even watch the Oscar's, dude
Big facts
Liked top gun maverick as a moive, not a war movie so to speak
Top Gun was fun.
@@Cairo40000 Sure it was. Doesn't change the fact it's a propaganda movie. After watching the film, imbeciles rushed to get enlisted
The greatest barrier to the anti-war film is that we cannot truly take the point of view of the dead. The camera always survives, and if it doesn't, the movie is over and our life goes on. We can't experience the end of experience.
Another comment mentions the movie Gallipoli, and how it is filmed and shown.. and I think it comes closest to exactly what you describe can't happen, because it ends when the main character dies, very suddenly.
Jacob's Ladder?
@@chromaticstorm787 I also immediately thought of this film.
@@guard13007 A great point! Also a fun fact; that particular ending was inspired by a photo of a Spanish soldier being shot during the Spanish civil war.
Only The Sopranos
Terrific video. Good points. I'm in my 60s. No one talked as much about the total randomness of war until the past few years. It's a good sign. Even those of us who were strongly anti war still held on to the myths that except for bad luck, if were were 'well trained,' and 'smart' we'd survive. Something else that was in none of the hundreds of history books and biographies of war I've read over the years, 60% of casualties are from artillery. This means that even if you dig the deepest hole, your chance of being wounded or killed is still totally random.
The book Jarhead about the first Gulf War, Desert Storm: the young Marine sniper writes that to them all war movies were pro war. That's how they saw them, that's what they got out of them.
I've watched countless war movies over the last 25 years and All Quiet on the Western Front really moved me, it was hard to watch and really showed how cold and harsh WWI was. All those young men's lives just thrown away like they were nothing. Truly a masterpiece of a film.
Just like the movie that was shot back in 1930...
if seen all 3 versions of the film (1930, 1979 and 2022) and all of them are done very well for their time and manage to capture the spirit of the book beautifully.
@@melchiorvonsternberg844 I'll have to track this down and watch it as well.
Have you seen Come & See or Turtles Can Fly? Both horrific antiwar films perfectly made.
It is not a masterpiece good lord
They should make a war film where instead of the protagonist being a person, the protagonist is a piece of equipment or uniform as it passes from soldier to soldier.
UPDATE: 2K Likes! This is the most interaction I've ever had on social media, Thank You!
A protagonist is a character who drives the action of a story. If the equipment isn’t sentient or something, it can’t be a protagonist. You could say that a story follows a piece of equipment as it’s passed down.
@@laughingseagull000 it's a movie... all they need is a voiceover to make any object sentient
i mean they kinda did that with heinrich's jacket, but they only really did it for the intro
someone could try to do something similar for the entirety of a film as a recurring motif
I know its not the same but war horse kinda does this.
War Horse?
All Quiet on The Western Front is truly an anti-war film with the absolute helplessness you feel throughout it. The scenes where the soldier lives long enough to go home, only to be confronted with the general who encouraged him and his friends to join the war, and being pushed with war talk when all he wanted to do was get away from the war almost made me cry. There’s such a disconnect between those who get shipped to war and those who stay in the homeland, away from the carnage. Its the closest thing to hell on earth, I think
That film and Come and See are hauntingly the BEST.
Human imagination can never get worse than reality
Can someone Tell me the movie at 3:11
It was an anti-German war film. I dont know if there exists a film about Belgian resistance during WW1, but I can assure you that it would be comparable to the French WW2 resistance films which honor the practice of defending against those seeking to oppress you.
@@jonasschaf911 I think its Jarhead
8:48 I respectfully disagree with you. 1917 is not an anti war film, it is a war action thriller. These are two completely separate movies with completely different themes, 1917 could have never been similar to All Quiet on the Western Front. The only correlating factor between the two is that they take place during WW1. 1917 made war feel suspenseful and made us feel in awe, AQWF was almost a horror film. I agree that the later is how war films should be, but 1917 wasnt really a “war” film, it was an action thriller where the setting was WW1. That doesn’t make it a bad film, but to compare it to a real war film is unfair.
I just finished All Quiet On The Western Front and I have just been left in silence, with tears literally streaming down my face. This film is truly heartbreaking.
this is exactly what the movie wants, exploit your emotions rather then enlighten you, the movie talks to our reptilian brain rather than the upper parts
WHY DID KAT HAVE TO FUCKING DIE
@@Papi_Buzz I don't personally remember a cat dying, but if one did, its probably because cats died. Imagine you're 17 years old and are dragged into a hell like WWII, you wouldn't care much about the cats, would you. Although I doubt imagining that is even possible for most.
@@CrunchRosey I mean kat, he was such a good role model and mentor to Paul and his friends. I remember when he died, my classmates were swearing towards the farm boy who killed kat
@@Papi_Buzz Now I just look silly, don't I. I'll leave the comment up tho because i'm not wrong.
As a german I really like to see that this film makes international waves, I think german literature in the theme of war is completely different than english one so its nice to see this. I also like that the film breaks the stigma that there has to be a hero, also sth that is frequently done in german literature, maybe it has sth to do with our culture that we dont have heroic heros, or that we lost two ww idk
Maybe we have just realized that every heroe tale is just another step to a new war.
Just look at the Ukraine War and how Russia is using WW2 to justify it. Young Russians go there to be a part of the "hero" generation they have been heard stories hundrets of times before.
The Fact that Germany has no Heroes is coming from Psychological Warfare from the Outside. A Nation without any Heroes is just depressed and in fact has a sickening effect on the psychology of its People. It only leads to self-hatred. And if you talk with Germans its everywhere. They doom and demonize their ancestors and talk themselfs down as if they are and were the worst people ever and German History in General is "Nothing to be proud of, it was always bad" or even worse some people even going as far as saying "what german history ? there is none besides starting both world wars" and all of this is serious and not some unfunny ironic bullshit.
Tbf, "All quiet on the western front" always made waves outside Germany, starting with the Book. Arguably, even more so than in Germany : After all, the first adaptations as movies/TV series were American and it's only now that the Germans finally tackled it (and well, it's from Netflix so still with americans involved)
I'm not German, but I think there's a bit of a taboo that made it impossible for any German filmmaker to do it until now
I think it's because Germans didn't want to face that, while foreigners could examine it in a more detached manner. The harshest reaction would be the ban by the Nazis and book burnings (it was one of the first book on their "degenerate" list), but even regular Germans probably had no real taste for it.
@@Baamthe25th it was very controversial at the time, yes. Basically, Germans fell into one of two categories: those who liked All Quiet On the Western Front and those who liked Storm of Steel. Nowadays, with the exception of the usual ultra-right segment of society, I would say that All Quiet On the Western Front is the view that has prevailed in German society.
@@lisaw150 you are referring to Ernst Jüngers "In Stahlgewittern", right? That's a fascinating book, with such a strange and, to us nowadays, exotic and uncanny view on war and what it does to the individual. Ernst Jünger became an officer during the war, so unlike Paul, he was more in a position of the soldier as a profession. The book was time and time again rewritten by him, which shows that he still processed the whole horrible war
The reason why that guy made the book a few years after ww1 was because he wanted to show people and explain the true horrors of war and that it's not all about glory and medals
Didn’t the nazis try to burn the book?
@@sirilluminarthevaliant2895 They didn't just try… (:
@@sirilluminarthevaliant2895 burn the book and heavily edit the 1930s film and later prohibit it completely
This notion is common and shared by all German war literature of the 1920s, even the affirmative ones. However, there are actual blind spots, for instance technology.
@@malena5026 How ironic that those who censored the book were placed into power by those who witnessed the horrors depicted in the book.
Our history teacher had us watch Dunkirk to show why war is so tragic and unnecessary. I just can't get over how that movie is clearly "propaganda" directed to showcase the heroism of the English volunteers and soldiers who fought to get home. To me that movie was like watching a Marvel movie, not an anti-war movie. All the glorious moments of defeating the enemy while outnumbered and on their last bullet. Even the ending was cheerful with the England celebrating the return of thousands of soldiers as if they had won the Olympics.
The book ”All quiet on the western front” is one of the best book I’ve read. During Hitlers mass book burnings before/during WW2 this was one of the books that were ordered to be thrown in the pile all over the country. It completely worked against Germanys propaganda by depicting war in its true essence and the deaths truly meaningless. A powerful read.
I love that book. I still wanted to join the military. But the book help me choose the Navy instead of the Marines or Army.
@@lupea8079 what made you join it?
@@SmashingCapital well i figure what would be the worse case scenario; get station on an aircraft carrier and be at sea for months or infantry duty in Afghanistan? I prefer to be out at sea.
Far as joining the military in general. College just sounded like a terrible idea. After you spent 13 years in public school. The idea of spending more time in school but paying for it now, nah i am good. Wanted an adventure and I sure did find one.
@@lupea8079 So a combination of your ignorance and selfishness, and pragmatic calculation of where you could find a biggest comfort and safety while still granting you associated social status made you join the military, not the book.
@@YellowKing1986 yup as the old saying goes you chose your rate, you choose your fate. 😆
The bit that got to me was when one of the boys said, "my mum just said watch what you eat". That really put into perspective how unaware of the brutality some of the boys and their families were.
@The Christian Oubliette but there was never a war like ww1, ww1 was the start of modern day combat mixed with the old ways of combat where each side would line up and run at each other, nobody knew that they was going to end up with trench foot or living with rats the size of of a house cat that you would see eating dead bodies, same for ww2 nobody thought there would be another world war but there was and it was more gruesome than the last which no one expected
@@D-A-A-honestly I think even the commanders, generals, politicians and kings didn't knew how much more brutal WW1 was gonna be.
Not even the engineers and scientist that made the weapons knew the new effect it Will have on warfare.
Everyone is making it up as they go. I am sure once they realize how horrendous war was. They resign to the fact they started something horrendously bigger than themselves as it spiralled out of control.
Ah the sins of our grandfather's.
@@D-A-A- Not entirely true.
The operational headquarters *should* have known what it could and probably would end up being like. Maybe not until the offensive in French ground to a halt, but certainly after that. The American Civil War or the Russo-Japanese War were great examples of what war had become that it hadn't been in the last great European war -- if you want to be so cynical to call the French-German War 'great'.
The simple fact is that army command on *all sides* disregarded human life, were grossly out of touch with reality, and put ideology above reason and pragmatism.
Look at Gallipoli, look at Verdun, look at people like Hotzendorf, Enver Pasha -- heck -- even Churchill fumbled around like a bumbling baboon.
It was hell. And what made it hell were the people at the top abusing the glorified illusions of the youth.
They betrayed their own countrymen.
They were despicable, lazy, unimaginative, and half-witted bastards with a claim to office often more reliant on the inbreeding of their family than the measure of their achievements.
And I hope history will remember them as that.
@@D-A-A- It was not the start of modern day combat, not even close.
However it was the biggest display of it soo far. (No wonder, since its a world war lmao)
-
The first war that had modern day combat was the thirty years war, under the reign of Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus (Also called "Father of modern warfare") sweden revolutionized the combat of the era and used modern tactics during the thirty years war which he ultimately won, defeating the Holy Roman empire, German states, The catholic league, Denmark-Norway, and the Spanish empire.
Sweden basically invented a new way of combat and ALL nations in the world have adopted this general doctrine and after the war, atleast the West, transitioned into modern warfare, some slower, and some faster than others.
Sweden practically won the entire war alone under his rule and with the help of superior tactics and strategy.
-
Now ofcourse he didnt invent every single detail of modern warfare as we today know it, that would be ridiculous for one man to do.
But he laid the entire foundation and invented the general strategy for the tactics still used today.
if you went through the process of becoming a soldier, it didnt take 2 days and you were foolish to think you didn't know what you were getting into
There was that scene where some soldiers (who couldn't control their emotions) tried to rebel by refusing to go back to the front line, were simply lined up and shot right there and then. It was quick business and a slap in the face which drove home Charlie's point (for me) that they simply don't care.
Really? You’ve only just now realized the phrase ‘cannon fodder’ means exactly that?
what movie are you referencing?
@@L4UR3L All quiet on the western front.
When I first watched this I was waiting for that epic battle scene cause every I watched always had one either in the form of fighting and beating the enemy or surviving against great odds and escaping to safety.
And yet all I got were scenes that remind me of horror movie survivors trying to survive the killer. All i got was the protagonist trying to survive the horrors of war, doing very little to impact the battle at all.
I adored this movie, so very refreshing
as a kid i glorified being a soldier and played soldier all the time but seeing this movie, especially the tank scene, killed any remaining feeling of wanting to be a soldier, this movie did great with its portrayal of combat
Man, you must watch the original 1930 version. That turn off all my glorifications of war. Not the carnage but the shellings and how shitty life in general is in the front. It is boring, saddening, and depressing life in general. When the action arrive you may already break from various sickness or shell shocked. If you still in one piece, then the enemy will try to break you too.
If you see past western narrative of Russo Ukraine war and reached the middle ground, you will see that war also echoed WW1. Many people volunteered for an adventure only to live shitty life in trenches, dissolutioned by glory of warfare. People from both side die in bulk for their politicians. The difference is that now drones and tanks also trying to kill you from longer range.
Tank scene is the 2nd scariest, with the worst being the flame thrower dudes walking behind them.
@@comradeblin256 Most of the international volunteers saw combat before they showed up, they at least knew what it was like to be in the military and get shot at already. What they are not used to is fighting a often-static artillery war.
I watched plenty of anti-war films and still joined the Marines. Low and behold, here I am. I did lose friends in Iraq, but we all would do it again if we could.
@@comradeblin256 ?
My uncle is a US veteran that served in Iraq. He suffers severe PTSD from it and he went to watch All Quiet on the Western Front, and couldn’t even handle the first couple minutes of action.
As somebody who is friends with a veteran who deals with PTSD and survivors guilt, that was a BAD idea, bruv. . . . . Like, taking him out for Barbecue on the 4th of July would have been a bit much.
The 2022 version is the first version I've had problems with watching
@@Tsm132 How many versions are there? I thought there had only been one previous?
@@MarcIverson there's 3, first one is from 1930, second is from 1979 and the third is 2022.
@@Tsm132 Thanks.
Breaks my heart, knowing that there are people still dying on a war like that. Just because somebody told you so, you go and kill you neighbours, with unimaginable cruelty and hate.
Exactly!
It feels good
@@Simonhenerickson wow, your very funny
@@BucketMans Thanks dude👍
@@Simonhenerickson your welcome dude👍
"All quiet on the western front", "Come and see" and "Grave of the fireflies" are my top three picks for anti-war films. All hit SO deep.
A close contender is of course the finnish film Tuntematon Sotilas (the unknown soldier), it truly shows how horrific the winter war was, especially in the later stages.
Our dad made us watch a documentary on war when I was quite young. It focused on the victims of war. I will never forget that scenne of a mother, who was not able to talk anymore, only making those unnerving sounds and screams because she had witnessed her son die a horrific death. It made me a pacifist for life.
Any chance you remember the name?
Yeah any chance you remember the name of that?
Same what is the title called
And yet look at how many brainless lemmings are cheering on the war in Ukraine and want us to get into a nuclear war with Russia.
I want to know as well
I realized watching the movie in the beginning that this was going to be a sad movie, when he was handed the uniform that was in someone else’s name, it indicated that the person that had that uniform had died but the movie perfectly portrayed the young mind of a person to not realize and the innocents he possessed not realizing what hes getting into. It was at that point i felt sad how these young men were brainwashed into war.
I think the most anti-war film ever made is Come and See. I don't think any other film in the world can make you feel as if you were there and make you truly feel the horror the same way it does
That movie is truly horrific. The most horrifying movie I have ever seen, and based on the lived experience of it's writer.
"Come and See" is available for free on TH-cam on the Mosfilm channel, for anyone who's interested.
No, it's not. Since the bad guys in the film are the Nazis, its message is easy to misinterpret as "Nazis are bad" instead of "war is bad". Don't get me wrong, the Soviets made a few great films about war, including this one, which show the horror that comes with it. And yet look at what Russia is doing right now, with at least a significant part of population supporting it. And you know who supports it the most? People in the 45+ age category, exactly the ones who have seen all those films, the ones who you would expect to have the least militaristic zeal.
Art doesn't change people's minds. They just interpret it the way it suits their already held beliefs, and if it doesn't, they just discard it entirely.
@@olgap218 Did you even watch Come and See? The Russians are just as bad as the Nazis. They steal from each other, murder prisoners, leave each other behind, rape their own civilians, its chaos and murder. Everyone is a bad guy. The only innocent people are the two kids, who by the end, are also bad guys. War turns everything into hell and everyone into demons.
Hard disagree from me. Art absolutely imitates life, but life absolutely also imitates art.
Haunting that movie.
Thank you for this amazing video, I find that many people seem to miss the point of these movies. All Quiet on the Western Front is an amazing movie that left a strong impact on me. It reminded me of a book I read called "Refus d'obéissance" by Jean Giono, a WW1 veteran. This book goes beyond anti-war sentiments and blames the system that creates and depends on war. I highly recommend it; a truly powerful and insightful read.
One of the most striking things about this movie for me was how it depicted the cycle.
We start by following a boy who dies meaninglessly, we follow a character who dies meaninglessly and then in the end we follow yet another boy following in footsteps of those who came before.
There will always be another casualty of war to mourn.
I really liked 1917, while it was a hero's journey, it also used to its one take approach to show that everything that happend in the movie happend in the space of about a day. All the death, tragedy, horror was just a tiny little timeframe in a tiny little section of a global war. In that way, 1917 is both a hero's journey and antiwar.
1917 was a war movie, aqotwf was an anti war movie.
I disagree with the idea that 1917 is meant to be a hero's journey, maybe on a surface level (in the sense that the protagonist has an immediate goal that is ultimately mostly achieved), but when he finally delivers the letter to the Colonel and "saves" the men, the last words from the Colonel are "That's it for now, but next week command will send a different message: attack at dawn. There is only one way this war ends... Last. Man. Standing."
In the end, all of the struggle and sacrifice, everything that happened in the entire movie, was for nothing, merely a short delay of the inevitable. As soon as next week these same men would be sent over the top to their pointless deaths, there was no hero because almost nothing was actually accomplished
@@Mysteryums glad someone caught this.
@@Mysteryums yes, but it's one thing to have a throwaway line, and it's another thing to actually show it
1917 does seem to pull its punches with regards to being anti-war, maybe it doesn't pull them completely, but the anti-war message isn't nearly as strongly depicted as it is in AQOTWF
@@Mysteryums I agree with you. I most definitely felt that was shown well in the movie. He "saved" those guys so that they could die the next day or week. The heroism was essentially lost as proven by the end seen with the overflowing field hospital after a completely pointless offensive that was then cancelled. Sometimes i wonder if people fail to appreciate the subtleties in a film instead preferring to be bludgeoned over the head with a film makers ideas/ideals.
When I watched this movie I remember thinking “best picture” in the first few minutes, I truly hope this movie pulls a ‘Parasite’ at the Oscars because it is extraordinary
Edit: Now it’s been nominated for 9 Oscar’s including best picture! It’s what it deserves.
Edit 2: BEST FILM AT THE BAFTAS ALONG WITH A BUNCH OF OTHER AWARDS!!! AWW YEAH!!
Edit 3: AND ITS ALLLLL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, it might not have won best picture but it did win FOUR OSCARS INCLUDING BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE! YEAH BABY THATS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!
I am not sure if it will win this year, but the first adaptation from the US from 1930 did win two back in the day. The story is really important and special, and the 1930-version also is really something to watch if you haven't done that.
And the Oscar for Best Picture/Original Score goes to…
yeah it definetly deserves a few oscars. Lets hope Hollywood will recognize this
Oscars are meaningless, and have been for a very long time.
@@jesperburns No ! Puplicity !
I finished reading All Quiet on the Western Front a few months ago and I was stunned the last line of the book just drives home the entire book up until that point it was a truly fantastic anti war novel. This version of the movie included some scenes that weren’t in the book but for example the flame thrower scene was so well done. The actors had real fear represented on their faces and you could feel the hopelessness.
"Survival is dependent on sheer luck, depending on where your superior puts you."
I've always wondered how many wars would be fought if the modus operandi had been making the leaders duel.
Modern or pre-modern?
Might reduce the risk of modern wars, but historically, plenty of rulers were also battlefield leaders. Start with Alexander the Great, add every Roman consul ever elected, every medieval king, quite a few Dukes . . .
There was a nominal tradition of medieval battles being settled by having champions (or a group of them) from each side fight. Of course, whichever side lost would generally fabricate a reason why it didn't count, and then fight anyway.
i mean, for most of human history commanders were generally present on the battlefield. the same men who led armies usually perished alongside them, or returned home in disgrace.
When I was watching „All quiet on the western front“ I had to take a few days break in between, meaning I watched it in two parts. It was so emotionally taxing on me, even though I‘ve read the book many many times and watched quite a few war movies.
All quiet on the western front is a true masterpiece in my opinion, because it left me speechless and feeling quite down for the better part of a week.
you're soft as warm butter
I watched it in one go, it was the third time I ever cried because of a movie/series/book, and it made me cry twice, in the french soldier on the crater scene and in the suicide scene
@@mysteriumxarxes3990 Absolutely understandable. The scene with the french soldier was hard to swallow in the book, but in the movie it was so much worse. Thank you for sharing your feelings on this!
@@schonski7260 best part is, the french actor is mute. the want of him accepting soldiers apology was dead from the start
after i saw the movie, especially after i saw it the second time, i've just felt very grim and sad, it really hurting to see end.
"We were soldiers" and "black hawk down" have always felt like very pro-war films to me and you've put why into words better than I ever could
oh so sorry all war films don't spend their entire running times showing how everything is horrible and the worst for 3 hours.
@@starexcelsior I'm not sure what your angry against? He's not commenting on their quality, just their themes.
They are pro war films. That doesn't make them bad ones.
@@starexcelsior Everything is objectively horrible and the worst in combat and at no point should it be glorified in any way. Try not to make too deep of a terrible take about something serious like war when you have a hollow knight profile pic bud
@@starexcelsior tbh Pro-War film shouldn't be a genre. Everything about war is horrible and the worst, there's nothing positive about millions of people trying to slaughter eachother. But i guess Nationalism sells and of course Hollywood will keep doing what sells.
@@starexcelsior you would prefer they show the happy and fun side of war?
I haven’t seen the movie, but I have read the book. It is devastating. And also in my homeland’s national school reading list, meant for teens to understand the true horror of war. One scene that has stuck with me is when Paul describes the war horses he sees. Their riders dead, the horses attempt to run but are stopped by their own guts falling out as death slowly claims them. There are many such moments, as graphic or more as this one, but I cannot forget it for some reason. Man, while soldiers are not the instigators and their deaths meaningless, can think. The war horses were truly, truly innocent, meant for roaming the wild fields. A sad, but great book
On a cinematic perspective, I love that the first and last shot are of the exact same place, but shot in different times of the day. It shows that despite all that carnage, the world continued on and their sacrifices actively changed nothing.
It also makes you realize, that behind every dead body is a whole human life full of experiences. You cannot empethize with dead bodys that much, the end of the movie makes you though.
This movie basicly showed a life and death of an extra, what you normaly don't see.
The big thing that made me realize that AQOTWF was different from the other war movies I watched was that it made me sick to my stomach. At multiple points I became nauseous and had to step away from the movie, and I've never had to do that before. The pointlessness of the fighting, the deaths, the politicians and general delaying the surrender and insisting they keep fighting, it all made me feel very different than other war films had.
That's because the war on the Western Front during WW1 was different than any other war ever fought in human history.
I was fine, the Frenchmen slow death was sad tho
@@GeneralJackRipperpeople die the same everywhere, it doesn't matter where it is
I teared up watching the ending of this video. I don't think I understood what war is until it came into my life. War is horrific, and the death of a soldier is truly meaningless.
Men in my country are mobilized, many of them are already dead and many of them soon will be dead. They will be dead for nothing, they are being lied to and they are bringing death to others as well.
Absolutely heartbreaking video. Thank you for spreading the good message
The war entered into the life of Ukrainians, the war that russians brought. russians don't hide in the bombshelters, don't hear explosions, aren't afraid for their lives and their families. Stop talking like you're witnessing it. Isn't it strange that country that made an anti-war film "Come and see" is openly waging a war now?
@@anninna118 you don't know me, you don't know where I live and what I am witnessing. Also I don't think that deaths of Ukrainian soldiers are meaningless, they are protecting their homeland, their families and they are fighting evil.
@@DianeOBCD I don't need to know who you are and where you are, to say that russian soldiers are not in the position of mindless puppets who don't know what they're doing.
@@anninna118 mate I'm on the ukrainian side all the way but the russians are also in a really shitty position. A lot of them don't even want to fight but their famillies are in danger if they desert or don't go into the army.
Slava Ukraina!
@Cong Quach So I should wait for russian soldiers to come, terrorize and kill, because that poor soldiers can go to the military court if they disobey? So heartless and selfish from side to blame them, indeed.
Some of the best anti war works of cinema are the ones that show you the people on both sides. Because that's when you realize that they are all people. And there are many among them you don't want to see die. One mans hero killed another mans family.
I suggest you watch Joyeux Noël then
Brilliant movie in Australia called Gallipoli (1981) that was a kick in the gut to my history class as we watched it as 15 year olds. 2 best friends join the war together and the entire movie is them excited to go on an epic adventure, it really drags the audience in, makes it feel like it is a fun advanture, but the ending is harrowing. Eventually the plot turns into basically 1917, one character is delivering a message destined to stop the other charging into death. Only difference is he fails, the final shot of the movie is his friend being cut down. Fade to black. Nothingness. Credits. The sense of dread I got watching that and realising that these characters I'd come to enjoy and respect was just over, no explanation, no joy, no victory. Just cut short. Genuinely harrowing.
I watched that one during highschool, and the film went out of its way to show how different their lives and personal skills were too.
Then it's all for nothing when the end happens...
Thank you! I was hoping someone would mention Galipoli!
My dad nearly got the s kicked out of him in a pub in oz when that was in cinema. The lads thought he was a Brit but he’s Irish
@@charlieharrington9555 Same here, I watched it too long ago to remember much, but that core is there. That kind of story just feels unfair, and for good reason. It helps you feel like something was lost and taken from you in some way, even when it truly wasn’t. Just painful really
I might be off-target since it’s been so long though ofc. Maybe that wasn’t the exact feeling.
Yes. Starring a young Mel Gibson early in his career. Despite that fact, it was a very good movie. One of the worst disasters for the allies during WWI.
I remember reading _All Quiet On the Western Front_ in high school, and yeah, you can't get much more anti-war than that. I had no idea there was a film adaptation out; I'll have to give it a watch.
There are three film adaptations! One from 1930, one from 1979 and now also 2022. All of which are incredible, definitely worth a watch. Especially the 1930 version.
The 1930 version absolutely broke me. It could just be the way that it's shot due to it's technical limitations but it's insanely brutal. The way the camera captures them there one moment and gone the next, how the audio has the grainy side effect of peaking yet haunted. It's like your watching someone's past life and that's all that's left of them.
the 1930 Version hits a lot harder to me because of the fact, that a lot of people in the movie might have experienced the first Word War themself... like imagine acting in a scenario you recently had to be in for real.
Nobody likes old movies anymore-it’s a Gen Y/Z thing that I don’t totally get-but the original movie adaptation won the Best Picture Oscar and was long considered one of the greatest films of all time.
@@mymangodfrey That isn't really a new thing. People just have an irrational aversion to older content. It's actually one of the (several) reasons copyright dates are in Roman numerals instead of plain digits; it was a tricky little way to obscure just when something came out to a general audience, so a viewer in MCMLXIV wouldn't balk seeing that the film they were watching was made in MCMXLVI. Especially since re-releasing older movies in cinemas was a common practice at the time (since, you know, VHS wasn't invented yet).
Maybe it's gotten a bit more noticeable now because of advancements in film equipment - a 1964 viewer could be forgiven for not being able to tell a 1946 film hidden among contemporary ones at a glance, but a 2023 viewer who couldn't spot a 1964 film probably isn't paying attention - but that doesn't mean the phenomenon is exclusive to us.
I think the genius of 1917 is it focuses on the scars around a battle than the battles itself.
The sequence of the protag running as so many men charge out of frame into nothingness, all gone, is more apocalyptic to me then any visual of men being mowed down by machine guns. The bodies in the river. The final song to the worn down faces. The empty German bunkers. The flares in the ruined city.
That said its not solely an anti-war movie, its a man's odyssey through a horrible war.
This is the exact comment I was looking for. The storyline didn't allow for the film to be explicitly anti-war, I think it would have changed the movie too much.
It's a beautifully heart-wrenching story that shows just one perspective of war out of many. One of the few war films I've ever actually enjoyed, it gets its point across well.
“Come and see” 1985 is by far the best anti war film I’ve seen. It does everything all quiet on the western front does but better and more graphic. It’s one of those movies that I saw years ago and still randomly think of to this day. If you like war movies it’s a must watch.
"War is where the young and stupid are tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other." - Niko Belic
I hate that quote, it makes it sound like the kids weren't just manipulated and coerced into the military :/
@@Grace-gm5id considering a lot of countries have forced recruitment into their militaries its not farfetched to say that the young generation is forced or spoonfed propaganda to join in wars
@@Grace-gm5id It doesnt, though? It literally says "...the young and stupid are **tricked** by the old and bitter"
“It makes no difference what men think of war, war endures.” -Judge Holden
@@PolishGod1234 "It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those who fought and those who had not."
What’s funny is that when I first learned about the First World War and how it ended, I too thought it was a very symbolic and poetic ending to a brutal conflict. What I didn’t realize up until very recently was that it was all done intentionally to satisfy uncaring people. I still think it’s a fascinating war to study, but I would never want someone to go through that kind of hell.
Ah ja...? Well, then look at the origins of this war. That's what's really fascinating. Check out the wiki about a certain Jean Jaures. And then use your brain to add 1 and 1 together. But think outside the box and think about everything you've been told to date about WWI guilt. If you're really interested in this, then I'll give you more facts...
@@melchiorvonsternberg844continue
@@r0e404 Okay... If we want to look at that, we have to look at how France is acting and its strategic situation. The pact with Russia alone would not be enough to wage a revenge war against Germany. France had therefore begun to gnaw at the weakest pillar of the German defensive alliance at an early stage. Germany's alliance strategy was defensive in nature, for as Bismarck put it: "Germany is territorially satisfied..." And that's where Italy comes into the picture. Italy, had border conflicts with Austria and was eyeing areas in the Adriatic Sea and Greece. France recognized the starting point and first used fiscal funds and covertly bought up Italian government bonds on a large scale. Then another means of pressure developed, rather by accident. A stream of Italian guest workers poured into France. At its peak, it must have been over 1 million. The French could easily make life hell for them. Then there were such political favors as free hands for Italy, from France and England when they wanted to grab Libya. This made italien a more than insecure cantonist. For France, this success was more than important, because it was only now that France could wage a war at all. Because, as Clemenceau put it so aptly: "The problem with the Germans is that there are 20 million too many of them..." If you were malicious, you could also see that as a call to genocide. Now France no longer had to cover its Alpine front, which enabled the use of at least 8 more divisions in the north. Half an army. At the same time, Germany was additionally weakened, since the legendary Schlieffen plan provided for about 6-8 Italian divisions to be used defensively in the southern Vosges mountains up to the Swiss border. This task now had to be taken over by German units. That was the strategic aspect. Then the cooperation with the Serbs came into play. As far as I know, there wasn't any research done on the cooperation between French and Serbian intelligence before the war, but it might be worth trying to dig a little. What is certain is that France never missed a chance when it was able to act covertly against Germany and its allies. I don't want to go into more detail here about political cooperation between the Russians and the French. That goes beyond the scope. But if we look at the direct governance, the French President Poincare, as a native of Lorraine, was directly personally involved in the conflict over Alsace. When he visited the tsar in July, he only added fuel to the fire. Because the tsar didn't want to go to war. France was also keen to be only the 4th nation to be caught up in a dangerous development, so it seemed like others had been sucked into the maelstrom of events. Under no circumstances should you fire the first shot. Because the Entente, too, had an uncertain partner in England. This would be especially so if France were to open hostilities. The British Cabinet met on July 24 (!), for the first time this month. Almost 4 weeks after the assassination in Sarajevo. The British, while aware of the matter, were by no means concerned. And also in this cabinet meeting, it was mainly about domestic politics, about Irish autonomy issues. There was only a brief discussion at the end about the situation on the continent Grey, the Foreign Minister informs his colleagues about the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. At the same session, the Chancellor of the Exchequer expressed his delight at the results of the Anglo-German naval negotiations which were nearing completion and which would end the naval arms race. Relations with Germany are currently better than they have been for many years and it would be possible to save enormous sums on the fleet in the future. British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith wrote in a letter on this Friday evening: "It seems that on the continent the lights go out. Luckily, there doesn't seem to be any reason why we should be anything but spectators..." This explains very clearly how much France needed the first shot from the other side! I already mentioned the Jean Jaures thing. I have no doubt that France's government had the leader of the Socialists assassinated in order to prevent a general strike, first in France (only then could the German comrades follow without being branded traitors by the Kaiser) and then in Germany, the outbreak of war would prevent. France wanted its revenge war. It got this war and paid a heavy price for it, despite winning...
Honestly, WWI fascinates me far more than WWII. The media and politicians love to bring up WWII, and how the next war will be like that, but the reality is that the next war will almost certainly be more akin to WWI. Maybe not in the direct style of war sense (trench warfare and all), but in the futility and absolute worthlessness of the war. A war where young men are forced off to their deaths to help a politician line his pockets.
Not to say this makes me anti-war, as I would still gladly pick up arms to do my duty for my brothers when the time inevitably comes, but I am not stupid. I know that whatever our next war may be, it will be a war fought at the expense of the young, to cater for the old.
@@melchiorvonsternberg844 Thank you
A fabulous film. Paul's transformation, from a young fresh-faced youth to a haunted cipher with a thousand-yard stare spoke volumes.
For sheer brutality, this was in another league. No film has captured the horror of the First World War so brilliantly.
Yeah there has been the OG, which was made by actual ww1 vets.
Uh, the other two versions of the movie? From '30 and '79?
That actually respect the source material and its focus on the soldiers dissociation with normal life?
watch the original. The 2022 version omits a crucial scene that really gives that exact point a much heavier meaning.
I just want to say thank you for being "that one guy" who actually lists material used because sometimes I've spent hours on that, you're great man
If you want to get the full experience of All Quiet on the Western Front I highly recommend watching the original from 1929. It was the first true anti-war movie and features actual German WWI veterans as extras and apparently who taught the film directors how to accurately portray their environment, training, etc. It also features the most “gore” for it’s time which rendered is highly controversial (I only put gore in quotes because it’s nowhere near as bloody as it would be today but it does feature a gruesome hand scene if you know you know). Pretty good watch if you have the time and patience for it.
The fact that hurted me the more is that they all died... Their story was never heard by their families, their items were never bringed back. Their names were forgotten and their life were thrown away without acomplishing anything, without being nothing more than flesh, useless meaningless flesh...
And the fact that such fate befell millions of men, a few thousands of even hundred of thousands who were never found, and lay in the Tomb of the Unnamed Soldier…
exactly, they have no voice, no one will speak about what THEY lived.
Yeah this is what he talks about in the video essay, war is a pointless churning of death, it eats lives and gives nothing in return, if a film gives narrative purpose to the deaths of its soldiers, they give meaning to the otherwise meaningless violence of war, in reality many people go to war and kill many others who never get remembered or commemorated and they themselves are not commemorated in turn,
Humans treat each other like literal garbage.
ALL RIGHT AT THE END TOO ! Horrifying.
I don't think any movies can ever be antiwar. Growing up in the late 90s/early 2000s, I watched them all: Blackhawk Down, Saving Pvt Ryan, Thin Red Line, etc. and some of those could be argued as war porn, fair enough. With those movies as motivation and in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I turned 17 and enlisted to become a rifleman so I could prove to my "tribe" that I was one of their "warriors". I went to Iraq, and got what I wanted plus 15+ years of PTSD (survivors guilt, alcoholism, relationship issues, etc.) before getting any effective treatment for it. I still have an angry hatred for much of our foreign policy, patriotism/nationalism, and that naïve 17 year old. I don't even like telling people I'm a vet. And while the treatment has been life changing for me, the PTSD still lingers in the same way back pains lingers from an old injury despite physical therapy.
Since then, I've watched various war movies/shows like the Pacific and Journey's End and feel a sort of kinship with the characters who are trying to come to terms with what they've seen and done, it's oddly therapeutic and reaffirms my current views on war, even if some are necessary.
....and yet, these movies also reveal an itch that still wants to be scratched: my desire to be back there. I watch these movies and fantasize about being in whatever battle scene I am watching. I have dreams where I'm back in war, only to wake up disappointed when realizing it was just a dream. Mundane aspects of every day life lead to day dreaming.
AQOTWF was as horrific a war movie as one can be, and yet despite it's message it too revealed that itch I still have. So no matter how antiwar a war movie is and despite knowing the personal cost of war, I'll still get that desire to be back there. So it makes even more sense to me why a naïve 17 year old would watch this and want to be a part of it.
There is a continuation to the book called The Road Back dealing with the survivors of WWI and their return to a civilian life. It's way overshadowed by All Quiet to the point that I do not expect the vast majority to know about it so I'm bringing this up to you, especially given what you said and your choice of words - for you it seems to me as though its worth to be read.
Best of luck to you.
whats your problem with nationalism/patriotism. Its what keeps a country together and strong.
@@basedchad6035 It also lead boys into the trenches and machine of war.
@@melanieroberson1683 Well yeah but sometimes justified. Imagine if youre country get attacked and youre men dont wanna fight cause they dont have their country in their hearts. And yes that will happen with no nationalism/patriotism. I dont think nationalism/patriotism has to lead to war. If you keep youre morals then you can be peacefull, nationalistic and strong.
Usa is a terrorist state
i am a german soldier, recently got moved to an elite unit. one of the first things they told me was: „when its starts you are dead“ i asked what and they proceeded to explain to me what i have to survive through on a mission and i realized the odds of survival no matter how good you are are 0. Your skill just determines how much damage you can do before dying
Dad showed us "The Great Escape", "Kelley's Heroes", and "Band of Brothers" when we were kids, to name a few. I always hoped I would join the army, and by the time I was 14, I assumed I would join the marines at 18 and die in a foreign country by age 24.
Chance and fate (mostly in the form of a smart wife) took me in a different direction, and all I can see in these movies are my young sons. All our sons, on every side. And a few evil people at the top. Awful, awful stuff. I read the book in college and it shook me.
did you end up joining the army?
@@450sr_rider1 I did not. Went to college and started a family.
@@jonathanj.4561 You just can't relate to the civilian world anymore. However I can tell you that salvation doesn't come from human kind, but from the Bible and Jesus. I will pray for you brother. Pray in the name of Jesus, and you will see everything change. He can lead you to the way out. If you follow his path, if you believe in the eternal king Jesus Christ. I pray you will find your way home soon. In Jesus Name Amen.
The book is truly excellent. I read it in High School twenty years ago.
One scene that always stuck with me is how reluctant the old guard is to meet the new guys, because they're aware of how many of them are going to die until they learn the rules of the trench. Then, a bit later on, an artillery bombardment hits and the vets all hunker down and know what to do, and the new guys are freaking out. One guy literally sh--s his pants in fear, and he's horrified and embarrassed, and the vets are like, "Yeah, that'll happen. Just wad it up and throw it over the barricades."
They are SO ACCUSTOMED to the endless horrors of this all that someone completely crapping themselves with fear is completely normal, standard policy.
I'm missing 'Come and See' and that was a truly harrowing experience. No other even came close.
And 'Gallipoli' does exactly what you say about 1917. A soldier trying to prevent a meaningless death of his comrades comes too late, and many die meaningless, with a famous last shot. That hit home too.
@@nathanielwilcox4947 Haha, yes, maybe, but I wasn't talking about good or bad movie. :)
1917 does end on a dour note. Cumberbatch's officer explains they'll only order the attack tomorrow, or later in the week. It has delayed the inevitable.
What do you consider a movie that doesn't necessarily show war as totally vain, but absolutely hell to people living in it? That is what the 1951 film Force of Arms basically is. The main character of the story, Pete, is an American GI fighting in the Italian Campaign of World War II. He is just fed up with the killing, fed up with losing friends and companions, fed up with seeing Italian civilians being hurt by the Germans' attacks and just questions what in the world is worth caring about anymore. Nonetheless, he never just gives up on the whole thing. Partially what keeps him going is that he encounters a US Army WAC (female noncombat soldier) named Ellie who similarly is heartbroken, hurt by the war (apparently her fiancé was killed) and she is likewise angry and questioning what's worth trying or caring about. The two bond and fall in love due to their shared pains and longings, and Pete at the end survives the battles, but is not any big hero (rather he is captured by the Germans and later liberated). It's honestly unlike almost any other American-made World War II film I've ever seen. Is this some kind of anti-war film? The message seemed to be "Don't do this people, it destroys human beings inside even if they don't die. Don't do this war stuff unless it's absolutely necessary".
@@hawkeyeten2450 Seems also like a great message. But then sadly 'leaders' keep thinking it's all for the good of the country, eh, or, as Putin in Ukraine, or the US in Iraq, perhaps more for natural resources. What kind of 'leaders' let their own people die for their interests? Criminals, thugs, tyrants.
@@judyhopps9380 Thanks. Forgot that.
Come and See is probably the closest I’ve ever seen. It almost makes you not want to watch it again, which is the feeling you should get
ive been looking for a comment mentioning come and see, glad to see I wasn't the only one thinking about it
Your note about 1917 avoiding an ending where efforts by a single man to save people were fruitless was done very well by an Australian film called gallipoli starring mel gibson. It has exactly the ending you describe, where a rush by one man to prevent an attack is ignored and many men die as a result. Definitely worth a watch.
Absolutely love gallipoli one of the greatest war movies ever
Also the general in 1917 tells that it does not matter if they don't attack today, tomorrow or some other day the orders will change and they will die anyway.
@@ПавелПовх-з3у yes, they missed this, it didn't matter, they all died.
This comment, exactly this
Saw Gallipoli as a child and it really stuck with me. Churchill was behind some of those failed landings btw.
The strong feeling of loneliness at the end of all quiet when I protagonist is all by himself and without friends made me tear up
"The cause can be worth fighting for, but not worth the loss of lives tricked into fighting for it" is something that sticks in my mind when I think of world war 2.
It was a war of only two outcomes; either 75 million casualties or the Wehrmacht completely taking over.
I rewatched All quiet on the western front 3-4 times and everytime it breaks my heart...
For me it's the best WW1 Movie whit all the happy, sad, desperate, hopeful yet hopeless feelings you see in front of you.. No bias to one or the other site... You just see what war really is.. Fellow humans killing each other so people can push their will on other...
One of the moments that broke some of the myths about war I grew up with was seeing an interview with one of the few surviving men awarded the Victoria Cross in WW2. They asked him to describe what he did in his own words. His response and I am paraphrasing a bit here was to the effect of "I did something very very stupid, and it just happened to work out."
My mom gave me this book and for whom the bell tolls to read when I was 8. Even though I was too young to really fully get them, they sparked a lifelong commitment to pacifism
Glad your a pacifist not everyone is strong enough to fight for what they love
Idk why but I read "pacifism" as "fascism" and I was like AYO WTF?!
I also red it. I agree with you
Then you weren't paying attention. Hemingway believed that "the world is a fine place, and worth fighting for." That some things are worth fighting for even if we fail is the message of that book
As a military veteran, I don't view 1917 as a spectacle at all. The film is very true to life and captures the experience of a young enlisted soldier very well. They go from being volunteered for what they consider to be some mundane logistical task like carrying some mail or supplies to a life or death situation in an instant. By the end, fuck man, I was almost in tears. That movie breaks my heart just thinking about it. All Quiet is fantastic in its own right.
I think it’s only viewed as a spectacle for its narrative and the entire movie looking like it’s all one shot.
@@stereowired the ending does drive home the point though. Colonel McKenzie straight up says that stopping the attack won't make a difference in the long run. The men saved by stopping the attack that day would still be killed or wounded in a matter of days or weeks later when they inevitability resumed offensive operations with better intelligence about the Germans.
The fact that he goes through all of that, but is reminded of the reality is what makes it an anti-war film. The fact that is a beautiful film to look at doesn't glorify anything.
@@stereowiredveteran also, I enjoyed 1917 way more than All Quiet on the Western front
@@6tuf85dyfu I fully agree. I’d even say that the fact that there is a hero’s journey and a tremendous success against impossible odds supports the point. This is all the heroism any man could hope for, and this is all the good it could ever do: That a few hundred men were killed later rather than sooner. Nothing more.
@@owenf5222 well said
“All Quiet on the Western Front” was a film that really got to me. All the happy moments could go away so easily and my god the ending… All the characters were so close and I always got emotional when one of them left. This movie is really a piece
The Armistice delay is a little detail I never knew, and hurts so much to learn. How heartless to not have it be something that is cried out continuously, as fast as one can run? Every life lost beyond the moment that signature is started is a tragedy, and it could've been as few as a handful if there was any sense of urgency.
Really really awesome how much France really hated Germans by this point. Germany had humiliated France in 1871, taken an entire region from its core and then more less masterminded the Great War itself. Dragging France through 4 years of the most brutal war in human history until that point, fought almost entirely in French and Belgian territory. Of course they were gonna get every last kill they could. In the interwar anti-German sentiments were popular and they still wanted to keep kicking the Weimar Republic on the ground.
@@goswaldthegoose It's really really great how little you know about the history of the origins of the First World War and above all about the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. But I'd be happy to give you a tutoring session so you don't have to die stupid...
th-cam.com/video/U10ON2aau3g/w-d-xo.html it's a short film about those last minutes of the war
It was mas0nic 11 + 11 + 11 = 33
@@goswaldthegoose Yea well France sure got bit in the ass 20 years later. Then had to get Britain and America to save them.
war is definitely still glamorized all over the world in films, books or series. even in history classes it sometimes feels like teachers rather speak positively about these past wars instead of getting the horror and immense unnecessary looses across. i didn’t watch this film yet because everytime i watched or had to watch a war movie i felt really uncomfortable because a lot of scenes felt really romanticized but I might give this one a chance now.
great video!
Unnecesary? There is nothing unnecesary about war, people Die for greater good- for advance of future generations.
@@tangow371 naive? You're the one being naive if you believe war is just a pointless bloodshed that goes nowhere. War is in our Blood, War brought us new inventions, go and do a research on how many inventions we use even today were created for Wars/during Wars. Since the beggining of mankind humans have fought each other -no matter the cause the war was human's close friend.
War is humanity, there is no humanity without conflict
I feel guilty whenever I play Call Of Duty because of how blatantly they glorify war
@@PolishGod1234 ROFL you're literally proving my point. While people have died for "greater good" like you mention do you not understand that theres such thing as dying for absolutely nothing? And the only technology which has evolved during wars, while alot of them have civilian use, they are ultimately the ones used by humans to destroy each other. Like you said, since the beginning of humanity, not only humans have fought each other but we've constantly found new ways to destroy each other. And we came so far, we reached a point where we're now very much capable of bringing about our own demise once and for all. But you're right, for as long as humanity wanders the earth, we are doomed to forever be in conflict with one another.
@@PolishGod1234Some dude who play to much COD in the comfort of his house
One moment from the book that I really wished was in the film somehow was when Paul goes back home. Damn its brutal when you realize that even if they do somehow survive there isn't a place for them in that world anymore.
That scene is so powerful, so important that without it I don’t truly consider the recent film an adaptation
I was baffled that they took Paul’s leave out and put all the peace talk stuff in.
@@handle25 I think they wanted to provide some context for the insanity of the fictional last day's attack and foreshadowing of what would happen a generation later.
That scene always pisses me off, seeing how disillusioned Paul was when he goes home and becomes even more so when the kids and his teacher call him a coward, and I believe it was his father and some dudes in a bar saying, "the final push to Paris is coming" without even listening to what Paul says or what he thinks (I remember Paul saying the food they get is almost nothing yet the men say, "No, only the best for our soldiers")...
A part of me is glad it wasn't shown in the 2022 film, I always skip the classroom scene when I watch the original 30s film I doubt I could watch it again.
Huh, wasn’t that scene in the movie? Or are there multiple versions? I’ll admit I was confused because I remember All Quiet being in black and white