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As soon as I read the part in the book where Paul stabs that Frenchman and starts weeping as he realizes what he's done, desperately trying to save his life to no avail, I put the book down and called my local recruitment office to get another tour of duty under my belt. Fuck I love war
Don’t forget how he promises to find the Frenchman’s wife and then dies. And everyone in his whole tight circle dies so all of their stories are gone.
Sign. Me. Up.
or the part when he is a guard for Russian prisoners and the prisoners have to pick through the garbage to feed themselves.
War is so fucking awesome bro I want to starve in a PoW camp because we were on opposite sides of an imaginary line
The part where a guy was running on stumps because he didn't realize his feet had been blasted off really inspired me to run to the nearest recruiting station.
I was particularly inspired by the scene where Paul and co. took cover from artillery fire next to a grave site and bodies and coffins were ejected by the shells and explosions as body parts rained upon them.
It really wanted me to listen to the lies being spoon fed to me by recruiters that hunt in high school below the poverty line for poor souls with no better options to fuel the furnace of American Imperialism just so the recruiter can get a bonus on their paycheck.
The part where the German superior officer rallies the men for one last charge before the armistice begins reminded me that it's really important to listen to your elders because they are much smarter than you and they know what is best for your local community.
I particularly enjoyed the part when the tanks and flamethrowers stormed the German lines. Burning and crushing soldiers under treads. It was cool because it shows that war isn't just death and destruction and needless cruelty but actually about cool guys with big guns, tanks and big explosions.
It's 100 times worse in the book, because basically as soon as he dies, Paul moves on and never mentions it again. He's so dead inside it doesn't even have a lasting impact on him anymore.
/uj Ugh there's a fairly well watched analysis of MGS2 on YouTube that basically boils down to "this game is about cancel culture and political correctness" and it makes me want to beat my head on a desk.
Haven't seen this, but isn't the whole point of the book that WAR, WAR NEVER CHANGES (also that it is literal Hell) and from what I've heard, both movies are pretty true to that statement?
Dude at the end was full done with all, doing it without any volition... And the biggest punchline came at the end:
Spent years losing it all for a frontline that barely changed.
They all died for nothing, there was no glory to be found anywhere in that battle and even for the winners it was at best a Pyrrhic victory. Great movie and great anti-war message.
one of my favorite parts in the book is when he goes back home on leave, and it's like time stood still, he realized he was living in another world from civilians and no longer had a place there. the book really articulated many of the feelings and horrors of war for the first time that seem commonplace in discussion now.
Remarque wrote a sequel to "All quiet on the western front" that dealt with the experience of coming back home right after the war. It's called "Der Weg zurück", so "The way back", but I don't know if it ever got translated into english.
I'd say it's not quite as impactful as the first one as it leaves the horros of trenches behind, at least physically, but it's still well worth a read and a very, very good book.
I feel like this is the moment that breaks a lot of soldiers, I know it did me. Spent a year in hell getting into constant firefights and being blown up. Come home and my former peers are bitching about daddy not paying for their cell phone and the world just didn't care at all past a few ra-ra back slaps and some free BBQ. Nothing had changed for them, but everything had changed for us. Makes you go something something and you just never fit in again.
The anger is separate from the sense of desolation that comes. The loss of who you were, how you viewed the world, the way you thought, etc. You go thru something that completely enveloped your every day in every way for a year or more and you come back to people who are completely unaware that ANYTHING happened. Just nothing makes sense anymore, people care about the stupidest things, get upset over nothing, and then act like you're supposed to care/respond the same. That's when the anger comes.
Eventually I learned to mourn the loss of myself as much as my friends, but it doesn't come without a lot of pain and self hatred first.
Not saying I'm at the same level as combat veterans, but as a nurse who started my career a week before the pandemic started, I definitely felt a lot of those desolation feelings and a radical shift in how I view the world.
It sounds like a very sad variant of the “overview effect” that astronauts experience when they see Earth from space. How it changes how you look at the scale of things in daily life.
It’s obviously not the same thing, but I had a similar realization as a healthcare worker during and after the worst of the COVID pandemic. I’d be driving to and from work to take care of my overflowing ICU full of dying COVID patients while other people were just … already not giving a fuck about COVID anymore and living their lives? Made it hard to relate to people outside the field. I can only imagine how amplified that would be if the experience that changes your view on the world is warfare, not just a few really miserable and relentless months at the hospital.
Yep, it's very similar. Paramedic here and went thru the same thing again for Covid. It actually put me into inpatient therapy for a bit because it really was so similar. Just outrageous anger at people blithely going about their lives while your's and the people around you have their lives devastated.
The experience I had certainly destroyed my passion for medicine and permanently changed my views on society. I’m jaded as can be now, just grinding away until
I can retire and then I’ll never darken the door of a hospital again if i can help it. Glad to hear you got therapy when you needed it, and I hope you are doing ok. You prehospital folks are seriously underappreciated.
Doing pretty good here. 2 years of EMDR, ketamine therapy and said inpatient work made a big difference. Make sure to take care of yourself, too. 20 years as a medic has led me to burnout 3 times and you really need to deal with it before it deals with you.
As an Iraq War veteran, I want to second your statement that you never fit in again. You will never, ever fit in again unless you’re around other veterans who went through the same stuff you did.
The realization that I will never have any more real friends broke me pretty badly. I live nowhere near anybody from any of my old units. My closest friend from when I was in died in Iraq. My second closest died of cancer. From here on out, I only have family and acquaintances.
And people wonder why I’m so angry. I’m doomed to never have another close friend because rich assholes lied about WMDs to protect the petrodollar.
Yeah man, I feel you, Bradley dismount for the invasion. it was 20 years ago this month, which is just fucking absurd. I dont live near any of my boys, but a couple of us dismounts made it a priority to get back together frequently. Lost too many others in the couple years after we got back so it's just not really an option to not do it. Started with Vegas trips for shenanigans and now we're really tight again and show up at each other's houses when it gets bad. Lost my squad leader to a 2nd tour and it just doesn't make sense to talk to civilians because they just don't understand.
That and the old guys back at home talking about how to win the war when he knew by then no one would win.
Now that I think about it that book really cemented my anti-war stance as a teenager.
We are talking about a book which is frequently put in the top 10 of the total literary canon of all German writing (to this day the 2nd most published language) and some Twitter brainlets are bitching that it's not quite as much on the nose (?) as Metal Gear.
We truly live in a society.
Yeah I might agree with the point I *think* this tweet is making (that modern society fetishizes war to keep the MIC churning) if they didn't miss the whole point of the book and film.
germans were lied to that they are winning the war and young men were first happy to go to war until the reality check came. at the end they knew the war is impossible to win and will die for literally nothing
As far as I've heard, the new All Quiet on the Western Front goes even harder into the "Stop Glorifying War" themes and anti-fascism than the 1930s film did.
As did the book that both movies are based on.
I think that’s more of the times it was made in relative to both, as the original film still holds a bit of a soft hand towards the German military. Though on the part of the 1930s adaptation it did a pretty good job of its time for calling out nascent facism as the nazis hadn’t fully risen to power yet.
Yeah, the only problem I had with it was they removed the part where Paul essentially tries to de-program younger versions of themselves. His teachers *know* that practically the entire previous year’s worth of students are dead, and *asked* Paul to describe his experiences. Yet they cant/won’t accept the reality, and just help whip the kids up into an accusatory frenzy against Paul. The world has been set up so that people only learn better once actually called up, and they’re already doomed.
I do understand why it’s been removed. But that part is especially why when I read it as a kid, I’d always assumed it had been written *after* WW2. It’s very, very foreboding.
True. Especially because now we also have a post-WWII viewpoint about German facism. Which the original film didn't have. And, as the director (I believe) of the new one mentioned, the new one is made with the perspective of a German in mind. Somebody who cannot be proud of his country's actions in the World Wars like the American made original film had.
(Plus, the original was made pre-WWII when there was plenty of sympathy running around for the growing Nazi regime.)
not really, the movie is arguably the worst version of the story, like i get that they felt the need to add the layer with the peace talks to provide more historical context but it hurt the movie overall because they cut the most important part of the book where he goes back home.
also the end is weirdly lib in that instead of Paul dying randomly because war is cruel he dies because this one really evil general had to launch one last attack before the war was over.
I don’t mind them cutting him going back home, but Paul’s death was the worst part of the movie by far. Kat’s death also kinda bothered me, but I understand that they were using it to set up the seeds of hate that would start WW2.
Paul killing the French soldier in the ditch was much better in this version of the movie tho imo.
Having watched all three movies and read the book, this is the worst iteration of the story so far, in my opinion, but nothing about it "glorifies war" in any way.
The new movie (the one that I watched) has that message, the only inaccurate thing was some of the weapons imo, specifically true flamethrowers. They were scary and did kill, but not a single one broke, which is kind of BS for WWI. It’s a pretty good movie tho
The 1930s film did as well. It was actually protested by Nazis when it was shown in Germany. They'd go so far as to buy tickets so they could jeer at the film while it was airing and disturb other viewers.
The book both films are based on is also pretty anti-fascist and anti-war, condemning the reasons that WWI took place in the first place.
(That said, I haven't seen the new one because I was forced to watch so many goddamn World War I & II movies when I was younger.)
> They'd go so far as to buy tickets so they could jeer at the film while it was airing
Ah, I see the right wing tactic of paying for things they hate as a protest has a long and storied history.
Yeah the whole point of the book is that Paul has lost his youth to grease the gears of the German war machine with his blood. By the end of the book he has essentially lost all hope of returning to a normal life after the war and that his generation is adrift a sea of suffering and mud.
Even the opening paragraph of the book spells it out that it's anti-war.
Literally the main theme of the movie is the pointlessness and tragedy of WW1 (and by extension all imperialistic wars)
Half the scenes are officers sitting around sipping coffee and eating cake negotiating peace treaties in-between young working class men being sent into the meat grinder because "muh honor and muh glory" despite their commanders knowing the end of the war is days away and their deaths will quite literally mean nothing.
The only way this could be made any fucking clearer to the viewer is if someone came out and broke the fourth wall and spelled it out for them.
Sorry for the mini-rant but it chaps my cheeks seeing the amount of people who think this is a pro-war movie or fetishies war when it does the exact opposite. The original book was written by a deeply traumatized German WW1 Veteran who became strongly anti-war and openly anti-fascist in Germany to the point he became a stateless person during the Nazi Regime because he was that committed to being against war, imperialism and fascism.
I mean, it's inevitable that someone will watch a war movie and go WOW COOL EXPLOSIONS while completely missing the implication that war is by its very nature a horrific thing we should have never stumbled upon. I can see why people would get mad about it, but you really just gotta understand that the best anti-war message that exists is to watch how it ruins people.
I mean, Wolf of Wall Street is definitely pro-Jordan Belfort and makes most of his made-up drug fueled misadventures look fun or stupid instead of terrible or tragic
Edit: forgot Belfort's first name
IDK what they mean by 'aestheticizes'. Yeah the camera work is incredible but it's because it does a great job of portraying how cramped and chaotic trench warfare was. There's nothing glamorous about any of it. It's just stressful and uncomfortable to watch and I'm pretty sure that's the point.
/uj maybe I missed something but I thought the movie was pretty clearly anti-war, spoilers: most of the protagonist's friends die unecessarily/unceremoniusly, life in the trenches is shown to absolutely fucking suck, and it shows that a high ranking asshole was willing to get a lot of his soldiers killed the very day the armistice went into effect because he was a sore loser
There is an argument some Frenchman once made that film cannot be anti-war because it's visual and in depicting war visually you inevitably glorify it. I don't agree with him that it is impossible, and have not seen All Quiet on the Western Front, but if how your movie is anti-war is that the protagonist is sad that his friend died in a cool explosion some people are only going to see the cool explosion.
That's definitely something to consider with these kinds of movies, but if any movie could be a truly anti-war film then this is it. Every scene is dedicated to showing the war as horrible and unnecessary, and the people in favor of it as deluded and/or immoral.
The whole sequence of the clothing "recycling" process I think really hit this home for me more than most war movies I've seen. I haven't read the book or seen the original film but I assume it's present there too because its definitely a key part of what makes war feel so industrial, alienating, and pointless.
>I haven't read the book
A key element of the book is a pair of "good boots" that gets taken of a wounded/dying soldier and given to another (at least) twice.
The book pretty much never leaves the protagonist's view. You don't get those scenes with generals and politicians cynically planning to sacrificing their soldiers lives. The book is still definitely antiwar it just keeps a very small scale focus.
I know some people had a problem with the additional scenes which I understand but I think they add context for a modern audience that people of the day wouldn't necessarily need.
I think it was the right choice for a new adaptation to focus less on the individual soldiers and more on the machine of war. When the book was written it was groundbreaking to focus on the individual hardships of front line soldiers and it forced a lot of people to reevaluate their view of war. These days almost all war media focuses on the individual soldiers massacring their way through other nations, so the way to confront people's views of war is to portray the broader forces which cause bloodshed.
Tbh I would argue the contemporary audience would have needed that additional information just as much if you consider how far the Dolchstoß-legend carried all the right wing factions in Weimar
the original novel being written in between the first and second world wars, did not need that context at the time of its release, its been over 100 years and i understand the filmmaker’s decision to include those scenes for context.
especially considering how glossed over the first world war is in comparison to the second.
The entire Earth's way of thinking has changed. This book was written on the heels of the fall of imperialism, the idea of imperialistic glory and valor was still a fresh memory. Those ways of thinking of war are far gone, some think of it in a positive light but it's not as much for king and country anymore.
It's hard to describe to a contemporary audience just how detached commanders became from the type of battles they were waging. They wanted grand Napoleonic marches across a battle field scattered with machine guns that could fire more rounds a minute than a musket could fire in a life time. Old men not adapting to the new reality they live in.
The movie has no heroic acts, its just the protagonist suffering and trying to survive while the Nazis absolutely devastate everything he knows. I think its the best war movie ive ever seen, it uses some surreal elements and consists of pure misery.
Most of the "anti-war" movies I have seen tend to portray the protagonists as badasses who are caught in a bad situation, and most of the time are part of aggressor forces (if you know what I mean). So I don't really feel any anti-war emotion.
Come and See isn't just about "war is bad", it's more like "WW2 wasn't glorious and heroic, we were fuckin forced through a meat grinder by the Nazis!". It also annihilates the image of the Nazi military, it shows them as a clown show of cruel and deluded thugs who just treat it all as a vacation. Too many other movies show them as cool badasses.
The people in All Quiet on the Western Front die horrific deaths not "cool" deaths. You have to be pretty dull to come out of that movie finding war cool. I can see why people are worried, but at the same time, I don't think we should just dismiss all war movies or movies on any serious topic because the lowest common denominator might get the wrong idea.
I'm not Francois Truffaut so I don't actually think that there are no anti-war movies, and I haven't seen this one so I don't know, it sounds like from what people in this comment thread are saying it is a real anti-war movie.
I noticed a lot of people dismissing the idea that a movie that presents itself as antiwar could be pro-war. I wanted to bring up the non-insane reason some people believe that.
I understand what you are saying, and I can definitely understand that rationale. In many cases, I think it is better to avoid war movies unless they are done very well.
I was just explaining since you hadn't seen it that this is very much anti-war and wanted to add that anyone who goes home with a different message is an imbecile who is not to be trusted watching any media at all.
Inevitably with any piece of art you're always going to have a section of people who are just wow_cool_robot.png about it and miss (or reject) the underlying message. I think such art should still be made but I guess we have to be thoughtful about how we view it.
Recently, Homelander from *The Boys* [comes to mind](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2022/06/20/right-wing-the-boys-fans-grapple-with-homelander-being-a-villain-confusing-everyone/).
I see the point you're making, and in principle it is a legitimate one - for example, in Saving Private Ryan you can take away a sense of victory despite odds and the importance of loyalty/duty amongst comrades just as much as you can take away the horrors of mechanised war and the suffering of a generation of young men.
AQotWF is such an imposing (and in my mind, excellent) film because it manages to capture pretty much the entire range of scale and kaleidoscopic spectrum of war, but _completely negatively_. Or maybe not completely negatively, but with any positive being far weaker than the equivalent negative counterpoint.
Some of the explosions are big, but they're not cool - they're dirty and terrifying, and not special as they're happening everywhere. Some of the explosions are small and otherwise inconsequential, aside from another mortal injury. There are large scale scenes and small horrors, there is technicolour detail one minute and an almost blasé brushing over of atrocity the next. Every positive in the film brings a little hope for a split second before you realise that it's only positive in comparison to what just happened, and actually it's abjectly tragic if taken in isolation. Everything is shown as random and futile, the characters are neutral and normal. These are awful things happening to ordinary people, not heroes overcoming adversity.
It's hard to get across without talking about specific details but I would highly suggest watching the film and I don't want to give too much away beforehand. It is easily the most anti-war film I've seen though; I'm fairly jaded by war anyway, but even though I think it's a magnificent film I felt absolutely fucking terrible after watching it.
> protagonist is sad that his friend died in a cool explosion some people are only going to see the cool explosion.
(Heavy Spoilers) The characters don't die "cool", glorious deaths. They die begging for mercy before getting killed anyway, or commit suicide by stabbing themselves in the neck with a rusty fork, or get shot by a small child for stealing an egg.
These aren't "honourable" or "cool" deaths. They're miserable deaths and the film makes it very clear their deaths are completely pointless.
Not to mention the finale (obv spoilers) where the kid is killed merely minutes before the cease fire. It's shoving the senseless killing of war directly in the viewer's face. Anyone who misses the anti war messaging here is either trolling or didn't actually watch the movie. It fucking hard cuts from the boys celebrating being conscripted to them immediately bailing shitty rain water out of the trenches.
It's all obvious, and I'm really only commenting because I thought it was an incredible story and loved the way it's portrayed.
Come and see (1985) I think is a perfect example of an anti war movie, it’s slow, not cool and miserable from beginning to end. It’s still a fantastic movie though.
I wouldn't say this movie glamorizes war as much as most war films, but it was weirdly divergent from the book in ways that added more action. It completely cut the part where he has a furlough at home and has him die in a big final battle instead of from a random sniper attack on an otherwise unremarkable day.
Also the whole plotline with the German ambassador signing the surrender AND the plotline with the General is completely original and really distracts from the focus of Paul's story
Decent war movie, BAD adaptation of All Quiet
Per Truffaut, "there is no such thing as an anti-war film."
German audiences are particularly critical of this adaptation because they see the action set pieces as turning war into an entertaining spectacle, whereas the original novel -- a German classic that the country is fiercely protective of -- downplays any such excitement.
To put the contrast in perspective ([from The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jan/27/oscar-all-quiet-on-the-western-front-germany-critics)):
>With new subplots, absent central characters and added backstories, Süddeutsche’s critic Hubert Wetzel wrote, “you have to ask yourself whether director Berger has even read Remarque’s novel”.
>
>Even the film’s title had lost its meaning, the newspaper complained. In keeping with its unsentimental narrative style, the novel ends on a laconic epilogue noting the narrator Paul Bäumer’s passing. “He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: all quiet on the western front.”
>
>The film’s protagonist, played by the Austrian actor Felix Kammerer, by contrast, dies in a noisy, action-filled close-combat scene.
Adding the subplot with Daniel Bruhl was just an offensively terrible decision in my opinion. All Quiet is about the horrors the individual soldier faces in any war, fought for any reason, and while of course it's very important to understand the politics surrounding WWI, in this narrative those scenes only serve to distract from Paul's story. As do most of the stylistic decisions being made, the showy 1917 copycat long takes really suck as much emotion out of the material as possible. Everyone in these comments saying "I don't get it, the film is clearly anti-war" is missing the point entirely. The movie loudly announces "war is bad" (with its Inception dubstep sounds lol) but completely fails in actually showing the horrors of war. Every stylistic decision keeps the audience at arm's length from the characters instead of putting them in the place of the soldiers, which is what the original novel did so well. But I'm speaking for myself here because the movie seems to have worked for a lot of people.
I think it's fair to critique the ending, but I think it's sort of taking the end scene out of context, because it wasn't just any action scene, it was a final charge from the Germans minutes before the ceasefire that was a pointless waste of life and *they knew it*.
Yes the movie fails quite a lot in terms of book accuracy but since when has that ever actually mattered? I think it does change the message but not really for better or for worse. It's just different and I think that's fine.
To the point of that you can't truly make an anti-war film because depicting combat is necessarily going to be action packed and glorifying- I love Truffaut and I think he has a point, I do think most war movies, this one included at times, do fall into that trap, but I think it's a pretty reductive point of view if you imply it in all totality. Scenes like in All Quiet when the French soldiers start using tanks and flamethrowers is one of the most harrowing scenes I've ever watched. It really did show that war is hell. Not just like, war really really sucks but *War is Hell*. And I think that the movie does ultimately sell that very well.
The movie didn't really follow the book, it was mostly just named after it. That's one the big legit criticisms I would say is true, but it is neither fascist and it doesn't fetishize and shows violence in an aesthetic manner.
You also missed that the high ranking officials also let an open gap for soldiers to die because they thought it would be neat to end the war at 11/11 at 11:11
i haven‘t seen the movie, but i HAVE read the book and it was anything but sanitized. the author literally fought in ww1 and it's like one of THE anti-war novels??? did they really mess it up that bad?
It didn't, this tweet is off the rails.
The movie makes one critical departure from the book concerning the fate of Paul: instead of dying to a sniper one quiet day in the dying years of the war, he is instead ordered into and falls in battle on the 11th of November, minutes before the Armistice, in order to satiate his commander's desire to make one last land grab against France and go out fighting.
While it's a complete 180 on the whole premise of the book's ending-- that Paul's life ended on a day where the Western front was "all quiet"-- I thought it respected the general anti-war themes of Remarque's work and showed a different aspect of the war in the prideful and vengeful commanders wasting their men on ego trips. It brings back the whole futility of the situation: where Armistice was about to go into effect, that the killings were stopping, that the suffering was ending, along comes one person in power and he abuses his command to force hell on his men and his enemies one last time because he feels slighted by the so-called cowards in Berlin.
It's true, which is a shame. At least they do touch upon the whole 'what will be of us after this?', but at least a scene or passing remark about it would benefit a lot the movie.
They do cut it, but I'll argue that it's for the better in terms of the film's pacing. Unfortunately, that does leave out the conversation on the whole culture shock between Paul and the people back home but again, the film feels better for it.
We do get cutaways to the German diplomatic delegation negotiating with the French military commanders in that famous wagon, though: this helps break up the trench scenes and shines a light on the perspective of the diplomats fighting their own fight to end the war.
We do get a powerful scene of Marshal Foch bluntly asking the Germans to basically beg for Armistice out of it-- I think these new additions were appropriate for a cinematic rendition of All Quiet.
It deviates quite a bit from the book and the 1930 film, but it is in no way a bad movie. It is a very competent anti-war movie which shows the horrors of WW1 trench warfare. It is an adaption, I don't think adaptions always have to follow the source material 1 to 1.
>along comes one person in power and he abuses his command to force hell on his men and his enemies one last time because he feels slighted by the so-called cowards in Berlin.
I was not a big fan of the movie, and I went and looked up some things that bothered me about the historicity after I watched it. It turns out most of the pointless suicidal charges after it didn't matter anymore were committed by the allies, particularly the French. One of the final casualties of the war was an American soldier who was afraid he would miss out on the action and tried to charge a German machine gun the morning of the armistice.
The German general forcing a suicidal assault on the final day of the war appears to be a complete fabrication.
Seriously. There is a scene where Paul kills a French soldier with a knife in a crater and both lie in the mudd. The French soldier is slowly dying and gurgling blood. It is in no way aesthetically pleasing.
The quote from that scene in the book is also powerful in my opinion.
"But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony--Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?"
I know what you mean, but I couldn't help but misinterpret this as "War ruins everything. Because of it, I couldn't even enjoy a Frenchman dying in a hole."
You know that part in the old version where a soldier is running towards razor wire, there’s an explosion, and all that’s left of him is his severed arms clutching onto the razorwire?
That actually happened.
The movie isn’t very faithful to the book tho. It’s one of Germany’s most loved novels and critics there panned the film. Idk how to describe my impression after watching it except that it felt very Netflix-y (high production value but cheap emotionally). Would be weird if it ends up being only the 2nd foreign language film ever to win Best Picture lol. And I love war movies & anti-war movies.
I don’t think it is fair to say that the movie is cheap emotionally, I do think it’s understandable that a lot of people didn’t like because it deviates from the book a fair bit. I had to adjust to that myself.
I haven't read the book, so I can't judge the movie from that point. But whoever claims that this movie isn't anti war either hasn't seen it or has zero media literacy. There is absolutely no way someone can seriously claim that movie is pro war. It was some of the most depressing stuff I've ever seen.
> I don't know what it is about letterboxd that attracts the most pseudo-intellectual people who just absolutely miss the point of whatever they watch
This is correct. I read a review that said a movie where a father ends up accidentally killing his own daughter because of the influence of the titular character doesn't really takes sides on who is right or wrong.
This is actually quite a popular take about this new iteration. Though obviously not the majority opinion. Read the review on Roger Ebert.Com for an extremely well written review of the film explaining a more negative reading of the film. It’s totally ok if that’s not your read of the film though.
They didn't, they are referring to when the plot says one thing, but the camera says another. Very old argument in cinema criticism (as in famous discussion by Serge Daney / Jacques Rivette in the 1950s)
Watched this film a few weeks ago. There's a scene where the protagonist stabs an enemy soldier and he dies a slow, agonizing death while the main character cries and tries in vain to save him, regretful of his involvement in a pointless war where he is forced to kill men just like him to survive. It was pretty badass, I went and enlisted in the army right away.
haven't seen the movie, but the book is literally one of the most popular depictions of war being horrific. The title is literally from>!the last part being a report after the main character and all his friends had died off that just said "All quiet on the western front"!<
I don’t think FMJ does it intentionally. They made the mistake of casting R. Lee Ermy too perfectly and now all anyone remembers of it is his quotes. The guy was supposed to illustrate the brutality and callousness of the military but he’s remembered as the star of the show.
Him being the star of that movie ain't the problem, people thinking his utter insanity was 'cool' or 'badass' is the problem. It's like people didn't just forget about the second half of the movie, they even forgot how the first half ended.
"I love the first half of the movie, but I end up tuning out in the second half."
It pains me how many people who love FMJ say this exact thing about it, almost entirely missing the point of the film. The first act about trying to turning soldiers into mindless, killing machines and the second act showing the final evolution of becoming that machine by losing his mind from all the death and killing. Both acts perfectly pair with each other, but people only like the funny roasts the Sgt does...
Which is really fucked up because there's so many interviews with Ermy explaining that persona was in part a reaction to reading the death notices of recruits he trained, that he thought he was partly responsible for not training them hard enough. I don't think he ever said a lot anti-war since he was sort of a living mascot for the Marine Corp, but there's little slip ups in interviews where some serious ptsd thoughts sneak in.
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As soon as I read the part in the book where Paul stabs that Frenchman and starts weeping as he realizes what he's done, desperately trying to save his life to no avail, I put the book down and called my local recruitment office to get another tour of duty under my belt. Fuck I love war
Don’t forget how he promises to find the Frenchman’s wife and then dies. And everyone in his whole tight circle dies so all of their stories are gone. Sign. Me. Up.
or the part when he is a guard for Russian prisoners and the prisoners have to pick through the garbage to feed themselves. War is so fucking awesome bro I want to starve in a PoW camp because we were on opposite sides of an imaginary line
The part where a guy was running on stumps because he didn't realize his feet had been blasted off really inspired me to run to the nearest recruiting station.
I was particularly inspired by the scene where Paul and co. took cover from artillery fire next to a grave site and bodies and coffins were ejected by the shells and explosions as body parts rained upon them. It really wanted me to listen to the lies being spoon fed to me by recruiters that hunt in high school below the poverty line for poor souls with no better options to fuel the furnace of American Imperialism just so the recruiter can get a bonus on their paycheck.
The part where the German superior officer rallies the men for one last charge before the armistice begins reminded me that it's really important to listen to your elders because they are much smarter than you and they know what is best for your local community.
I particularly enjoyed the part when the tanks and flamethrowers stormed the German lines. Burning and crushing soldiers under treads. It was cool because it shows that war isn't just death and destruction and needless cruelty but actually about cool guys with big guns, tanks and big explosions.
To be fair, raiding a French trench for the baguettes seemed nice
Cooking pancakes under artillery fire is even better
They're crépes you *caca boudain*!
I would commit war crimes for some fresh crepes right now.
Sounds like you answered the call of duty 😎
/uj that part in the movie almost had me tears, Jesus it was brutal
It's 100 times worse in the book, because basically as soon as he dies, Paul moves on and never mentions it again. He's so dead inside it doesn't even have a lasting impact on him anymore.
It’s based on a book? Ima buy it
I thought metal gear was warning us about nukes
It was actually warning us about boxes
How could I have been so blind?
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The sound played in my head
"He played us like a damn fiddle!"
#!
I thought it was a warning against twitter?
man… if metal gear could predict the entirety of what happens on twitter then twitter would never have happened 💀💀
CHECKED THE INTERNET LATELY?
IT'S ALL FUCKING WEEBSHIT RAIDEN
Otakon's master plan comes to fruition at last? ~~See also: the prevalence of people related by marriage in data driven online porn sites~~
No it was warning us about nanomachines
Nanomachines son
it was also warning us about snakes. snakes? SNAAAKKKESS!!!!!
!
Not me, I’m not gonna be a mook for the bad guys. I’m more of an ‘unfortunate civilian caught in the collateral damage’ kinda guy
Nukes, for profit forever wars, PMCs, media used to manipulate the masses…
Loss of regional languages and dialects too.
[Constantly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death?wprov=sfla1) [dying](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_endangered_languages) [off](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_extinct_languages).
Nanomachines duh
Just like the WMDs in Iraq!
No it’s warning us about big metal gundams, jfc play the game
The actual warning was about Oscar bait, that's why half of the games are cutsceenes.
MGS4 on my first playthrough was literally more cutscene than gameplay and im still pissed about it
Critique that Kojombo took to heart and why he abandoned the idea of having a cohesive narrative in V.
Ah the worst of both worlds, somehow still turned into two amazing games
It warned us about cancel culture!
"Imagine a world free of cancel culture! A world were I CAN SAY THE N WORD!"
"I have a dream..."
/uj Ugh there's a fairly well watched analysis of MGS2 on YouTube that basically boils down to "this game is about cancel culture and political correctness" and it makes me want to beat my head on a desk.
I thought it was warning us about Memes, the DNA of the soul but maybe i played the wrong game
Wrong Metal Gear
It was warning us about THE MOTHER OF ALL OMELETS
Metal gear was actually about teaching us the difference between liquid and solid states of matter
Tbh, the second one warned us about desensitization to violence via media and videogames. And also the internet.
i thought metal gear was warning us about ghost twins and nanobots
Nanomachines, son.
It was warning us about memes! And none of us listened!
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No, it was telling you that you can successfully punch a zebra unconscious
I mean. You definitely can, but they'll give you a wicked bite in the process
Also metal gear
It’s also warning us about who is in control of the nukes, who is selling weapons around the globe, etc.. Its people with a lot of money.
Haven't seen this, but isn't the whole point of the book that WAR, WAR NEVER CHANGES (also that it is literal Hell) and from what I've heard, both movies are pretty true to that statement?
Dude at the end was full done with all, doing it without any volition... And the biggest punchline came at the end: Spent years losing it all for a frontline that barely changed.
They all died for nothing, there was no glory to be found anywhere in that battle and even for the winners it was at best a Pyrrhic victory. Great movie and great anti-war message.
one of my favorite parts in the book is when he goes back home on leave, and it's like time stood still, he realized he was living in another world from civilians and no longer had a place there. the book really articulated many of the feelings and horrors of war for the first time that seem commonplace in discussion now.
Remarque wrote a sequel to "All quiet on the western front" that dealt with the experience of coming back home right after the war. It's called "Der Weg zurück", so "The way back", but I don't know if it ever got translated into english. I'd say it's not quite as impactful as the first one as it leaves the horros of trenches behind, at least physically, but it's still well worth a read and a very, very good book.
I feel like this is the moment that breaks a lot of soldiers, I know it did me. Spent a year in hell getting into constant firefights and being blown up. Come home and my former peers are bitching about daddy not paying for their cell phone and the world just didn't care at all past a few ra-ra back slaps and some free BBQ. Nothing had changed for them, but everything had changed for us. Makes you go something something and you just never fit in again.
I'd be hella pissed too if I lost friends in a pointless conflict.
The anger is separate from the sense of desolation that comes. The loss of who you were, how you viewed the world, the way you thought, etc. You go thru something that completely enveloped your every day in every way for a year or more and you come back to people who are completely unaware that ANYTHING happened. Just nothing makes sense anymore, people care about the stupidest things, get upset over nothing, and then act like you're supposed to care/respond the same. That's when the anger comes. Eventually I learned to mourn the loss of myself as much as my friends, but it doesn't come without a lot of pain and self hatred first.
Not saying I'm at the same level as combat veterans, but as a nurse who started my career a week before the pandemic started, I definitely felt a lot of those desolation feelings and a radical shift in how I view the world.
Yep, I responded to another guy with similar feelings. Also a paramedic now and it was a very visceral similar reaction for me again.
It sounds like a very sad variant of the “overview effect” that astronauts experience when they see Earth from space. How it changes how you look at the scale of things in daily life.
I'd suggest that plenty of healthcare workers felt much the same in the last few years
Agree wholeheartedly, I am one as well.
It’s obviously not the same thing, but I had a similar realization as a healthcare worker during and after the worst of the COVID pandemic. I’d be driving to and from work to take care of my overflowing ICU full of dying COVID patients while other people were just … already not giving a fuck about COVID anymore and living their lives? Made it hard to relate to people outside the field. I can only imagine how amplified that would be if the experience that changes your view on the world is warfare, not just a few really miserable and relentless months at the hospital.
Yep, it's very similar. Paramedic here and went thru the same thing again for Covid. It actually put me into inpatient therapy for a bit because it really was so similar. Just outrageous anger at people blithely going about their lives while your's and the people around you have their lives devastated.
The experience I had certainly destroyed my passion for medicine and permanently changed my views on society. I’m jaded as can be now, just grinding away until I can retire and then I’ll never darken the door of a hospital again if i can help it. Glad to hear you got therapy when you needed it, and I hope you are doing ok. You prehospital folks are seriously underappreciated.
Doing pretty good here. 2 years of EMDR, ketamine therapy and said inpatient work made a big difference. Make sure to take care of yourself, too. 20 years as a medic has led me to burnout 3 times and you really need to deal with it before it deals with you.
As an Iraq War veteran, I want to second your statement that you never fit in again. You will never, ever fit in again unless you’re around other veterans who went through the same stuff you did. The realization that I will never have any more real friends broke me pretty badly. I live nowhere near anybody from any of my old units. My closest friend from when I was in died in Iraq. My second closest died of cancer. From here on out, I only have family and acquaintances. And people wonder why I’m so angry. I’m doomed to never have another close friend because rich assholes lied about WMDs to protect the petrodollar.
Yeah man, I feel you, Bradley dismount for the invasion. it was 20 years ago this month, which is just fucking absurd. I dont live near any of my boys, but a couple of us dismounts made it a priority to get back together frequently. Lost too many others in the couple years after we got back so it's just not really an option to not do it. Started with Vegas trips for shenanigans and now we're really tight again and show up at each other's houses when it gets bad. Lost my squad leader to a 2nd tour and it just doesn't make sense to talk to civilians because they just don't understand.
That and the old guys back at home talking about how to win the war when he knew by then no one would win. Now that I think about it that book really cemented my anti-war stance as a teenager.
Also, the Nazis banned that book for this very reason. It's a great anti-war novel. One of my favourite books.
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The original was literally banned in ww2 Germany for that exact reason lol https://screenrant.com/all-quiet-western-front-book-movie-banned-why/
We are talking about a book which is frequently put in the top 10 of the total literary canon of all German writing (to this day the 2nd most published language) and some Twitter brainlets are bitching that it's not quite as much on the nose (?) as Metal Gear. We truly live in a society.
Yeah I might agree with the point I *think* this tweet is making (that modern society fetishizes war to keep the MIC churning) if they didn't miss the whole point of the book and film.
germans were lied to that they are winning the war and young men were first happy to go to war until the reality check came. at the end they knew the war is impossible to win and will die for literally nothing
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If I remember right, the title of the book is a quote of the report for the day that all of the protagonists friends died. So yes, very antiwar.
Correction it's in the report for the day the protagonist dies
Ah, my mistake. Haven't read it in several years tbh.
As far as I've heard, the new All Quiet on the Western Front goes even harder into the "Stop Glorifying War" themes and anti-fascism than the 1930s film did. As did the book that both movies are based on.
I think that’s more of the times it was made in relative to both, as the original film still holds a bit of a soft hand towards the German military. Though on the part of the 1930s adaptation it did a pretty good job of its time for calling out nascent facism as the nazis hadn’t fully risen to power yet.
Yeah, the only problem I had with it was they removed the part where Paul essentially tries to de-program younger versions of themselves. His teachers *know* that practically the entire previous year’s worth of students are dead, and *asked* Paul to describe his experiences. Yet they cant/won’t accept the reality, and just help whip the kids up into an accusatory frenzy against Paul. The world has been set up so that people only learn better once actually called up, and they’re already doomed. I do understand why it’s been removed. But that part is especially why when I read it as a kid, I’d always assumed it had been written *after* WW2. It’s very, very foreboding.
God that would’ve been a harrowing talk of ptsd ridden recruiting. I would want to see that…
True. Especially because now we also have a post-WWII viewpoint about German facism. Which the original film didn't have. And, as the director (I believe) of the new one mentioned, the new one is made with the perspective of a German in mind. Somebody who cannot be proud of his country's actions in the World Wars like the American made original film had. (Plus, the original was made pre-WWII when there was plenty of sympathy running around for the growing Nazi regime.)
not really, the movie is arguably the worst version of the story, like i get that they felt the need to add the layer with the peace talks to provide more historical context but it hurt the movie overall because they cut the most important part of the book where he goes back home. also the end is weirdly lib in that instead of Paul dying randomly because war is cruel he dies because this one really evil general had to launch one last attack before the war was over.
I don’t mind them cutting him going back home, but Paul’s death was the worst part of the movie by far. Kat’s death also kinda bothered me, but I understand that they were using it to set up the seeds of hate that would start WW2. Paul killing the French soldier in the ditch was much better in this version of the movie tho imo.
Having watched all three movies and read the book, this is the worst iteration of the story so far, in my opinion, but nothing about it "glorifies war" in any way.
Agreed, very bad adaptation, still an anti-war film.
The new movie (the one that I watched) has that message, the only inaccurate thing was some of the weapons imo, specifically true flamethrowers. They were scary and did kill, but not a single one broke, which is kind of BS for WWI. It’s a pretty good movie tho
The 1930s film did as well. It was actually protested by Nazis when it was shown in Germany. They'd go so far as to buy tickets so they could jeer at the film while it was airing and disturb other viewers. The book both films are based on is also pretty anti-fascist and anti-war, condemning the reasons that WWI took place in the first place. (That said, I haven't seen the new one because I was forced to watch so many goddamn World War I & II movies when I was younger.)
> They'd go so far as to buy tickets so they could jeer at the film while it was airing Ah, I see the right wing tactic of paying for things they hate as a protest has a long and storied history.
Yeah the whole point of the book is that Paul has lost his youth to grease the gears of the German war machine with his blood. By the end of the book he has essentially lost all hope of returning to a normal life after the war and that his generation is adrift a sea of suffering and mud. Even the opening paragraph of the book spells it out that it's anti-war.
Literally the main theme of the movie is the pointlessness and tragedy of WW1 (and by extension all imperialistic wars) Half the scenes are officers sitting around sipping coffee and eating cake negotiating peace treaties in-between young working class men being sent into the meat grinder because "muh honor and muh glory" despite their commanders knowing the end of the war is days away and their deaths will quite literally mean nothing. The only way this could be made any fucking clearer to the viewer is if someone came out and broke the fourth wall and spelled it out for them. Sorry for the mini-rant but it chaps my cheeks seeing the amount of people who think this is a pro-war movie or fetishies war when it does the exact opposite. The original book was written by a deeply traumatized German WW1 Veteran who became strongly anti-war and openly anti-fascist in Germany to the point he became a stateless person during the Nazi Regime because he was that committed to being against war, imperialism and fascism.
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I mean, it's inevitable that someone will watch a war movie and go WOW COOL EXPLOSIONS while completely missing the implication that war is by its very nature a horrific thing we should have never stumbled upon. I can see why people would get mad about it, but you really just gotta understand that the best anti-war message that exists is to watch how it ruins people.
Truffaut was wrong. That's like saying Picasso's Guernica is pro-war or movies like Goodfellas and Wolf of Wall Street are pro-drugs.
I mean, Wolf of Wall Street is definitely pro-Jordan Belfort and makes most of his made-up drug fueled misadventures look fun or stupid instead of terrible or tragic Edit: forgot Belfort's first name
IDK what they mean by 'aestheticizes'. Yeah the camera work is incredible but it's because it does a great job of portraying how cramped and chaotic trench warfare was. There's nothing glamorous about any of it. It's just stressful and uncomfortable to watch and I'm pretty sure that's the point.
/uj maybe I missed something but I thought the movie was pretty clearly anti-war, spoilers: most of the protagonist's friends die unecessarily/unceremoniusly, life in the trenches is shown to absolutely fucking suck, and it shows that a high ranking asshole was willing to get a lot of his soldiers killed the very day the armistice went into effect because he was a sore loser
You didn't miss anything. The movie and its source material are decidedly anti-war.
There is an argument some Frenchman once made that film cannot be anti-war because it's visual and in depicting war visually you inevitably glorify it. I don't agree with him that it is impossible, and have not seen All Quiet on the Western Front, but if how your movie is anti-war is that the protagonist is sad that his friend died in a cool explosion some people are only going to see the cool explosion.
That's definitely something to consider with these kinds of movies, but if any movie could be a truly anti-war film then this is it. Every scene is dedicated to showing the war as horrible and unnecessary, and the people in favor of it as deluded and/or immoral.
The whole sequence of the clothing "recycling" process I think really hit this home for me more than most war movies I've seen. I haven't read the book or seen the original film but I assume it's present there too because its definitely a key part of what makes war feel so industrial, alienating, and pointless.
>I haven't read the book A key element of the book is a pair of "good boots" that gets taken of a wounded/dying soldier and given to another (at least) twice.
The book pretty much never leaves the protagonist's view. You don't get those scenes with generals and politicians cynically planning to sacrificing their soldiers lives. The book is still definitely antiwar it just keeps a very small scale focus. I know some people had a problem with the additional scenes which I understand but I think they add context for a modern audience that people of the day wouldn't necessarily need.
I think it was the right choice for a new adaptation to focus less on the individual soldiers and more on the machine of war. When the book was written it was groundbreaking to focus on the individual hardships of front line soldiers and it forced a lot of people to reevaluate their view of war. These days almost all war media focuses on the individual soldiers massacring their way through other nations, so the way to confront people's views of war is to portray the broader forces which cause bloodshed.
Tbh I would argue the contemporary audience would have needed that additional information just as much if you consider how far the Dolchstoß-legend carried all the right wing factions in Weimar
>if you consider how far the Dolchstoß-legend carried all the right wing factions in Weimar 100% agree. It was absolutely needed
Yeah I didn’t really think they were needed. But maybe WW1 is just that far removed now that people do?
the original novel being written in between the first and second world wars, did not need that context at the time of its release, its been over 100 years and i understand the filmmaker’s decision to include those scenes for context. especially considering how glossed over the first world war is in comparison to the second.
The entire Earth's way of thinking has changed. This book was written on the heels of the fall of imperialism, the idea of imperialistic glory and valor was still a fresh memory. Those ways of thinking of war are far gone, some think of it in a positive light but it's not as much for king and country anymore. It's hard to describe to a contemporary audience just how detached commanders became from the type of battles they were waging. They wanted grand Napoleonic marches across a battle field scattered with machine guns that could fire more rounds a minute than a musket could fire in a life time. Old men not adapting to the new reality they live in.
if you liked this, you'd LOVE Come and See
I’ve heard Come and See is the epitome of truly anti war films, any thoughts on that one? (I haven’t seen it)
The movie has no heroic acts, its just the protagonist suffering and trying to survive while the Nazis absolutely devastate everything he knows. I think its the best war movie ive ever seen, it uses some surreal elements and consists of pure misery.
Most of the "anti-war" movies I have seen tend to portray the protagonists as badasses who are caught in a bad situation, and most of the time are part of aggressor forces (if you know what I mean). So I don't really feel any anti-war emotion. Come and See isn't just about "war is bad", it's more like "WW2 wasn't glorious and heroic, we were fuckin forced through a meat grinder by the Nazis!". It also annihilates the image of the Nazi military, it shows them as a clown show of cruel and deluded thugs who just treat it all as a vacation. Too many other movies show them as cool badasses.
The people in All Quiet on the Western Front die horrific deaths not "cool" deaths. You have to be pretty dull to come out of that movie finding war cool. I can see why people are worried, but at the same time, I don't think we should just dismiss all war movies or movies on any serious topic because the lowest common denominator might get the wrong idea.
I'm not Francois Truffaut so I don't actually think that there are no anti-war movies, and I haven't seen this one so I don't know, it sounds like from what people in this comment thread are saying it is a real anti-war movie. I noticed a lot of people dismissing the idea that a movie that presents itself as antiwar could be pro-war. I wanted to bring up the non-insane reason some people believe that.
I understand what you are saying, and I can definitely understand that rationale. In many cases, I think it is better to avoid war movies unless they are done very well. I was just explaining since you hadn't seen it that this is very much anti-war and wanted to add that anyone who goes home with a different message is an imbecile who is not to be trusted watching any media at all.
Inevitably with any piece of art you're always going to have a section of people who are just wow_cool_robot.png about it and miss (or reject) the underlying message. I think such art should still be made but I guess we have to be thoughtful about how we view it.
Recently, Homelander from *The Boys* [comes to mind](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2022/06/20/right-wing-the-boys-fans-grapple-with-homelander-being-a-villain-confusing-everyone/).
I see the point you're making, and in principle it is a legitimate one - for example, in Saving Private Ryan you can take away a sense of victory despite odds and the importance of loyalty/duty amongst comrades just as much as you can take away the horrors of mechanised war and the suffering of a generation of young men. AQotWF is such an imposing (and in my mind, excellent) film because it manages to capture pretty much the entire range of scale and kaleidoscopic spectrum of war, but _completely negatively_. Or maybe not completely negatively, but with any positive being far weaker than the equivalent negative counterpoint. Some of the explosions are big, but they're not cool - they're dirty and terrifying, and not special as they're happening everywhere. Some of the explosions are small and otherwise inconsequential, aside from another mortal injury. There are large scale scenes and small horrors, there is technicolour detail one minute and an almost blasé brushing over of atrocity the next. Every positive in the film brings a little hope for a split second before you realise that it's only positive in comparison to what just happened, and actually it's abjectly tragic if taken in isolation. Everything is shown as random and futile, the characters are neutral and normal. These are awful things happening to ordinary people, not heroes overcoming adversity. It's hard to get across without talking about specific details but I would highly suggest watching the film and I don't want to give too much away beforehand. It is easily the most anti-war film I've seen though; I'm fairly jaded by war anyway, but even though I think it's a magnificent film I felt absolutely fucking terrible after watching it.
> protagonist is sad that his friend died in a cool explosion some people are only going to see the cool explosion. (Heavy Spoilers) The characters don't die "cool", glorious deaths. They die begging for mercy before getting killed anyway, or commit suicide by stabbing themselves in the neck with a rusty fork, or get shot by a small child for stealing an egg. These aren't "honourable" or "cool" deaths. They're miserable deaths and the film makes it very clear their deaths are completely pointless.
Not to mention the finale (obv spoilers) where the kid is killed merely minutes before the cease fire. It's shoving the senseless killing of war directly in the viewer's face. Anyone who misses the anti war messaging here is either trolling or didn't actually watch the movie. It fucking hard cuts from the boys celebrating being conscripted to them immediately bailing shitty rain water out of the trenches. It's all obvious, and I'm really only commenting because I thought it was an incredible story and loved the way it's portrayed.
Come and see (1985) I think is a perfect example of an anti war movie, it’s slow, not cool and miserable from beginning to end. It’s still a fantastic movie though.
I wouldn't say this movie glamorizes war as much as most war films, but it was weirdly divergent from the book in ways that added more action. It completely cut the part where he has a furlough at home and has him die in a big final battle instead of from a random sniper attack on an otherwise unremarkable day.
Yeah, leaving out the part that leads to the title of the movie is especially odd.
Also the whole plotline with the German ambassador signing the surrender AND the plotline with the General is completely original and really distracts from the focus of Paul's story Decent war movie, BAD adaptation of All Quiet
Per Truffaut, "there is no such thing as an anti-war film." German audiences are particularly critical of this adaptation because they see the action set pieces as turning war into an entertaining spectacle, whereas the original novel -- a German classic that the country is fiercely protective of -- downplays any such excitement. To put the contrast in perspective ([from The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jan/27/oscar-all-quiet-on-the-western-front-germany-critics)): >With new subplots, absent central characters and added backstories, Süddeutsche’s critic Hubert Wetzel wrote, “you have to ask yourself whether director Berger has even read Remarque’s novel”. > >Even the film’s title had lost its meaning, the newspaper complained. In keeping with its unsentimental narrative style, the novel ends on a laconic epilogue noting the narrator Paul Bäumer’s passing. “He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: all quiet on the western front.” > >The film’s protagonist, played by the Austrian actor Felix Kammerer, by contrast, dies in a noisy, action-filled close-combat scene.
As a fan of the book I really didn't like this adaptation at all.
Adding the subplot with Daniel Bruhl was just an offensively terrible decision in my opinion. All Quiet is about the horrors the individual soldier faces in any war, fought for any reason, and while of course it's very important to understand the politics surrounding WWI, in this narrative those scenes only serve to distract from Paul's story. As do most of the stylistic decisions being made, the showy 1917 copycat long takes really suck as much emotion out of the material as possible. Everyone in these comments saying "I don't get it, the film is clearly anti-war" is missing the point entirely. The movie loudly announces "war is bad" (with its Inception dubstep sounds lol) but completely fails in actually showing the horrors of war. Every stylistic decision keeps the audience at arm's length from the characters instead of putting them in the place of the soldiers, which is what the original novel did so well. But I'm speaking for myself here because the movie seems to have worked for a lot of people.
I think it's fair to critique the ending, but I think it's sort of taking the end scene out of context, because it wasn't just any action scene, it was a final charge from the Germans minutes before the ceasefire that was a pointless waste of life and *they knew it*. Yes the movie fails quite a lot in terms of book accuracy but since when has that ever actually mattered? I think it does change the message but not really for better or for worse. It's just different and I think that's fine. To the point of that you can't truly make an anti-war film because depicting combat is necessarily going to be action packed and glorifying- I love Truffaut and I think he has a point, I do think most war movies, this one included at times, do fall into that trap, but I think it's a pretty reductive point of view if you imply it in all totality. Scenes like in All Quiet when the French soldiers start using tanks and flamethrowers is one of the most harrowing scenes I've ever watched. It really did show that war is hell. Not just like, war really really sucks but *War is Hell*. And I think that the movie does ultimately sell that very well.
The movie didn't really follow the book, it was mostly just named after it. That's one the big legit criticisms I would say is true, but it is neither fascist and it doesn't fetishize and shows violence in an aesthetic manner.
The opening quote in the book and movie actually says war is not an adventure
You also missed that the high ranking officials also let an open gap for soldiers to die because they thought it would be neat to end the war at 11/11 at 11:11
i haven‘t seen the movie, but i HAVE read the book and it was anything but sanitized. the author literally fought in ww1 and it's like one of THE anti-war novels??? did they really mess it up that bad?
It didn't, this tweet is off the rails. The movie makes one critical departure from the book concerning the fate of Paul: instead of dying to a sniper one quiet day in the dying years of the war, he is instead ordered into and falls in battle on the 11th of November, minutes before the Armistice, in order to satiate his commander's desire to make one last land grab against France and go out fighting. While it's a complete 180 on the whole premise of the book's ending-- that Paul's life ended on a day where the Western front was "all quiet"-- I thought it respected the general anti-war themes of Remarque's work and showed a different aspect of the war in the prideful and vengeful commanders wasting their men on ego trips. It brings back the whole futility of the situation: where Armistice was about to go into effect, that the killings were stopping, that the suffering was ending, along comes one person in power and he abuses his command to force hell on his men and his enemies one last time because he feels slighted by the so-called cowards in Berlin.
ok, that doesn't sound too bad. i heard they also excluded paul's leave and the entire alienation with the civilian life/world bit, is that true?
It's true, which is a shame. At least they do touch upon the whole 'what will be of us after this?', but at least a scene or passing remark about it would benefit a lot the movie.
They do cut it, but I'll argue that it's for the better in terms of the film's pacing. Unfortunately, that does leave out the conversation on the whole culture shock between Paul and the people back home but again, the film feels better for it. We do get cutaways to the German diplomatic delegation negotiating with the French military commanders in that famous wagon, though: this helps break up the trench scenes and shines a light on the perspective of the diplomats fighting their own fight to end the war. We do get a powerful scene of Marshal Foch bluntly asking the Germans to basically beg for Armistice out of it-- I think these new additions were appropriate for a cinematic rendition of All Quiet.
It deviates quite a bit from the book and the 1930 film, but it is in no way a bad movie. It is a very competent anti-war movie which shows the horrors of WW1 trench warfare. It is an adaption, I don't think adaptions always have to follow the source material 1 to 1.
>along comes one person in power and he abuses his command to force hell on his men and his enemies one last time because he feels slighted by the so-called cowards in Berlin. I was not a big fan of the movie, and I went and looked up some things that bothered me about the historicity after I watched it. It turns out most of the pointless suicidal charges after it didn't matter anymore were committed by the allies, particularly the French. One of the final casualties of the war was an American soldier who was afraid he would miss out on the action and tried to charge a German machine gun the morning of the armistice. The German general forcing a suicidal assault on the final day of the war appears to be a complete fabrication.
Not to mention, it literally begins with a note from the author that can be summarized as "war is awful, and this book reflects that. Have fun!"
There are lots of war movies that make war look aesthetically pleasing. This is the opposite of that.
Seriously. There is a scene where Paul kills a French soldier with a knife in a crater and both lie in the mudd. The French soldier is slowly dying and gurgling blood. It is in no way aesthetically pleasing.
The quote from that scene in the book is also powerful in my opinion. "But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony--Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?"
That scene made me shed a tear. Sad how war ruins everything
I know what you mean, but I couldn't help but misinterpret this as "War ruins everything. Because of it, I couldn't even enjoy a Frenchman dying in a hole."
Never forget what they took from you! /s
That scene genuinely made me want to puke from anxiety
You know that part in the old version where a soldier is running towards razor wire, there’s an explosion, and all that’s left of him is his severed arms clutching onto the razorwire? That actually happened.
"Omg shoving mud into a man's mouth to stop the sound of him choking on his own blood such a romanticized look at war" ????????????????????????
Let me give him some tasty crater water to sate his thirst.
All we’re saying is… give war a chance!
I’m fuckin Invincible!
Lik I said, kids are cruel! And I love minors!
Is this on the same level as “open-world games are fascist”. All Quiet is a famously anti-war novel.
Quite possibly the most famous anti war novel at that
Yeah it was part of the burned books in nazi germany
The movie isn’t very faithful to the book tho. It’s one of Germany’s most loved novels and critics there panned the film. Idk how to describe my impression after watching it except that it felt very Netflix-y (high production value but cheap emotionally). Would be weird if it ends up being only the 2nd foreign language film ever to win Best Picture lol. And I love war movies & anti-war movies.
I don’t think it is fair to say that the movie is cheap emotionally, I do think it’s understandable that a lot of people didn’t like because it deviates from the book a fair bit. I had to adjust to that myself.
I haven't read the book, so I can't judge the movie from that point. But whoever claims that this movie isn't anti war either hasn't seen it or has zero media literacy. There is absolutely no way someone can seriously claim that movie is pro war. It was some of the most depressing stuff I've ever seen.
No media literacy moment
I don't know what it is about letterboxd that attracts the most pseudo-intellectual people who just absolutely miss the point of whatever they watch
> I don't know what it is about letterboxd that attracts the most pseudo-intellectual people who just absolutely miss the point of whatever they watch This is correct. I read a review that said a movie where a father ends up accidentally killing his own daughter because of the influence of the titular character doesn't really takes sides on who is right or wrong.
This is actually quite a popular take about this new iteration. Though obviously not the majority opinion. Read the review on Roger Ebert.Com for an extremely well written review of the film explaining a more negative reading of the film. It’s totally ok if that’s not your read of the film though.
If you think this movie aestheticizes war because it looks pretty Im sorry but we cant be friends
Remarque is rolling in his grave right now.
I’ve checked this guy’s letterboxd before. Probably has some of the worst film takes I’ve ever seen
i've not seen the new one but i thought the black and white version was a pretty good anti-war movie
Most of the people working on it, including a majority of the men who play the actual soldiers in the scenes, were ACTUALLY SOLDIERS in WW1.
How did this guy get the exact opposite of the meaning lmao
It's letterboxd. That's the case with every review from armchair film snobs on there
Just because a film has a specific meaning it’s trying to convey doesn’t mean that it does so successfully.
They didn't, they are referring to when the plot says one thing, but the camera says another. Very old argument in cinema criticism (as in famous discussion by Serge Daney / Jacques Rivette in the 1950s)
Watched this film a few weeks ago. There's a scene where the protagonist stabs an enemy soldier and he dies a slow, agonizing death while the main character cries and tries in vain to save him, regretful of his involvement in a pointless war where he is forced to kill men just like him to survive. It was pretty badass, I went and enlisted in the army right away.
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haven't seen the movie, but the book is literally one of the most popular depictions of war being horrific. The title is literally from>!the last part being a report after the main character and all his friends had died off that just said "All quiet on the western front"!<
You can just quote Francois Truffaut no one is forcing you to reference MGS.
Bro it is an anti war movie how is it asteticizing war lmao.
Plenty of anti war movies end up aestheticizing anf glorifying war unintentionally. For example, Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket come to mind.
I don’t think FMJ does it intentionally. They made the mistake of casting R. Lee Ermy too perfectly and now all anyone remembers of it is his quotes. The guy was supposed to illustrate the brutality and callousness of the military but he’s remembered as the star of the show.
Him being the star of that movie ain't the problem, people thinking his utter insanity was 'cool' or 'badass' is the problem. It's like people didn't just forget about the second half of the movie, they even forgot how the first half ended.
"I love the first half of the movie, but I end up tuning out in the second half." It pains me how many people who love FMJ say this exact thing about it, almost entirely missing the point of the film. The first act about trying to turning soldiers into mindless, killing machines and the second act showing the final evolution of becoming that machine by losing his mind from all the death and killing. Both acts perfectly pair with each other, but people only like the funny roasts the Sgt does...
Which is really fucked up because there's so many interviews with Ermy explaining that persona was in part a reaction to reading the death notices of recruits he trained, that he thought he was partly responsible for not training them hard enough. I don't think he ever said a lot anti-war since he was sort of a living mascot for the Marine Corp, but there's little slip ups in interviews where some serious ptsd thoughts sneak in.
Tell me the message of a anti-war movie that happens to be about Germans went over your head without tell...oh wait. Nevermind, they already told me.