All Quiet on the Western Front: An Anti-War Film
Uploaded by masone4718 on Nov 28, 2004
All Quiet on the Western Front is a film about a group of friends who enlist in the army.
Through their service, these boys understand what war is really like. The film shows how bad war is before the boys are even fighting. The class is shown going through a terrible training exercise where they have to lay down in mud and run. When it is time to leave, the boys get a view of injured people coming back from the front line. One of the first things that scare the soldiers is the sound of the horses and watching them die. The rats are another problem. They feed on the dead bodies and there is even a shot in the film where the soldiers kill a bunch of rats. Another thing is the young children. The children keep getting younger and younger and are barely trained and die from the gases. The largest anti-war scene is when Paul gets lost from his group and hides in a crater. Paul has to kill a Frenchman, but he does not kill him completely and the Frenchman is left to die. Paul is upset and tries to save him. He becomes emotional and says a speech, “Forgive me comrade, they want us to fight, but they never want us to know the enemy. If we threw away our weapons we could be brothers.” He realizes that soldiers are just killing machines being ordered around by their superiors. Another scene is when the soldiers visit the hospital. People are coming and going so fast, they never seem to have enough beds for people to be in. Many are brought to the ‘dying room’, where they are left to die. When Paul returns home, his father doesn’t want him leaving without him being in his uniform, but Paul doesn’t want to because he doesn’t want to be seen as a killing machine. Paul’s statistics about the war also show the movie is anti-war. Out of the 20 kids that graduated together, 13 were killed, 4 were missing, 1 in a mad house and 2 were alive: 1 injured, 1 ok. This brings Paul to smoking, a habit he rejected before the war. All Quiet on the Western Front is an anti-war...