All Quiet On The Western Front
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Has anyone seen this movie, nominated for 9 oscars this year?
I watched it last night , and here are some of my thoughts.
This movie is exceptionally well made. The cinematography is great (will probably win that academy award) and the sound and combat special effects are spectacular. The set design , battlefields of no man's land, the trenches, and French villages, is also very very good.
This is perhaps the anti war movie to end all anti war movies. The combat is brutal (think Saving Private Ryan on steroids) , soldiers get shot, machine gunned, shelled, bombed, gassed, bayoneted, stabbed with knives, run through with a saber, chopped with an ax, and hit in the forehead with a large rock. I'm probably leaving something out. The violence is always there, if not on the screen at the moment, then in the eyes of the characters. In a word, it is grim.
Which is the point. WWI was the folly of them all, 14 million people killed fighting over an almost stationary front that lasted for years. It became all about "national honor". But as one of the characters says, when you're dead there is no honor, national or otherwise.
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Everyone should watch it, but you probably need a strong tolerance for movie war violence.
I read the book, and the ending sucked lol. To survive all that, and then get shot in the head because the other guy didn't hear about the ceasefire just yet.
I'll have to watch it but it is good to see that there was finally a film made from the German perspective. They were just like the allied soldiers being killed, most just young boys pressed into service to fight a war they didn't understand but brainwashed with the idea of national pride. Of course the reality was that WW1 ended up being probably the most horrific (for the soldiers), and ultimately pointless war of all time.
By the way, the trailer shows it in foreign language, but I watched it on Netflix and it was in English. You dont need subtitles.
Never even heard of this.
Good book, haven't seen the movie yet.
Written by Erich Paul Remark, in 1928 it is a classic and he did write other books about the horrors of war.
WWI led to WWII.
Some debate, but yeah, the general consensus is the "peace" of WW1 led to WW2.
What I can't understand is that the original great classic movie is not on any of the "must see" classic movie lists that I have seen, or on any of the shorter 'Great Classic Films' lists.
Because it is from the German side, plain and simple.
Oh, of course, you're right. Who gives a shit about a viewpoint that isn't in lockstep with American exceptionalism? What's good for General Bullmoose is good for everybody. It's "The American Way".
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yeah..