All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
War is bad. And All Quiet on the Western Front makes sure you know it. Entire countries somehow fall out with each other, their leaders puff up their egos, and suddenly it’s the ordinary people who are told to go kill strangers they’ve never met. Men who, in any other circumstance, they’d have no reason to hate. Somehow it becomes acceptable, even expected, once someone in charge declares it "honour."
In this film, a bunch of German school leavers are whipped into a patriotic frenzy by their pompous teacher, who tells them their destiny is to fight for the glory of the Fatherland in The Great War. Twelve years of study, and the grand reward is to be blown up in a muddy trench. “Honour” doesn’t count for much when you’re up against machine guns, artillery shells, and barbed wire.
What follows is a descent into the daily grind of trench life: mud, rats, bombardments, and a constant lottery of who’s next to die. The film lingers on bitter little details. A pair of boots outlasts three different soldiers, passed along like a cursed heirloom. Rations become more important than ideals. At one point the men get double portions, but only because half their company has been wiped out. This isn’t fighting for the Kaiser. This is surviving until dinner.
Paul (Lew Ayres), the main protagonist, starts as a wide-eyed patriot and ends as a hollow-eyed survivor. His comrades joke, drink, and try to stay human, but every order and every bombardment chips away at them. In one sequence, Paul stabs a French soldier in a shell crater. Trapped beside the man as he slowly dies, Paul begs forgiveness, weeping and apologising. It’s raw, uncomfortable, and it perfectly shows the absurdity of killing strangers because someone else told you they’re the enemy.
We also meet Himmelstoss, a postman turned drill sergeant who bullies recruits with pointless cruelty. He struts about barking orders, but once he’s shipped to the front and has to go "over the top", he’s revealed as a coward. It’s a neat portrait of how the people who crave authority are usually the least fit to wield it.
One scene has always stuck with me: the soldiers casually ask why they’re killing people they don’t hate and don’t even know. They question how wars start? How do countries fall out with each other? Does a mountain in Germany offend a field in France? And why not just get the leaders to battle each other instead? Strip them down to their underpants, fight each other with clubs, and the best country wins. Half-joke, half-truth, but it cuts right to the heart of war, how millions of ordinary lives are wasted for the pride of a few. It was relevant in 1930, and sadly, it still is today.
The scale of the film is jaw-dropping. Massive battle sequences with hundreds of extras storming across no man’s land still hold up, even nearly a century later. Some of it is graphic, scenes in a hospital show the truth of war. Lots of soldiers die, some just lose limbs. The true horror of the war is juxtaposed against the perception held by those distant from it.
And then comes the ending. Paul, in a rare moment of peace, spots a butterfly minding its own business just on the other side of the trench wall. He reaches for it. And a sniper’s bullet takes him. A bullet from a total stranger, who just happens to have been born in a different country, in that instant ends Paul's story. And the official report for that day? “All quiet on the Western Front.” Yep, everything’s fine. Apart from the obliterated generation of young men, of course.
Watching this in 2020, it still hits hard. Yes, sometimes the pace is a little slow, and the acting sometimes feels stiff and melodramatic by modern standards. But, the message itself hasn’t aged a day, as it seems that the world still hasn't learned from its past. War chews people up and spits them out while leaders squabble over borders and pride. All Quiet on the Western Front strips away every pretence of glory and shows conflict for what it really is: pointless, brutal, and a waste of human life.