War and Disillusionment: All Quiet On the Western Front

All Quiet On The Western Front (1930) is based on Erich Maria Remarque's book of the same name. It starred Lew Ayers, in one of his first starring roles, and Louis Wolheim. I personally think it is one of the best if not THE best anti-war film. It does a brilliant job of showing the horrors of war and how idealistic and patriotic men become disillusioned by those horrors. 

The story begins with Paul Bäumer and his fellow classmates on their final day of school. Their teacher, Kantorek, is rousing up their sense of patriotism. He tells them that there is no greater honor than to serve the Fatherland. They are the light of Germany. They are the heroes that will trounce the enemy. It is their duty and privilege to fight. We see the young men pressured to feel the honor to join the Army. The scene has intense close-ups of the teacher as he asks students what they will do. The close-up shows the pressure or rather the intensity of the pressure to agree to join the war. As the teacher pumps them up, the students start to feel good and proud about going to war. They cheerfully sing as they march to the Recruitment Office expecting to find glory and honor on the other side. When the group of students arrive at training camp, they find out that their Drill Sergeant is their former Postman, Himmelstoss. Himmelstoss loves the power and authority he now wields. He pushes the new recruits and enjoys making them perform humiliating exercises. After completing the training, the young Soldiers are sent to a unit near the front lines. They enter a barracks filled with only a few men. They find the place void of beds, and to their horror, they discover that food is also very scarce. There are no canteens near the front lines. They meet old-timer Kat, who takes the young soldiers under his wing and shows them how to survive life in the trenches. As time passes, the young soldiers become jaded and weary. Some lose their sanity due to the claustrophobia of trench life with the sounds of shells constantly exploding overhead. 

After the soldiers' time on the front lines, they are able to go to the Canteen. During this scene we are witness to a great conversation that highlights how war is waged by the people in power and not the people who are actually fighting. The soldiers talk about how they don't know the reason for the war, and that they feel no ill will towards their enemies. They don't want to kill the English or French, and they think the English and French soldiers probably feel the same way. These people hadn't even seen an Englishmen until they were face to face in battle. I always saw it as such an effective scene. Later in the movie, there is an incident that sort of piggy backs on this earlier scene. Paul is stuck in a foxhole when a French solider also drops in, and Paul stabs him. It takes all night for the Frenchman to die, and the sounds of his moaning torment Paul. When the Frenchman finally dies, Paul begs the man to forgive him. He tells the dead man that he would rather see him as a brother and not an enemy. He asks God why they were put in such a position.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie is a montage that follows a pair of boots. One of the students turned soldier is a young man named Kemmerich, and he owns a very nice pair of boots. When Kemmerich gets fatally wounded his boots are passed from one friend to another. As each owner dies, the boots move on to a different person. Through the journey of the boots, we can see how that group of young soldiers are dying one by one.

We really start to notice Paul's disillusionment when he returns home for R&R. He goes home and his mother wants him to be the same little boy he was before he left for war, but of course he can't be that boy anymore. He walks into his bedroom, and it feels like the room of a stranger. On his wall there are pinned butterflies in frames. It seems like a lifetime ago when his days were filled with catching butterflies with his sister. Paul meets with his father and his father's friends at the pub while at home. The older men pull out a map of the fighting area, and they tell Paul that the soldiers have to push through the enemy's lines and eventually make their way to Paris. Paul tries to tell them that life is different in the war zone. It may seem simple to push through but things are different out there. However, the older men don't listen. They dismiss him and tell him that he has no idea what he's talking about, even though he's been to the front. He realizes the futility of trying to talk to them, and so he silently sits and watches them talk about how the war will be won. Another day he walks by his school and hears his teacher once again trying to inspire students to join the war. He is again talking about the glory and honor of fighting for the Fatherland. When Paul enters the classroom, his teacher asks him to speak to the class and tell the kids what it means to serve the Fatherland. Paul is honest and tells the students that life in the trenches is hard, and all they do is try not to die and sometimes fail at that. He confronts the teacher about telling students that it's beautiful and sweet to die for your country when in reality it is dirty and painful. However, the teacher nor the students listen to him. The students even call him a coward and boo him. He realizes they can't see the truth and won't see it until they witness it for themselves.

Paul regrets going home. Away from the front lines, the people live in a bubble, and it's a bubble that he no longer fits in. When Paul returns to the frontlines, things are different there as well. He hardly recognizes anyone. The friends he joined the war with are either dead or in a hospital. Most of the soldiers he met when he first arrived at the frontlines are also gone. Dead or crazy. Paul finds out that old reliable Kat is still around and he went to look for food. Paul is happy to hear that and he rushes off to find him. Paul confides in Kat about no longer feeling as if he belongs back home and that Kat is really all he has now. As Kat and Paul are walking back to camp, a plane drops a bomb near them and Kat gets wounded. Paul starts to carry Kat to the Medic Tent when another bomb is dropped. Paul drops Kat off at the Medical Tent and is informed that Kat is dead. When we next see Paul, he is sitting in the trenches essentially alone even though he is surrounded by other soldiers. There is sense of despondency about him. He looks through the gun hole in the trench, and he spots a butterfly. In the midst of the barren field that is full of death and pain there was sign of life. A sign of nature's beauty in the form of a butterfly. A symbol of the carefree life he used to live before the War. As his hand reaches out to capture the butterfly, a shot rings out and Paul's hand falls lifeless.

The film ends with an image of a field full of graves. The images of the young students we met at the beginning of the film are transposed over it. These young men who were filled with life, idealism, and promise, now reside in graves.

"This story is 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 who even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war...."