A strong antiwar film for the ages

Rating: 10/10 (8 March 2019)

Last night and this morning I watched this 2 hour and 16 minute film in its entirety. I wasn't really sure what to expect from this movie, but it is undoubtedly somber, a criticism not only of the horrors of war but also of the uber-patriotism/jingoism that leads men to die for a cause they don't even believe in. In 1914, these young German men go from the classroom, where their professor (played by Arnold Lucy) encourages them to enlist for the "good of their country" to the training camp, and then to the battlefield of World War I. They are not automatons however, but are angry at their treatment by the officer training them so they take him and put him in the mud on the night before they are set to go out to the front. They arrive there utterly naive, thinking it will be a licking, but soon realize and live the horrors of war, as these men decline rapidly to a smaller amount as the war continues onward, with them hunkering in their trenches.
Most of the movie takes place on the battlefield, mirroring in some ways Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1999), which focuses on World War II, or Paths of Glory (1957), which focuses on World War I, with Kirk Douglas playing a starring role, the slight antiwar themes in Hacksaw Ridge (2016), or those of the absurdist film on the WWII-era, Catch-22 (1970). As for this film, it e depicts charge after charge by the soldiers against the enemy as artillery blasts surround them, killing people right and left whom are not killed by enemy machine guns. All in all, it is an utter slaughter, making you think: is this really worth anything? What are they really fighting for? In one of the film's pivotal scenes, the soldiers discuss who and what the war is all about, not coming to a conclusion about why it happens, with one saying that the generals of both sides should fight each other in their underpants, making it an utter absurdity. At another, a soldier asks why he stabbed another French soldier who was "no different than I," another young man supposedly trying to fight for "his country." Clearly nothing is sacred, not even a cemetery, where the German soldiers fight "the enemy."
Perhaps to indicate the brotherhood of the male soldiers and to make this antiwar drama more effective, women are rarely mentioned at all, as it is seen as an "all-male affair." In an absurd scene, the soldiers swim across the river to visit a group of presumably French women, talking with them and such, but that is all, as they quickly leave. They show that even with the war, their chauvinism and need to be appreciated by women has not abated. At the same time, the movie shows the horror of war is not confined to the battlefields or trenches but to the hospital where many people languish until they die, saying that they are brought to the "dying room" (as one soldier calls it)/"bandaging room" (as the doctors and nurses call it) and never come back. One of the men, Paul Bäumer (played by Lew Ayres) goes home on furlough, visiting his sister (played by Marion Clayton) and mother (played by Beryl Mercer), realizing that people do not know the real state of war. The telling moment is when Paul speaks before the class of the professor whom had pressured him to go to war, telling the reality of the situation and the horrors of war, where he has been for 4 years (indicating it is 1918), as many of his fellow soldiers have died, with the young students calling him a "coward."
Feeling disillusioned, he goes back to the front, to stay there for four more days until his time is over, with the 2nd Company, he was part of, being extremely under-staffed as most have been killed. He soon finds Stanislaus Katczinsky/"Kat," as they talk about how people do not recognize the futility of the war, while Kat gets injured by a bomb dropped by an aircraft. But he is later is killed by a second explosion! As the film ends, Paul reaches out, only to be killed by an enemy sniper, with the find shot showing the company marching to the front for the first time, along with a shot of the cemetery. The latter indicates the lasting horror of war, which only leads to death and destruction. This film is more than "greatest anti-war statement every created" or a "sincere, emotional film," to take from reviews by bkoganbing and kian_ef, but this rather a film that makes a strong statement against the institution of war, perhaps more than any other film created, being realistic about what happened rather than sugarcoating it like Peter Jackson did in his 2018 documentary, They Shall Not Grow Old. With that, my review of this film comes to its conclusion.