"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."

Rating: 8/10 (24 February 2008)

The irony of this quote ("Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland) is what All Quiet on the Western Front is all about. The movie paints a very clear, even blindly obvious, picture of the difference between the young recruit's expectation of battlefield glory and the battle weary veteran's knowledge of the bloody reality of war.
The beginning of the movie suggests a military atmosphere that will stifle everything else in American daily life, as a military marching bands trudges past, drowning out the words of a lecturer in a classroom, but then changes directions when we realize that that professor is spouting militaristic propaganda at his young male students, vehemently urging them to join up and fight for their country. By the end of his speech, modern audiences might be astonished at the naked lies about battle, but the young men are cheering by the end and desperate to enlist.
There is, of course, massive difference between the audiences that first saw the film in April 1930 and today's audiences, and the thematic elements make this abundantly clear. Remember that this movie, one of our first Best Picture winners, was made for an audience most of whom had never seen moving images of war, and had no idea what life was really like on the battlefield. Because of that, the movie lacks in realism, although mostly only in the behavior and dialogue of the men. The actual battle scenes are startlingly realistic.
The men remind me of reading old Hardy Boys books, which contain dialogue which can't possibly be at all realistic. Some of the dialogue here in this movie is funny because it is so different from how people would speak today ("You are the gay heroes that will repulse the enemy when called upon to do so!"), but mostly it is simply the ham-handed delivery of the thematic elements that gets a little tiring ("You're just a man, like me, and I killed you! We only wanted to live, you and I. If we didn't have these guns and these uniforms, we could be brothers!").
Needless to say, the men quickly realize that they are not running off to the glorious battle. As with any war, when they left home, they were leaving to fight for their country. But when they arrived at their destination they find that they're not fighting for their country at all, they're fighting for their lives.
My historical knowledge of World War I is pretty limited, so I was a little confused at one scene where four American soldiers are bathing in the river, and soon notice three attractive French women casually strolling past the river. Initially I thought that they were just camping near a small village, apparently oblivious to the war, until the men managed to seduce the women using some soggy bread that had been soaked in the dirty river water, suddenly revealing that these smiling young women are virtually starving. The plight of the French civilians is hardly portrayed well.
One soldier goes home on temporary leave, and the movie also gets his battle remorse totally wrong. When he sees his family, he mumbles and trudges past, indifferent to see his loved ones again. It is as though he has lost his job, not returned after months and months and months at war. Soon he is at a table talking to some of the old politicians pulling the strings of the war, who accuse him of not knowing a thing about it when he tells them that the war isn't what they think it is.
To say that this is an anti-war film is certainly an understatement. In fact, the film ends on a decidedly unpatriotic note. A soldier speaks in the same classroom he used to go to, telling the eager young men about the reality of war. "It's dirty and painful to die for your country, And what good is it? Death is stronger than duty to one's country."
He then returns to the front, which now feels more like home to him than his home. The film has a great, meaningful ending, as well. It is as anti-climactic as you can imagine, but has a deep and resonating meaning.
The movie has not dated well, but being one of America's earliest war films, it is certainly successful.