All quite on the western front film review

All quite on the western front is a 1930's American epic war film directed by Lewis Milestone and based on the Erich Maria Remarque novel of the same name. The film follows the journey through war for several young German soldiers who all decide to go together and think that it will be fun and wont last long making them men. Starting in a classroom all the boys are encouraged to join by their teacher who gives them a patriotic speech about honour and heroism making them think about what war could mean and do for them in life, and ending in the trenches with them dying.

The film didn't shy away from the action that would have occurring the trenches which really drew me and and i feel this was one factor that made the film so successful and helped towards the many awards it won. This was so different to many other war films I have watched as many tend to put a happier look on the situation however by this film showing the audience how it really was they were able to connect to the character. The film showed many of the characters deteriorating and going insane which was both interesting and upsetting to watch however it allowed you to understand slightly what they were going through in certain situations, which I don't think would have been possible if the film wasn't true to what was going on. The film is a disturbing yet intriguing account on what the war is really like and makes the audience feel many strong emotions through out which for me I didn't feel in several of the other films I have watched based on war. 



The visual journey of one soldiers boots to me had the strongest hidden message and when I worked out what I believed it meant it really made me think. They first appear when one of the soldiers is showing them off to the other men making them all envy him. You then follow the boots with him wearing them until the soldier becomes injured learning he has to loose his leg, it is here that many of the soldiers then discard the fact he is hurt and only seem to think about his boots. This highlighted how the soldiers are only thinking of themselves at the end of the day and if them boots were going to protect them better ten they would do anything to try and get them. The boots are then passed onto to one solider that stood up for the hurt man moments before he dies, then when that soldier dies they are passed on again. This to me gave the message of how insignificant the soldiers are in the grand scheme of war and if one dies then they will just move on and recruit another with no real guilt for what they are doing.



The scenes where the soldiers are chasing rats, swapping bottles of spirits and sharing them between each of their gasping mouths and the memorable scene where one of the soldiers is blown up leaving just his hands behind on barbed wire (see image above) really showed the harsh reality and the gritty side to trench warfare, and not just the bit of fun that the young men first thought it would be. Between seeing all these young men coping with death, being driven and becoming killers the physiological aspects of the film are just as captivating as the visuals.

The final scene was one of the most touching parts to the film and was the part where I really felt for the character and what he had been through. It was the combination of the delicate butterfly and the innocence of the soldier (see image below) that showed the harsh reality of war to me as it was during this act of kindness that his death occurred as he reached out to save the butterfly. This is one of the parts that really stayed in my head after watching the film and really effected me emotionally.

This film really made me think and overall I really enjoyed looking at the real life situations, this was due to the fact it really opened my eyes to what went on in the trenches and war life. It has helped to get my head around situations that some of the the films didn't and the fact it was so true to what was actually going on for me worked in the films advantage and from this I can not widen my research ideas within my project.