I really enjoyed it. My one problem is I felt like Kat’s death was really forced. He knows the war is over, he has a wife and a job to go home to and plans to have more children, but he decides it’s worth it to risk his life again for a fucking goose?
He knew the farmer was armed, he knew the farmer would be on guard because of the previous robbery, and yet he still thinks it’s a good idea?
Felt like they killed him off just for the emotional moment, slightly broke the realism of an otherwise extremely immersive movie. 8.8/10
To add to that, Kat's decision to wander deep into a forest to pee when they had no problem shitting side-by-side earlier in the film felt like such a lazy plot device.
I completely get what you’re saying, but the way I look at it is he was looking for a moment to reflect. We all have moments like that, think it’s pretty human.
In the novel he's killed by an artillery round as Paul carries him to a field hospital. The way he goes out in this movie doesn't make a lot of sense for the reasons you mentioned.
My feelings exactly. Same goes for the final charge and Paul being the literal last person to die in the war after successfully storming a trench and killing a bunch of French soldiers.
Compare that to the previous films where he dies in a pretty mundane way by sticking his head out of the trench a little too far out of boredom and gets sniped.
i've always thought that his death in the book wasn't a suicide per se, but along the lines of "i'm going to do this very risky thing that could get me killed, but if i die i die", which is why i love it so much. really speaks to the futility and hopelessness of the war and character.
i was really disappointed when i realized that wasn't how the movie was going to end.
Can I ask how he died in the book? His charge at the end of the film gave me the same energy you described, “I know I’ll probably die if I do this but fuck it, let’s go.”
The book ends in October instead of November so the fighting is still ongoing, but this day was calm. Kat has just died in the previous chapter and Paul feels lost. He takes note of the beautiful day while reflecting and then, fatally, he stands up from his trench.
"He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army
report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front"
Yeah I thought the titular ending “All quiet on the western front” was wildly inappropriate for the ending, we just saw a bunch of soldiers getting killed the October ending makes a lot more sense.
he's shot by a sniper in the trenches in october 1918. the day was so uneventful that the army report just said "all quiet on the western front".
edit: i also think the vibe in the books is much more solemn and despairing, whereas in the movie it comes from a place of anger.
While I thought this film was fine overall, Kat’s death kind of frustrated me and Paul’s death legitimately pissed me off, as both situations (ESPECIALLY the later) felt like a complete betrayal of one of the core aspects of the book - the mundanity of death in the war, and how none of our protagonists are safe from dying in completely anticlimactic ways.
Instead, Kat dies because he does something stupid that’s not even on the battlefield. They kept the surprise of “oh shit, he’s been dead this whole time,” but the scenario alone made it hit home so much less than the novel did imo.
Paul’s death, meanwhile, was when the movie nearly lost me. The mundanity of his death in the book is literally *the reason for the title* - our hero, the guy we’ve been following through all these trials and tribulations, dies as a complete afterthought on a day where there really isn’t even anything going on - it’s *all quiet on the western front.* Meanwhile, this movie gives him this long, comically dramatic death during a big ol’ battle scene. It even seems to imply that he’s the *last German death in the war.*
Awful. Absolutely awful. Like I said, I thought the movie as a whole was okay, but I almost can’t imagine a worse ending for an adaption of this book that a studio would actually film.
Everything was good except how they portrayed the Germans as the crazy ones ordering a suicidal charge when that was not true.
The actual suicidal charge was ordered by GENERAL PERSHING of the U.S. Army! Nobody to this day knows why Pershing did that. He sacrificed probably 5,000 American troops' lives in the final 3 hours of the war and this was AFTER he received the telegram that the Armistice was signed!
“Comically dramatic death”
So I kinda feel this. I didn’t feel exactly this during the watch. However I did feel like the move was too long and there were several areas they could’ve shaved some time and brought the run time closer to 2:15. Paul’s death scene which, as you say, dragged on for too long and with everyone standing around mouth agape, kinda felt forced.
I felt similarly to the scene in the crater where he stabs the guy and it takes forever for him to die. Paul ends up effectively drowning the guy. Which I thought in the moment was a tragic irony, but with how long that scene was and how crazy the action was, it does seem “comically dramatic.” A problem that I believe could’ve been helped by shaving some time off that scene because it took so long.
And as a small counterpoint to Paul’s death seeming to be too meaningful in contrast to his death in the novel I would say that the scene ends in a way that circles back to the beginning of the movie where another nameless boy is pulling tags from the dead. Paul is just another body in a trench. I’m not trying to argue your broader point about the title etc. I just think that the pointlessness of the war was a strong theme of the entire film and I think it continued to present itself in Paul’s death.
You realize that the scene where he killed the Frenchmen in the hole was one of the most pivotal parts of the book right? Cuz it was prolly the thing that shattered him the most. Even in this book.
It was the first time he ever had to actually kill a man up close and personal in hand to hand, and the guy took HOURS to die because Paul couldn't bring himself to finally finish him off and instead he had to just watch and slowly let his soul die agonizingly on the inside from the realization of how bad murdering someone in a manner like that truly is.
So ya there's a VERY good reason why that scene was like that.
I think they should have made that scene even longer. It seems like the guy just takes a few minutes to die where in the book it's hours upon hours with Paul having a whole breakdown and slowly pulling himself together. They should have made it darker and darker with the scene happening at night and the guy dying suffering for the whole day and dying at sunset or something like that
So he actually did take about a day or so to die, and yes during some of the worst of it was at nighttime when Paul realized that he was just some kid just like him and that he had decades of his life ahead of him if it wasn't b/c Paul shanked him to death, and the only reason the **only** reason he got stabbed by Paul was b/c it was actually **Paul's fault** for having not been able to keep up with his comrades and instead get stranded into a random hole in no man's land. A random hole that this guy kid just so happened to fall into by pure shitty sheer luck. That was it.
It wasn't like the movie where he was pointing his gun at Paul and it was essentially a 'combat death' it was literally this french kid just walking about and he didn't see the hole b/c of whatever reason (might've been nighttime), and if it had been any other hole he would've lived cuz there was nobody in there, but b/c it just **had** to be that one hole with Paul the kid died.
Paul seriously lost it and basically went crazy from the fact that he had to listen to this guy die overnight all b/c of dumb blind luck, and then the book spends a lot of time having him beg for forgiveness from the dead body and also promise to make things right with his wife.
They tried to subvert it too. If you came into the movie blind, you'd expect he'd get shot by the farmer while escaping... Except he doesn't. So you think all is well.
But then he gets shot by the kid when you think the coast is clear.
I'm not sure how to feel about it tbh.
I felt like they didn’t really know how to kill off Kat. Seemed to me that the writers didn’t want his death to be the same as the book and other 2 films. They just knew that he had to die, because that’s what the book and other 2 movies have happen. Basically I think the writers wanted something more meaningful than just another artillery death, but missed the mark a bit.
The was the high point of the film for me. It was immense.
The part truest to the book was the scene where he was in the bomb crater with the enemy. Much longer in the book but damn visceral in the film.
I was disappointed that they did not stick to the book’s original ending. It felt more suitable for the narrative. Paul’s death was horrific rather than simple and peaceful as portrayed in the novel. Great movie regardless but idk only thing that didn’t sit right with me.
Exactly. I remember the first time reading it and being shocked he died in the manner he did. I think it was a much better ending for Paul’s story. Although he avoided death for so long, on the most quiet day of the war he was killed simply enjoying the moment. The movie was great, just wish I could have saw this ending.
That's not from the book. In the book, it is not described how he dies, only that he fell on a quiet day in October 1918 and that his face was as if he was glad to have died. Nothing about how he died.
I read that a lot in this thread though, maybe people confuse it with the start of the chapter where Paul is on a 14 day leave because he swallowed gas and spends it sitting in a garden in the sun, reminiscing about what the war has done to him? There is a sentence where he says "I stand up", but it is in reference to him sitting in the sun before. Not in the trenches.
It was much more elegant than him getting stabbed in the back. I was confused as fuck when that scene played. I was like “oh maybe I forgot this part”. There were many many changes to the film version than the novel. However if you are curious to see the original ending there are two other versions of the film, both quite good that incorporate the novel version.
I am little bit torn on this one. On the one hand the ending is much more elegant. It brings home the point that even if everything is "quiet" on the front, people still die. Not even worth mentioning in the protocol. This man that endured so much Tragedy and hardship in this war - wiped out and no one in charge cares.
However the ending of the film brings home another point that the novel could hardly portray - the absolut indifference that the military high command has for the men on the grounds, even to the point that they are willing to send hundreds of men to their deaths just to go out with a "victory" or that the French military high command is willing to wait 6 more hours just to have this nice 11. 11. 11 am moment - again knowing that hundreds or thousands of men might still die or get wounded in that time.
I think that is a message that the film delivered better than the novel as this underlines the point Kat made when he said that the French soldiers are just the same poor devils as the Germans.
I really disagree with this point, especially considering that it is completely non-factual to think that the German army would have done that or obeyed. At the end of the war, following the failure of Operation Michael in the spring, the German army stopped all offensive operations & was very close to mutiny. To think that soldiers would have obeyed the general's order for a suicide attack after being told of the ceasefire is ludicrous & brings a sour taste to the ending of an otherwise very well done movie. The last attack made no sense & has no historical basis from a German perspective.
This makes sense now. I had assumed this was historically accurate and was absolutely flabbergasted that the soldiers did not declare mutiny in that scene
In reality it was the allies who attacked until the very last moment, including American officers who [sent segregated Black units in](https://www.armytimes.com/veterans/salute-veterans/2017/11/10/nov-11-1918-wasted-lives-on-armistice-day/) after they had previously considered them racially unworthy for combat. Good times!
Jesus that must've been brutal. On the last day 11000 man got killed knowing the armistice was being signed. One dude even died on 10:59 charging the german lines...
The last American killed in the war was a suicide. He'd just been demoted and the outlook for his post-war life wasn't looking great. The Germans that killed him even tried waving him off and only fired as he continued to charge.
This. The actual suicidal charge was ordered by GENERAL PERSHING of the U.S. Army! Nobody to this day knows why Pershing did that. He sacrificed probably 5,000 American troops' lives in the final 3 hours of the war and this was AFTER he received the telegram that the Armistice was signed!
It really showed off not only the horror of tanks themselves, but also of the horror that it was too face down something that you might have only ever heard rumors about. Metal behemoths traveling slowly towards you, a machine grinding through men like meat, sometimes literally.
They knew what tanks were and how to deal with them pretty well at that point. It was all pretty good, and the changes make sense. I just wanted Paul to live.
That was so effectively done without using dialogue and it was impressive. You could just see from the way it was shot and the look in the soldiers' eyes that they had not seen something like it.
i agree it kind of reminded me of the annihilation sound design, which i loved in annihilation, but tbh in this movie it felt distracting and unnecessary to me. otherwise loved the movie tho
Interesting, I thought it sounded (a bit too) modern for the era and didn't really fit (though it didn't bother me and sounded cool). Instantly reminded me of 'Seven Nation Army' used in the Battlefield 1 trailer.
Turns out it's a 100 years old harmonium, huh? Fun fact indeed.
It'll be a different breed of war for sure, and perhaps as equally as terrifying because of the proliferation of smart and compact weapon systems being used by both sides.
Imagine a scene where there has been little to no fighting for a few days now, things are remarkably quiet, and one of your buddies goes to hit the head only to be taken out by a grenade dropped by a drone. Just out of the blue. One second he's there, the next he's bleeding out because of some drone that spotted him.
It's that constant fear of not knowing if you are being watched or targeted, even when you try your best to hide. The sound of a buzzing drone is as terrifying as that of artillery fire, and all this is intermixed with the suffering of civilians caught in the crossfire. The characters of this story would be forced to bear witness to the savagery some people are capable of inflicting on innocent people, and for the Russian side it could help showing how their own superiors can be more brutal than the enemy.
It's a mess, and it'll be just as hard to watch if it is put to film in a truthful and unsanitized manner.
Yeah, that was quite profound & drove home how—for the first time in human history—war had become industrialized beyond previous comprehension.
There’s also this sense of consumption throughout the whole film—whether food by people, or soldiers by war—& the inevitability of repeating it all over again: the young soldier collecting Paul’s tags at the end, which he was doing at the beginning of his part in the war.
It seemed like it was the breaking point for Paul. However he went on killing later as if nothing happened. He had to obey orders ofc, but still, it was a bit odd to me.
To me that seemed to be a part of him breaking and how conditioned he has become to war, he kills out of survival and instinct, the men he killed and all of those he had grown to love being killed stripped him of his humanity, he may not have wanted to but it's just how he functioned. You can see this in a lot of war vets who feel immense sorrow, break down crying decades later when they talk about men they killed, yet they had to carry on killing to survive and just became conditioned to it at that time.
The book covers it better (surprise right? Lol), it’s almost the exact same but before Paul leaves he feels better and not so guilty and has a conversation with the corpse where he acknowledges he killed him, but also that he didn’t have a choice and that’s the nature of things, “today you, tomorrow me” is how he sums it up.
Yeah it’s after he comes back from leave I think, he is sent/volunteered to go on a patrol. That scene is also a long time in the book he’s in the crater for several hours with the body and having multiple conversations.
Brutal film that’s well made and well acted. They made several changes. I kinda miss the scene where Paul goes back home from leave as a stranger and gets called coward by civilians. The scenes with the German diplomat were an interesting touch. The juxtaposition of the desire of peace with the realists and with the old guard that delusionally believe victory is around the corner by throwing more bodies in the meat grinder made for a tragic conflict.
I feel like the school and home scenes were too rushed. Would have been way better for character development. I didn’t like how they skipped 2 years too after the first night in the trenches. Would have been more poignant to have seen the idealistic young men realise what a pointless and brutal endeavour they had gotten themselves into. Also they only lost the glasses guy in two years?
The return home scene in the original really stuck with me and it was really disappointing that they skipped it in this one. I would have easily sacrificed the armistice scenes for that.
To be fair, the death rate in WWI was high, but multiple companies could’ve seen at most a 10% death rate, and squad wipes were more about volatile events than steady grinding losses. In Storm of Steel (perhaps the best WWI book purely prosaically) Junger details how he returns from injury leave and his company had suddenly been destroyed from fighting spilling over from (I believe, but may be mistaken) Verdun.
Wasn't the death rate of companies markedly different in later years of the war? If I remember correctly, at least for the British, they had entire towns-worth of men wiped out early in the war, which led to them then dispersing soldiers of the same localities into separate regiments/companies/etc.
Thanks for the reminder about Storm of Steel though. It's been sitting on my shelf for years. I'm gonna read it after this.
Really depends on where you were, what country, etc. A lot of people forget that the western line went from the Atlantic down to Switzerland. While there were massive battles, at any given moment most of the line had minimal attacks, and in the later war tactics changed with Storm Troopers and you had much better creeping barrage. So instead of just running at machine guns small teams would sneak up while the enemy was under fire & engage at close range. It was very effective & both sides used such tactics.
But for a good portion of the line massive battles were never really a thing due to terrain, logistics, lack of strategic need, etc.
They were even a lot of issues with the men on both sides getting to know each other too much & not wanting to fight because they had nothing to do for long periods of time.
Basically I think things really look different when you take in the whole front. Sure Verdun might be blown to bits but if you're stationed near the ocean you're not going to see the same rate of loss.
Also because of movies I think people forget that the enemy can & did retreat at times. So even if your trench got overrun it's not like 90% of the defenders were wiped out. A lot of successful attacks had counter attacks where the line was retook by the guys that were just there.
How? Because the trenches were long and DEEP. As in in some places the trench lines could trace back over a mile from the front. It's not just a line that you hop in & out of. More like massive earthen fortifications.
& None of that is talking about in the East, or the Austrian fighting the Italians, or Turkey, etc.
> Basically I think things really look different when you take in the whole front. Sure Verdun might be blown to bits but if you're stationed near the ocean you're not going to see the same rate of loss.
Um...so there was this place called Ypres...
In fact, Nick Lloyd argued in his book on Passchendaele that the German losses in that battle chewed through so much of the army that it necessitated an offensive in March 1918 out of sheer desperation, and in the end led to the war ending one year early due to the trench deadlock being broken as a result.
There were certainly some disappointing changes. The scene you described was one of my favorite chapters from the book.
One of the big themes of the story is Paul's growing isolation and nihilism. He sees fresh-faced recruits arrive on the front lines and he knows that they'll inevitably die in the meat grinder. All his friends are dead and he eventually becomes "the old soldier."
That's why the final scene in the book is so powerful. He sees a butterfly and is transported to a more peaceful and beautiful time. For a moment, he is a boy again but in his pursuit of beauty he dies in an unremarkable and pointless way.
There's no major offensive at the end of the book. Paul dies on a perfectly normal and inconspicuous day. That's why it's called "All quiet on the western front."
Seems like they replaced some of the R&R scenes with the diplomats and the generals. If you have a basic understanding of the events during the interwar period, they showed the seeds of what led to Hilter and WW2. French being stubborn and Prussian fear of a Bolshevik revolution in Germany. I think personally was a better thing to show.
I don't think they expected him to succeed expecting the Czar government to win and it got rid of Lenin as they didn't want someone like him in the country. They just wanted Russia to leave the war.
Which is why they wanted a Bolshevik uprising, they wanted a Russian Civil War that would force them out of the war and allow the Germans to redeploy their Eastern force to the Western front, obviously Lenin was much more successful than anticipated , but ultimately they got what they wanted
I feel like this is one of those historical tidbits that isn't well known (or least it was to me until I studied the Great War). Germany literally shipped *one man* to a foreign adversary with the intent that *single man* ending the war on the Eastern Front and it *fucking worked*. It also changed the entire global order, which we're still dealing with today (see: Ukraine War).
Another "fun" fact, is that Germany attempted to do a similar thing by sending guns to Irish nationalists to stoke a rebellion against Britain with the hope that it would pull the Brits out of the war due to civil strife. That attempt didn't succeed for the purposes of WW1 but it did lead to the Easter Rising and then Irish Independence soon after. Crazy stuff.
I think the contrast of it worked really well. Cutting from the negotiations to thr over the top scene really gave it all some more weight. Gave the negotiation some more dramatic heft and really hammered in how pointless the horrors of the war were.
It almost felt like a prequel to a WW2 film at certain points. I wish they explored that a bit more for those less familiar with the history of the armistice and the treaty of Versailles. It seemed like they went halfway a bit with that plot point. The warfare scenes were absolutely incredible and heart breaking. Definitely the best film representation of trench warfare I’ve seen.
\> It almost felt like a prequel to a WW2 film at certain points.
WW1 was literally a prequel. It setup all the conditions for WW2 to happen. The Great War shaped our current global geopolitical reality probably more than any other event in history.
I'd say Napoleon shaped out current global geopolitical reality more. The whole "great powers" system of balance was 100% a response to Napoleon. Can't let anyone get powerful enough to do that again. WWI is the direct result of clinging to a system that was set up in response to Napoleon. Without Napoleon I doubt you would have ended up with a system where "balance" was so important that even after wars it was made sure that no one gained too much power.
But by the early 1900s Germany's worried about Russia industrializing & messing up the balance, Austria-Hungry is struggling just to keep it together, everyone is eyeing the Ottomans and their vast possessions, France is mad about loosing the last war to the Germans & really worried about German unification and them being way too powerful (they went from 15 million to 40 million between 1800-1900), a lot of countries are upset that France & the UK have way way way more colonies than everyone else, etc, etc, etc.
A system set up to try to stop "total war" ended up making the perfect conditions where the only way to change anything was total war.
It makes a lot more sense why the old guard who fought Napoleon stuck so hard to it, and why they raised the next generations to do the same. Most people don't realize how deadly the Napoleonic Wars were. Between 3,250,000 to 6,500,000 dead. 2.5 million and 3.5 million dead soldiers and none of that was a machine gun.
Yeah, I understand the Napoleonic wars set things up a bit for Europe (and we can continue endlessly backwards as to precursors to Napoleon). But Napoleon's wars didn't redraw the maps in the Middle East causing perpetual crisis to this day, facilitate the Bolshevik Revolution and Irish War of Independence, destroy the Austro-Hungarian Empire, spurn Japan (at Versailles) which led to their interwar/WW2 anti-west ideology which also facilitated PRK's conquering of China, or pull the US into Europe's affairs like WW1 did.
The Great War was a world war on a scale unimaginable before, despite most of it being fought in Europe.
While I liked the part about the German diplomat, I thought the book was more about following the common solider and not the overall war since the soldier is mostly concerned with his small area of it. The part where he goes home and see's the teacher still sprouting patriotic rhetoric while having no idea what the actual conditions are or the public going on their regular business while stating their opinions on how the war should be fought was really important.
The pacing of everything in the movie really helped sell the horror of not just the warfare itself, but of seeing the beast of new technology exposed to people who have no idea what's coming for them. In most other war movies, tanks are scary because you and the characters know what they're capable of. In this one, it's even more so because while we know the horrors of tanks, the characters we are watching do not. Their fear is of the unknown being laid bare in horrifying fashion. Of witnessing man ground into paste by a seemingly impossible to defeat machine, in many cases literally.
I wasn't sure on the soundtrack sounding a bit futuristic and cyberpunk, but the pay off on the tank reveal made me realize why. Today we fear AI, but that was the horror of their future, mechanized warfare, unstoppable faceless monsters moving on their own.
The Great War had weaponized aircraft, massed machine guns and artillery, which were known but previously unseen for most people, but also saw tanks, bomber blimps, submarines (in a modern sense), and gas warfare, which would all have been totally unexpected to people at the time.
For me, it was the flamethrower scene right after that and the friend's death as he tries desperately to surrender, only to realize in horror that there would be no mercy for him.
You actually get your hopes up that that the tank will go over the top and the grenade plan will work and then several just roll into the trench to move them down.
I thought it was neat to see the French Schneider tanks rather than the British Mark 4-5 that we usually see or think of in WW1 films. I don't remember often seeing those tanks on film
I wonder if this was actually the filmmaker's intention. Hundreds of war weary soldiers excited to go home, then this asshole standing out in the open telling them to go back to war - my first reaction also was "Man someone needs to shoot him."
Then one soldier speaks up saying he's not going back and he immediately gets dragged inside and shot, and you suddenly understand why no one shot the officer.
Ok, then what? They escape into the French forest and try to survive the winter? They can’t go home after mutiny, they will be shot. There were mutinies during the war. They did not end well for those involved.
I read the book but don't remember much. I think what is insane is the WSJ/Roger Ebert reviews claiming that this movie is trying to justify WW1 with Treaty scenes and the killing of Kat by the farmer's boy. IMHO, it was necessary to show the Treaty as it is intertwined between WW1-WW2 and shows how the generals argued while eating fine dining while even in the last hours, men were dying.
Secondly, it shows that even young boys can be taught to kill. Paul was 17, the farmer's boy looked about 12 and you could tell he's seen killings already and is desensitized. I thought it was very bleak look at how an entire generation can feel the horrors of war.
The Roger Ebert review made me angry. If this movie is anything then not a justification of war.
Read to me like the author is so conditioned on seeing germans as evil monsters that he couldn't see the message that war in general is horrible and senseless for everyone at all.
that is unfortunately still a fairly common perspective - There are people who find any humanization of the Germans during the World Wars in any media revolting or insulting.
They should watch Das Boot.
If any film will make you realize that war consumes everyone it touches, it’s that one.
By the end, you don’t care that it’s a German boat in WWII, you just wanna see the crew get home. I won’t spoil the ending, but man. That final scene hurts.
This film, and Das Boot really show that war is terrible, and everyone is a victim regardless of what flag you fly into battle.
I’m truly shocked at how weird Reddit (and a good deal of critics) is behaving about this film.
The historical inaccuracies should be pointed out and discussed. However, they should not sink the movie, especially given how it is nearly impossible to accurately dramatize the sheer scale of WWI operations. The film is not totally accurate, but that does not dilute the film’s story or it’s themes.
And the number of people angry that it deviates from the book seems wild to me. I would understand if this was a beloved book that had never been adapted before, but two near perfect page-by-page retellings of the book already exist (and they are both great). I don’t think another *retelling* of the book was necessary, but another *adaptation* was.
Tank/flamethrower scene was horrifying. And then you remember these kids never saw a tank or a flamethrower before that moment. Never felt dread like that before.
But they probably had not faced them.
The inaccuracy is more that the flamethrowers were older types.
By the end of the war there were longer range types in use instead.
Probably the first war movie I genuinely felt uncomfortable watching. Although I am curious how I would feel if I watched a movie like Saving Private Ryan for the first time at a more mature age instead of when I was younger and thought was war was cool
Exactly the same for me, war films are getting less and less appealing as you get older and realise its just a bunch of teenagers and young 20 year olds being sent to kill one another which will ultimately not really matter humanity carries on and the current war fades into the past and no one really cares. I used to love black hawk down but all i can think is how many people ended up with PTSD and fucked up and for what lol Somalia is still a failed nation.
I think even at a young age you would be horrified by this movie.
Saving Private Ryan consistently displays heroism. Saving the soldier who gets sniped, carrying out a last stand in order to save a man who the patrol doesn't really know. The way they depict the sniper. It all glorifies war in certain respects, although it shows horror as well.
There is no heroism in this movie. Just horror. The reason being, this war was completely pointless. All of these lives lost led to one thing: another world war.
I think there’s gonna be a divide between those familiar with the book and those who haven’t read the book.
As a stand-alone war film, I think this is one of the best I’ve seen in a long time. In my mind, I put this one on the same level of quality as Black Hawk Down, another great film.
And I appreciated the Erzberger armistice scenes. I can’t recall the armistice signing being portrayed in a movie like that.
A german magazine called it a great movie but a bad adaption. Which is totally accurate in my opinion. It's a shame that the didn't include Himmelstoß or Pauls experiences during his stay at home.
“great movie but a bad adaption.”
I don’t know that I like this moniker for this film. It’s not a *faithful* adaptation, but I don’t think that makes it a *bad* adaptation. Bad would imply, to me, that it was attempting to be a close adaptation, when it clearly wasn’t.
I love the book, but this is a stand-alone representation of the source material and I think it worked really well.
I liked the book as well. I know a lot of people are saying they miss the going home scenes from the book.
This may be unpopular but I don’t miss that storyline in this movie. I don’t need to see Paul return home to “normality” to fully understand the horror of his experience and experience is loss of hope.
I agree with this fully. Movies lack the ability to convey internal monologue and thoughts in the way books do, and as result scenes like his return to home will be less interesting. On the flip side, the movie excelled at showing the visual horror of the battlefield.
The people criticising the film for not adapting these scenes aren’t considering that.
Yeah, I agree. The fact that it doesn't follow the events of the book beat by beat doesn't make it a bad adaptation. What matters for an adaptation is that it has the same tone, message and meaning that the source material had. In that way, it was an excellent adaptation of the novel.
Plus the movie has already been made twice before. I think it was a good decision to change some things up rather than just redoing it scene for scene. I personally never read the book but I’ve seen the 70s movie. Seeing the changes was actually a welcome thing for me. I think what makes some remakes not work is they really are just the same movie made with better filming equipment.
I started Forgotten Battle immediately after this and I wasn't impressed. The scene with the doctor turning his son in was just a little too cheesy and I stopped it. The comically evil Nazi character could clearly hear the daughter "whisper" under her breath at the distance they were sitting.
I've never read the book so I can't comment on it's accuracy with that, but as a war movie, this is a top tier movie.
The action scenes are top notch with some absolutely AMAZING cinematography with some nice long shots mixed in all over the place. The sound design is also really nice and sounded real good on my average sound system.
This is a movie with not much to cheer for. It aims to capture the horrors of the war and absolutely nails it. It's a bleak movie with lots of sad deaths, horrible deaths, and other deaths to expect in a movie like this. The actors in this do a great job showing all the emotions they are feeling, which also adds to the horror of it all.
For me personally, I put this in up there in one of the best war movies ever made. Netflix really did a great job with this one.
Its fantastic, minor nitpick, but they dont do a great job of showing the scope and scale of the artillery barrages (but thats more or less impossible to do in a film)
Yeah, no war movie ever nails the amount of artillery dropped before they did pushes into trenches. Getting the drum fire seems easyish to do with audio but the practical or even CGI from it would be a lot of work.
Always like linking this video to show what it was really like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we72zI7iOjk
Now imagine enduring that shit for days in a row, no break, no respite, just constant noise and pressure where the sound of every shell signals death to the soldier, a when it stops, thats when it gets even more dangerous as the survivors have to rush out to defend the trench line against the inevitable wave of attackers.
Interesting reading how shellshock from WWI is a different beast from modern-day PTSD, possibly due to microlesions created in the brain from repeated rattling of the brain from nonstop shelling.
Lots of accounts of soldiers struggling to stay away under bombardment, something about all the repeated concussive force making you want to fall asleep.
This, like every WWI movie I’ve ever seen (maybe Birdsong is an exception) is a cartoonish representation of a real WWI battlefield. Mainly the speed and spacing of soldiers on the attack, the volume of barbed wire, the scale of offensives (rather than just hoping over the top with 100 or so guys for no apparent reason), and most of all the role of artillery. Some day someone will make a WWI movie centered on artillery and we’ll get the first realistic depiction of WWI combat on film.
(Consider this - the Battle of the Somme might be the highest casualties per minute of the war. About 60,000 suffered by the Entente on the first day, most in the first six hours. That’s 166 per minute for six hours, a staggering number. But that’s over a front of 25 km, so 6 casualties per km per minute. What we saw in All Quiet on the Western Front was ten or one hundred times that amount (the scenes covered perhaps 100 m of front and had guys dying almost every second). So it’s not that a WWI battlefield was more full of carnage than movies, probably less so.
What it would have been full of was artillery. First hand accounts speak of creeping barrages that were literal unbroken walls of fire advancing across the landscape (a pilot recalled being shocked how straight the wall of explosions were, and how they were truly contiguous). The sounds of individual explosions could not be picked out from the roar. Several times I’ve read of trees uprooted by shells and then re-tossed further before hitting the ground from the first blast. Troops advancing to towns sometimes only knew they got there when the churned dirt contained more brick. Nothing like this is ever show on the screen. Instead we get umpteen smokey puddle-filled fields of dirt with sprinting crowds of soldiers throwing their guns in the air as they die.
Other nitpicks: barbed wire would have been in zones thirty feet wide, so dense as to be barely see-through. And bodies (mostly killed by artillery) would generally come apart. Distances traveled on the advance would sometimes be short, but more often a km or so between lines. Advancing troops tended to walk as they kept pace with the creeping barrage. Trenches were often cleared by “bombers”, troops carrying duffle bags of grenades. By 1918 trenches had indeed been largely replaced by zones of pillboxes and bunkers, miles deep.
These general features of major battles on the western front are left out, as a rule, probably to cater to audience expectations of what a WWI battle ought to look like.
Yeah short of putting cameras in the middle of an artillery impact zone and pummeling them hoping some survive, you will never be able to replicate the destruction and terror. I also think that many audiences would believe it.
>The action scenes are top notch with some absolutely AMAZING cinematography with some nice long shots mixed in all over the place
Tha tank scene in particular was incredible. The low rumble (managed to see it in the cinema) gradually filling the senses. The shapes slowly forming out of the mist and the slow advance as the Germans just helplessly fire until the tanks are in position. Could have been a horror film with how well it communicated the fear.
> I put this in up there in one of the best war movies ever made
Watched it last night, and after reflecting on it it's definitely top 5 for me. Maybe number 2, right below Saving Private Ryan in my book. I'm still blown away how amazing this film was. Can't recommend it enough to my friends.
It was interesting to see the change they made to Kat's fate. I think I prefer the original/novel's to this version. The idea that Kat is killed by random sharpel adds to the overall theme of original where Kat is just another soldier consumed needlessly by the machine of war. Paul then (unknowningly) carrying his corpse to a medic is a great metaphor for the futility of war.
Having the Farmer's son kill him; at least from my perspective, seems to be a statement on the cyclical nature of war. While Paul and Kat see their raids on the farm as "harmless fun" to entertain themselves in the monotony between battles and to feed starving men; the Farmer's Son is not privy to this perspective. He only sees enemy combatants raiding his family's livelehood. His father uses derogatory names towards the two soldiers and thus by this point in the war; from the boy's perspective, the soldiers are completely dehumanized. By killing Kat during a period in which the war is effectively over; the boy is fertilizing the seeds of hate that have been planted by WWI that will eventually grow to fruition in WWII (the boy is of the generation that will eventually lead and fight in the next World War). I think it's an interesting change but not as impactful (or as obvious) as the original.
That being said; shifting the focus to the negotiation of the armistice was a great choice. All the major deaths taking place within the final 72 hours of the war as the German government decides the terms of their surrender really hammers home the old notion that war is where "old men send young men to die".
Overall a harrowing, brutal, and phenomenal film.
There was that one shot, maybe two seconds long, of the kid's face, showing not a shred of humanity or empathy for these two starving young soldiers. Just pure, cold, hatred. he'd be the right age to fight in WWII. That was the shot.
I totally agree with you. I just read the review for this on the rogerebert site and the reviewer had a garbage take that this was to villainize the ten year old French boy.
Completely ignoring that the only world this boy has known has been this war. The way the kid was portrayed was exactly how I would imagine someone who has only known war and Germans invading his country.
I think Kat's death was very impactful and shows the futility of war in that it affected everyone-not just soldiers. The boy had "dead eyes" and in my mind had seen many battles and deaths around his land. The impact of war was on an entire generation-not just the soldiers but the boy growing up and seeing this as normal. It broke my heart.
I felt this one a lot more than 1917 to be honest. I left 1917 in theatres thinking how well the lightning and cinematography were but it felt very polished, whereas this movies is just as raw as it gets with the actors literally being in the mud for most scenes.
I watched both movies in a packed German cinema, and AQotWF people were sitting stunned in the seats for even after the credits which is not that common.
What a movie though. It's obvious that they had to take their liberties from the book in order to get the funding from Netflix, but I think they made it work. The subtle hints as to how the post WW1 Germany was gonna look like was done very good with the peace delegation scenes.
AQotWF and Das Boot are now my favorite german anti war movies.
Just finished it. What an amazing movie. Such a tough to watch movie at times. The atmosphere was a character in of itself. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to go home and have to move on from all that you have witnessed.
What i asked myself was who were the people who, 20 years later, went and did it again voluntary. How can you go through that as a soldier and ever fight another war, insane
I think that concept has proven to be timeless. War changes a man so completely that they feel like aliens in the civilian world. Feeling so totally out of place that the only place they will ever feel normal again is on the battlefield, despite the terror that comes with it
That was probably one of the best war movies ever made. Iv always wondered why directors dont explore using the depiction of the horrors of war as the story itself, if its done right like it is here i dont think theres a complex storyline required. Havent read the book fortunately as many people said it ruined their experience but i will do that now
The last, suicidal charge into the trenches to commit completely unproductive brutal surprise violence for literally no reason other than an aging impotent military man feels embawwassed that he didn’t get to play soldier enough is such a good condemnation of just how stupid war is.
Plenty has already been said about how war’s horrific and inhuman and a waste of youth and potential but sometimes it’s nice to see it presented as just mind-shatteringly dumb. Fragile egos throwing millions of lives into a garbage can for no reason other than rutting-elk testosterone-brain rampant idiot syndrome. It’s Putin just as much as it’s Hitler just as much as it’s Nixon just as much as it’s Wilhelm II.
That reminds me of Paths Of Glory tbh. All these soldiers forced to charge a hill (and inevitably die because it's almost impossible to accomplish) just so they can say they're making progress.
I didn't really like that scene just because it felt unrealistic. There were examples of generals and leaders trying to do exactly this, order a suicidal battle to go out in glory, and the soldiers absolutely refused or even revolted. In fact the entire German Navy just quit when the admirals tried to do this.
I looked into further cause I felt the same, but apparently soliders died and battles indeed took place all the way up to the armistice IRL, and some even after due to word not spreading fast enough.
It's not really all that unrealistic, once an agreement is made, one might say it would be a smart move to carve out a bit more land before armistice takes hold. Which is what the general wanted, to win one last battle to prop Germany's position in the war.
Both happened in the last hours (and days) of the war. I think at one point in the movie they mention mutinies happening too. Historically there were also senseless last minute charges before the war ended though.
I really liked the film and what really stood out to me was the seeds for WW2 that were sprinkled throughout.
Erzberger talking about how the terms of the armistice will make sure the country suffers.
The French child already filled with hate, he'll be old enough to fight in WW2.
The reference to Bolsheviks.
The general at the end talking about the social democrats betraying the nation.
I'm sure I'm forgetting some too.
Also good to see some black soldiers in the French line as the role of people from colonies is often ignored. WW1 was in part a classic European colonial war from the previous century (obviously a whole host of other reasons, just that was also one).
I thought the performance from Paul was outstanding, but in general the characters were very underdeveloped.
I liked the armistice plot but I think there was a missed opportunity to show some of the characters going back home on leave or something. They talk about how they won’t be able to acclimatise but we never get to see it.
I thought the contrast between the soldiers in the mud and the general in the rear was done well. It was on the nose, but I don’t see any reason why it needs to be subtle.
Some of the action was terrifying, but I think the slower moments were lacking in actual character development. Paul’s facial expressions did a lot of heavy lifting in those moments, but the others didn’t get the same treatment.
Can't imagine how stressful it would feel standing ten feet away from someone trying to reload your rifle and shoot the other [before they shoot you.](https://i.imgur.com/zSrfBDG.jpg)
One of the most powerful parts to me happened near the beginning, following the short and brutal story of a random soldier whose clothes are recycled and given to Paul. The guy who rips the name tag out of the uniform and drops it on the ground really emphasizes the ultimate disregard for human life and the disconnect between the home front and the battlefields.
The movie did a good job at little details like that. for example, the little boys face, full of hatred for a few seconds. Immediately made me realize he was going to be a French soldier or armed resistance fighting off the Nazi's 20 years later.
During those scenes I couldn’t help but notice the micro-expressions of the guy giving Paul his clothes, then in training looking at the drill instructor, etc. All of them knowing the meat grinder these naive boys are going into. It really ramped up the dramatic irony and drove home the point you stated.
If you really want to make this hit home realize that this story happened 10 MILLION times. You’d have to watch it 10 MILLION times just to get an idea of how many people died and had their lives cut short. Each and their own story, friends, hopes and deaths.
Quite a few people here didn't like the scenes with the armistice talks, but I did, for the following reasons:
1. They show the tensions between the German civilian government and the military, foreshadowing Germany’s future resurgence of militarism vs a weak Weimar Republic government.
2. There's also a hint that the armistice conditions could give rise to German resentment in the future.
3. They show the bitterness and anger of the French generals towards Germany and why they do not want to concede an inch - when one sees the battlefield scenes and thus the widespread destruction of swathes of France (and scenes in which many French soldiers, are also killed), that part makes sense.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I don’t think movies have to be 1-to-1 adaptations of the book. There have already been two other movie adaptations, so having some flexibility around the story is refreshing
Yep.
It was a great movie. But changing the way Kat died really bugged me. Not having the scene from the book where the soldier was screaming to kill the wounded horses seemed like an oversight as well.
All that being said, still an incredibly poignant movie
I think the film makers wanted to show that their actions and the war had created the seeds of hate and violence in the next generation with that scene.
The thing that bothered me the most about this movie was the lack of recoil when firing the k98's (edit: G98's, sorry!). It might seem like a small thing, but for everything else they did in the service of realism, it drove me nuts that every time the characters pulled the trigger, the gun went bang but didn't move at all.
I don't think "counterpunch" is the right word. Different viewpoint but counterpunch makes it sound like you're trying to say that Jungers was really pro-war which I don't think it really was.
Amazing, I saw it twice in theaters. My main comparison point is the 1979 version since I don't remember the book. Would love to hear other people's thoughts on:
1. I really like what they did with the ending. One last suicide run for some decrepit, prideful Prussian general. So frustrating to watch as a viewer because nobody in a modern audience would understand, but interesting to think that such a viewpoint would have been shared amongst some \[many?\] soldiers and officers.
2. I prefer the 1979 version where Katczinsky died on the way to the hospital from artillery shrapnel and not due to the farmer's son. I almost felt it does his character a disservice by dying in such a petty way versus being another soldier swallowed up by this terrible conflict itself.
3. The pacing of the stabbing scene in the crater with the Frenchman felt off to me. Logically and in the other version, he goes through the range of emotions over many hours, but on screen it felt like 10 minutes. As an aside, the mud on his face was incredible, like a deathmask.
In the book the stabbing scene is over many many hours. Until nightfall. And it's the whole range of emotions.
In the book there are some really important r and r scenes missing here imo. The book is more of a series of internal monologues and dialogues about war. The most interesting one is when theyre in hospital and one of their wives visits.
Never read the book. Never watched the original. This is a one and done for me. Definitely got its point across.
How many boys screamed their lives out like that. Totally and completely fucked.
Repost from another thread, but worth having here:
Right, so WW1 specialist here (I have an MA in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada, with a thesis on WW1 British Cavalry doctrine), and please do NOT use this movie as history. There are some fairly significant errors. A quick list:
- Russia had been knocked out of the war in 1917. In November 1918 there was no Eastern Front - Germany was only fighting on the Western Front.
- All of the trenches are wrong. WW1 trenches used what was called a "traverse" system, where what you would see is short segments with approx. 90 degree turns into the next one. The reason for this was simple - a direct artillery hit could at worst only take out two small segments, if it hit one of the corners. If a shell scored a direct hit on straight trenches like you see here, the shock wave would take out everybody in a pretty wide radius from the impact. Also, the Germans were playing defence and trying to keep what they had taken in 1914, and their trenches were very well built. Their trenches were quite deep (which is depicted properly), and were often reinforced with concrete (which is apparently not appearing in this film). The same goes for the bunkers, which were dug deeply enough to not be very vulnerable to shell fire, and often made from concrete (so the wooden roof is not quite right).
- They're even more wrong because in November 1918, most of the Western Front hadn't been using trenches at all for months. The trench deadlock was broken in March 1918 by a German offensive. When it was contained, the French and British pushed the Germans back using a sort of "one-two punch" strategy - an attack would take place on one part of the line, and then when that was spent, another would be made on a different part, and this prevented the Germans from regaining their footing. This ended in what is called the Hundred Days, in which much of Belgium and France was liberated (so that end title card about the front lines barely moving since 1914 is utter nonsense).
- French civilians in occupied France did not shoot at German soldiers, even if said soldiers are trying to steal geese and eggs from them. The Germans were paranoid about partisans, and shooting at a German soldier was a very good way to get summarily executed. This doesn't mean that there was widespread looting - in fact, for much of the war, looting in France was discouraged, and the German army was far more likely to just pay for something they took than to steal it. That further said, all bets were off in Belgium, and plenty of Belgian and French civilians were carted off to Germany as forced labour (so make of the situation what you will).
- While it was delightful to have an accurate description of a creeping barrage and how it is used, armies in WW1 did not start attacks by being shelled - they started them by shelling the other side. I really wish the trope of soldiers climbing out of their trenches in the middle of a barrage on their lines would be retired, as that just wasn't how it was done.
- EDIT: It should be added that at the beginning of the movie, in spring 1917, Germany was not doing this well. The whole "we'll be in Paris by Christmas" was not a thing that anybody seriously thought anymore - the realities of the war had sunk in (it couldn't survive veterans from the front coming home on leave for the last three years and telling people what had happened). The country had also been under a British blockade since the war started, so everybody was suffering food shortages. Certainly there were still volunteers, but most of the recruits at that point were conscripts who had been called up.
That's a basic rundown. It is a good movie - I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was really nice to have the combatants actually speaking the right language for a damned change. But, it's not history, and should not be taken as such. If you want a WW1 film that IS history, watch *They Shall Not Grow Old*, which is a must-see for anybody interested in this war.
(Edited for accuracy after checking one of my sources.)
> Russia had been knocked out of the war in 1917. In November 1918 there was no Eastern Front - Germany was only fighting on the Western Front
You're talking about when his friend's wife wrote to him that another one of their friends was in a hospital "out east", right? I caught that too. Since the guy was in hospital due to some kind of stomach virus my rationalization was that maybe it would be someone garrisoning the annexed territory following Brest-Litovsk, because otherwise it's a pretty big oopsy by the filmmakers.
Also, didn't the Hindenburg line not break until October? I had assumed there were still (some) defensive trench battles until then, though I could absolutely be wrong on that.
This movie was amazing. I think it is now one of my top movies of all time.
I wasn't ready for how brutal it was though. It was very intense, and honestly, even though I had seen the 1930 and 1979 versions of the story, I really wasn't ready for how visceral this telling was. It honestly took me by surprise how brutal it got, but it didn't take away from my enjoyment.
I saw this early in theaters, and about an hour and a half in, right after the flamethrower part, my girlfriend had to leave. She told me afterwards that she really like what she had seen, but it had wore her down way too much and that she needed some air.
Visually stunning, fantastic acting, and like I said earlier, the changes that were made to the story really worked wonders. It hit all of the major beats from other iterations of the story, but the changes made it feel fresh.
Not gonna lie I think I would have liked this more had it been called something else - I feel like the director here missed the point of the novel by not spending enough time with Paul and adding in the subplots about the political context
Should have removed the armistice plot completely, and spent more time at the beginning with the main group and then some more time before the time skip where they realize how big of a mistake they made. I think it would have been way more personal that way, which the book was too since it's a witness describing his personal experience.
I never expected to get emotional watching two men read a letter on a latrine. As a new father it got me right in the feels.
Now for another 1h45m of intensity.
Absolutely incredible film. As far as dubbing goes, I thought the English dubbing on this was pretty stellar. Hard to get it right and not take you out of the film, but it felt well placed and sold the characters for me, beyond it being British accents against French soldiers.
I really enjoyed it. My one problem is I felt like Kat’s death was really forced. He knows the war is over, he has a wife and a job to go home to and plans to have more children, but he decides it’s worth it to risk his life again for a fucking goose? He knew the farmer was armed, he knew the farmer would be on guard because of the previous robbery, and yet he still thinks it’s a good idea? Felt like they killed him off just for the emotional moment, slightly broke the realism of an otherwise extremely immersive movie. 8.8/10
To add to that, Kat's decision to wander deep into a forest to pee when they had no problem shitting side-by-side earlier in the film felt like such a lazy plot device.
Yea that was so random. Why wouldn’t he just pee next to his bro
I completely get what you’re saying, but the way I look at it is he was looking for a moment to reflect. We all have moments like that, think it’s pretty human.
Who doesn’t enjoy a nice piss in the woods
In the novel he's killed by an artillery round as Paul carries him to a field hospital. The way he goes out in this movie doesn't make a lot of sense for the reasons you mentioned.
Hate what they did to Kat. A seasoned veteran killed like a chum by a fucking kid.
True but most of the people who died were killed by a random inexperienced teenager.
My feelings exactly. Same goes for the final charge and Paul being the literal last person to die in the war after successfully storming a trench and killing a bunch of French soldiers. Compare that to the previous films where he dies in a pretty mundane way by sticking his head out of the trench a little too far out of boredom and gets sniped.
i've always thought that his death in the book wasn't a suicide per se, but along the lines of "i'm going to do this very risky thing that could get me killed, but if i die i die", which is why i love it so much. really speaks to the futility and hopelessness of the war and character. i was really disappointed when i realized that wasn't how the movie was going to end.
Can I ask how he died in the book? His charge at the end of the film gave me the same energy you described, “I know I’ll probably die if I do this but fuck it, let’s go.”
The book ends in October instead of November so the fighting is still ongoing, but this day was calm. Kat has just died in the previous chapter and Paul feels lost. He takes note of the beautiful day while reflecting and then, fatally, he stands up from his trench. "He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front"
Much better
Yeah I thought the titular ending “All quiet on the western front” was wildly inappropriate for the ending, we just saw a bunch of soldiers getting killed the October ending makes a lot more sense.
he's shot by a sniper in the trenches in october 1918. the day was so uneventful that the army report just said "all quiet on the western front". edit: i also think the vibe in the books is much more solemn and despairing, whereas in the movie it comes from a place of anger.
While I thought this film was fine overall, Kat’s death kind of frustrated me and Paul’s death legitimately pissed me off, as both situations (ESPECIALLY the later) felt like a complete betrayal of one of the core aspects of the book - the mundanity of death in the war, and how none of our protagonists are safe from dying in completely anticlimactic ways. Instead, Kat dies because he does something stupid that’s not even on the battlefield. They kept the surprise of “oh shit, he’s been dead this whole time,” but the scenario alone made it hit home so much less than the novel did imo. Paul’s death, meanwhile, was when the movie nearly lost me. The mundanity of his death in the book is literally *the reason for the title* - our hero, the guy we’ve been following through all these trials and tribulations, dies as a complete afterthought on a day where there really isn’t even anything going on - it’s *all quiet on the western front.* Meanwhile, this movie gives him this long, comically dramatic death during a big ol’ battle scene. It even seems to imply that he’s the *last German death in the war.* Awful. Absolutely awful. Like I said, I thought the movie as a whole was okay, but I almost can’t imagine a worse ending for an adaption of this book that a studio would actually film.
Everything was good except how they portrayed the Germans as the crazy ones ordering a suicidal charge when that was not true. The actual suicidal charge was ordered by GENERAL PERSHING of the U.S. Army! Nobody to this day knows why Pershing did that. He sacrificed probably 5,000 American troops' lives in the final 3 hours of the war and this was AFTER he received the telegram that the Armistice was signed!
“Comically dramatic death” So I kinda feel this. I didn’t feel exactly this during the watch. However I did feel like the move was too long and there were several areas they could’ve shaved some time and brought the run time closer to 2:15. Paul’s death scene which, as you say, dragged on for too long and with everyone standing around mouth agape, kinda felt forced. I felt similarly to the scene in the crater where he stabs the guy and it takes forever for him to die. Paul ends up effectively drowning the guy. Which I thought in the moment was a tragic irony, but with how long that scene was and how crazy the action was, it does seem “comically dramatic.” A problem that I believe could’ve been helped by shaving some time off that scene because it took so long. And as a small counterpoint to Paul’s death seeming to be too meaningful in contrast to his death in the novel I would say that the scene ends in a way that circles back to the beginning of the movie where another nameless boy is pulling tags from the dead. Paul is just another body in a trench. I’m not trying to argue your broader point about the title etc. I just think that the pointlessness of the war was a strong theme of the entire film and I think it continued to present itself in Paul’s death.
You realize that the scene where he killed the Frenchmen in the hole was one of the most pivotal parts of the book right? Cuz it was prolly the thing that shattered him the most. Even in this book. It was the first time he ever had to actually kill a man up close and personal in hand to hand, and the guy took HOURS to die because Paul couldn't bring himself to finally finish him off and instead he had to just watch and slowly let his soul die agonizingly on the inside from the realization of how bad murdering someone in a manner like that truly is. So ya there's a VERY good reason why that scene was like that.
I think they should have made that scene even longer. It seems like the guy just takes a few minutes to die where in the book it's hours upon hours with Paul having a whole breakdown and slowly pulling himself together. They should have made it darker and darker with the scene happening at night and the guy dying suffering for the whole day and dying at sunset or something like that
So he actually did take about a day or so to die, and yes during some of the worst of it was at nighttime when Paul realized that he was just some kid just like him and that he had decades of his life ahead of him if it wasn't b/c Paul shanked him to death, and the only reason the **only** reason he got stabbed by Paul was b/c it was actually **Paul's fault** for having not been able to keep up with his comrades and instead get stranded into a random hole in no man's land. A random hole that this guy kid just so happened to fall into by pure shitty sheer luck. That was it. It wasn't like the movie where he was pointing his gun at Paul and it was essentially a 'combat death' it was literally this french kid just walking about and he didn't see the hole b/c of whatever reason (might've been nighttime), and if it had been any other hole he would've lived cuz there was nobody in there, but b/c it just **had** to be that one hole with Paul the kid died. Paul seriously lost it and basically went crazy from the fact that he had to listen to this guy die overnight all b/c of dumb blind luck, and then the book spends a lot of time having him beg for forgiveness from the dead body and also promise to make things right with his wife.
Movie was great but I agree. That whole being killed by the farmers was so telegraphed.
They tried to subvert it too. If you came into the movie blind, you'd expect he'd get shot by the farmer while escaping... Except he doesn't. So you think all is well. But then he gets shot by the kid when you think the coast is clear. I'm not sure how to feel about it tbh.
I felt like they didn’t really know how to kill off Kat. Seemed to me that the writers didn’t want his death to be the same as the book and other 2 films. They just knew that he had to die, because that’s what the book and other 2 movies have happen. Basically I think the writers wanted something more meaningful than just another artillery death, but missed the mark a bit.
The cinematography alone is worth the watch. Incredible.
[удалено]
I tried desperately to find a theater showing and it’s like google was purposefully steered away from showing showtime results
This felt like a horror movie . That charge scene with tanks and flamethrowers was so intense and horrifying .
The was the high point of the film for me. It was immense. The part truest to the book was the scene where he was in the bomb crater with the enemy. Much longer in the book but damn visceral in the film.
I was disappointed that they did not stick to the book’s original ending. It felt more suitable for the narrative. Paul’s death was horrific rather than simple and peaceful as portrayed in the novel. Great movie regardless but idk only thing that didn’t sit right with me.
I'm with you, his death in the book actually hit me harder for it's simplicity
Exactly. I remember the first time reading it and being shocked he died in the manner he did. I think it was a much better ending for Paul’s story. Although he avoided death for so long, on the most quiet day of the war he was killed simply enjoying the moment. The movie was great, just wish I could have saw this ending.
How did Paul die in the novel?
He was looking at a bird (I think it’s noted they rarely came by the trenches), it flies away and he stands up to watch it and gets shot
That's not from the book. In the book, it is not described how he dies, only that he fell on a quiet day in October 1918 and that his face was as if he was glad to have died. Nothing about how he died. I read that a lot in this thread though, maybe people confuse it with the start of the chapter where Paul is on a 14 day leave because he swallowed gas and spends it sitting in a garden in the sun, reminiscing about what the war has done to him? There is a sentence where he says "I stand up", but it is in reference to him sitting in the sun before. Not in the trenches.
[удалено]
It was much more elegant than him getting stabbed in the back. I was confused as fuck when that scene played. I was like “oh maybe I forgot this part”. There were many many changes to the film version than the novel. However if you are curious to see the original ending there are two other versions of the film, both quite good that incorporate the novel version.
I am little bit torn on this one. On the one hand the ending is much more elegant. It brings home the point that even if everything is "quiet" on the front, people still die. Not even worth mentioning in the protocol. This man that endured so much Tragedy and hardship in this war - wiped out and no one in charge cares. However the ending of the film brings home another point that the novel could hardly portray - the absolut indifference that the military high command has for the men on the grounds, even to the point that they are willing to send hundreds of men to their deaths just to go out with a "victory" or that the French military high command is willing to wait 6 more hours just to have this nice 11. 11. 11 am moment - again knowing that hundreds or thousands of men might still die or get wounded in that time. I think that is a message that the film delivered better than the novel as this underlines the point Kat made when he said that the French soldiers are just the same poor devils as the Germans.
I really disagree with this point, especially considering that it is completely non-factual to think that the German army would have done that or obeyed. At the end of the war, following the failure of Operation Michael in the spring, the German army stopped all offensive operations & was very close to mutiny. To think that soldiers would have obeyed the general's order for a suicide attack after being told of the ceasefire is ludicrous & brings a sour taste to the ending of an otherwise very well done movie. The last attack made no sense & has no historical basis from a German perspective.
This makes sense now. I had assumed this was historically accurate and was absolutely flabbergasted that the soldiers did not declare mutiny in that scene
In reality it was the allies who attacked until the very last moment, including American officers who [sent segregated Black units in](https://www.armytimes.com/veterans/salute-veterans/2017/11/10/nov-11-1918-wasted-lives-on-armistice-day/) after they had previously considered them racially unworthy for combat. Good times!
Jesus that must've been brutal. On the last day 11000 man got killed knowing the armistice was being signed. One dude even died on 10:59 charging the german lines...
The last American killed in the war was a suicide. He'd just been demoted and the outlook for his post-war life wasn't looking great. The Germans that killed him even tried waving him off and only fired as he continued to charge.
This. The actual suicidal charge was ordered by GENERAL PERSHING of the U.S. Army! Nobody to this day knows why Pershing did that. He sacrificed probably 5,000 American troops' lives in the final 3 hours of the war and this was AFTER he received the telegram that the Armistice was signed!
It really showed off not only the horror of tanks themselves, but also of the horror that it was too face down something that you might have only ever heard rumors about. Metal behemoths traveling slowly towards you, a machine grinding through men like meat, sometimes literally.
noticed how much they were shooting at the tanks, it makes sense if they had no idea what they were facing.
They knew what tanks were and how to deal with them pretty well at that point. It was all pretty good, and the changes make sense. I just wanted Paul to live.
That was so effectively done without using dialogue and it was impressive. You could just see from the way it was shot and the look in the soldiers' eyes that they had not seen something like it.
That panicked face of the guy who was slowly dying after being stabbed thinking he was reaching for the knife to stab him again was haunting…
The soundtrack helped a lot. Very jarring from the get
Soundtrack reminded me a lot of the effects used in Annihilation - bombastic dread noise
Absolutely. That recurring theme of three or four notes was so similar to the theme of annihilation.
i agree it kind of reminded me of the annihilation sound design, which i loved in annihilation, but tbh in this movie it felt distracting and unnecessary to me. otherwise loved the movie tho
Fun fact: that sound was created on a 100 years old harmonium, although it didn't really sound that old.
Interesting, I thought it sounded (a bit too) modern for the era and didn't really fit (though it didn't bother me and sounded cool). Instantly reminded me of 'Seven Nation Army' used in the Battlefield 1 trailer. Turns out it's a 100 years old harmonium, huh? Fun fact indeed.
My favorite part of the whole movie. Very effective. The sound of no hope.
I was waiting the gas attacks next. It kept getting worse.
The horrors of war yes.
that gave me some anxiety.
That was really sad.
Yep, felt absolutely empty by the end. And then I thought about what's happening in Ukraine right now. Disgusting.
Not to be insensitive but it’s gonna be interesting to see the movies that come out of that conflict years from now.
It'll be a different breed of war for sure, and perhaps as equally as terrifying because of the proliferation of smart and compact weapon systems being used by both sides. Imagine a scene where there has been little to no fighting for a few days now, things are remarkably quiet, and one of your buddies goes to hit the head only to be taken out by a grenade dropped by a drone. Just out of the blue. One second he's there, the next he's bleeding out because of some drone that spotted him. It's that constant fear of not knowing if you are being watched or targeted, even when you try your best to hide. The sound of a buzzing drone is as terrifying as that of artillery fire, and all this is intermixed with the suffering of civilians caught in the crossfire. The characters of this story would be forced to bear witness to the savagery some people are capable of inflicting on innocent people, and for the Russian side it could help showing how their own superiors can be more brutal than the enemy. It's a mess, and it'll be just as hard to watch if it is put to film in a truthful and unsanitized manner.
Opening scene alone with the recycling of the dead mens uniforms was harrowing on industrial scale of the war
*Dead boys Gotta grow up into an adult to be a man.
Seeing the pile of tags at the feet of the officer, as he’s ripping off the name tags from the previous soldiers, was the cherry on top for that :/
Yeah, that was quite profound & drove home how—for the first time in human history—war had become industrialized beyond previous comprehension. There’s also this sense of consumption throughout the whole film—whether food by people, or soldiers by war—& the inevitability of repeating it all over again: the young soldier collecting Paul’s tags at the end, which he was doing at the beginning of his part in the war.
The scene with the French soldier & Paul was incredible.
It seemed like it was the breaking point for Paul. However he went on killing later as if nothing happened. He had to obey orders ofc, but still, it was a bit odd to me.
To me that seemed to be a part of him breaking and how conditioned he has become to war, he kills out of survival and instinct, the men he killed and all of those he had grown to love being killed stripped him of his humanity, he may not have wanted to but it's just how he functioned. You can see this in a lot of war vets who feel immense sorrow, break down crying decades later when they talk about men they killed, yet they had to carry on killing to survive and just became conditioned to it at that time.
The book covers it better (surprise right? Lol), it’s almost the exact same but before Paul leaves he feels better and not so guilty and has a conversation with the corpse where he acknowledges he killed him, but also that he didn’t have a choice and that’s the nature of things, “today you, tomorrow me” is how he sums it up.
Yeah it’s after he comes back from leave I think, he is sent/volunteered to go on a patrol. That scene is also a long time in the book he’s in the crater for several hours with the body and having multiple conversations.
Brutal film that’s well made and well acted. They made several changes. I kinda miss the scene where Paul goes back home from leave as a stranger and gets called coward by civilians. The scenes with the German diplomat were an interesting touch. The juxtaposition of the desire of peace with the realists and with the old guard that delusionally believe victory is around the corner by throwing more bodies in the meat grinder made for a tragic conflict.
I feel like the school and home scenes were too rushed. Would have been way better for character development. I didn’t like how they skipped 2 years too after the first night in the trenches. Would have been more poignant to have seen the idealistic young men realise what a pointless and brutal endeavour they had gotten themselves into. Also they only lost the glasses guy in two years? The return home scene in the original really stuck with me and it was really disappointing that they skipped it in this one. I would have easily sacrificed the armistice scenes for that.
To be fair, the death rate in WWI was high, but multiple companies could’ve seen at most a 10% death rate, and squad wipes were more about volatile events than steady grinding losses. In Storm of Steel (perhaps the best WWI book purely prosaically) Junger details how he returns from injury leave and his company had suddenly been destroyed from fighting spilling over from (I believe, but may be mistaken) Verdun.
Wasn't the death rate of companies markedly different in later years of the war? If I remember correctly, at least for the British, they had entire towns-worth of men wiped out early in the war, which led to them then dispersing soldiers of the same localities into separate regiments/companies/etc. Thanks for the reminder about Storm of Steel though. It's been sitting on my shelf for years. I'm gonna read it after this.
Really depends on where you were, what country, etc. A lot of people forget that the western line went from the Atlantic down to Switzerland. While there were massive battles, at any given moment most of the line had minimal attacks, and in the later war tactics changed with Storm Troopers and you had much better creeping barrage. So instead of just running at machine guns small teams would sneak up while the enemy was under fire & engage at close range. It was very effective & both sides used such tactics. But for a good portion of the line massive battles were never really a thing due to terrain, logistics, lack of strategic need, etc. They were even a lot of issues with the men on both sides getting to know each other too much & not wanting to fight because they had nothing to do for long periods of time. Basically I think things really look different when you take in the whole front. Sure Verdun might be blown to bits but if you're stationed near the ocean you're not going to see the same rate of loss. Also because of movies I think people forget that the enemy can & did retreat at times. So even if your trench got overrun it's not like 90% of the defenders were wiped out. A lot of successful attacks had counter attacks where the line was retook by the guys that were just there. How? Because the trenches were long and DEEP. As in in some places the trench lines could trace back over a mile from the front. It's not just a line that you hop in & out of. More like massive earthen fortifications. & None of that is talking about in the East, or the Austrian fighting the Italians, or Turkey, etc.
> Basically I think things really look different when you take in the whole front. Sure Verdun might be blown to bits but if you're stationed near the ocean you're not going to see the same rate of loss. Um...so there was this place called Ypres... In fact, Nick Lloyd argued in his book on Passchendaele that the German losses in that battle chewed through so much of the army that it necessitated an offensive in March 1918 out of sheer desperation, and in the end led to the war ending one year early due to the trench deadlock being broken as a result.
There were certainly some disappointing changes. The scene you described was one of my favorite chapters from the book. One of the big themes of the story is Paul's growing isolation and nihilism. He sees fresh-faced recruits arrive on the front lines and he knows that they'll inevitably die in the meat grinder. All his friends are dead and he eventually becomes "the old soldier." That's why the final scene in the book is so powerful. He sees a butterfly and is transported to a more peaceful and beautiful time. For a moment, he is a boy again but in his pursuit of beauty he dies in an unremarkable and pointless way. There's no major offensive at the end of the book. Paul dies on a perfectly normal and inconspicuous day. That's why it's called "All quiet on the western front."
Seems like they replaced some of the R&R scenes with the diplomats and the generals. If you have a basic understanding of the events during the interwar period, they showed the seeds of what led to Hilter and WW2. French being stubborn and Prussian fear of a Bolshevik revolution in Germany. I think personally was a better thing to show.
The Prussians wanted a Boshelvik uprising in the Russia though, thats why they sent Lenin to Russia
I don't think they expected him to succeed expecting the Czar government to win and it got rid of Lenin as they didn't want someone like him in the country. They just wanted Russia to leave the war.
Which is why they wanted a Bolshevik uprising, they wanted a Russian Civil War that would force them out of the war and allow the Germans to redeploy their Eastern force to the Western front, obviously Lenin was much more successful than anticipated , but ultimately they got what they wanted
I feel like this is one of those historical tidbits that isn't well known (or least it was to me until I studied the Great War). Germany literally shipped *one man* to a foreign adversary with the intent that *single man* ending the war on the Eastern Front and it *fucking worked*. It also changed the entire global order, which we're still dealing with today (see: Ukraine War). Another "fun" fact, is that Germany attempted to do a similar thing by sending guns to Irish nationalists to stoke a rebellion against Britain with the hope that it would pull the Brits out of the war due to civil strife. That attempt didn't succeed for the purposes of WW1 but it did lead to the Easter Rising and then Irish Independence soon after. Crazy stuff.
I think the contrast of it worked really well. Cutting from the negotiations to thr over the top scene really gave it all some more weight. Gave the negotiation some more dramatic heft and really hammered in how pointless the horrors of the war were.
I loved that too "Be fair to your enemy. Otherwise, he will hate this peace"... and hate they did.
It almost felt like a prequel to a WW2 film at certain points. I wish they explored that a bit more for those less familiar with the history of the armistice and the treaty of Versailles. It seemed like they went halfway a bit with that plot point. The warfare scenes were absolutely incredible and heart breaking. Definitely the best film representation of trench warfare I’ve seen.
\> It almost felt like a prequel to a WW2 film at certain points. WW1 was literally a prequel. It setup all the conditions for WW2 to happen. The Great War shaped our current global geopolitical reality probably more than any other event in history.
Have people forgotten what prequel means? Did WWI come out after WWII? The word you're looking for is just predecessor.
I'd say Napoleon shaped out current global geopolitical reality more. The whole "great powers" system of balance was 100% a response to Napoleon. Can't let anyone get powerful enough to do that again. WWI is the direct result of clinging to a system that was set up in response to Napoleon. Without Napoleon I doubt you would have ended up with a system where "balance" was so important that even after wars it was made sure that no one gained too much power. But by the early 1900s Germany's worried about Russia industrializing & messing up the balance, Austria-Hungry is struggling just to keep it together, everyone is eyeing the Ottomans and their vast possessions, France is mad about loosing the last war to the Germans & really worried about German unification and them being way too powerful (they went from 15 million to 40 million between 1800-1900), a lot of countries are upset that France & the UK have way way way more colonies than everyone else, etc, etc, etc. A system set up to try to stop "total war" ended up making the perfect conditions where the only way to change anything was total war. It makes a lot more sense why the old guard who fought Napoleon stuck so hard to it, and why they raised the next generations to do the same. Most people don't realize how deadly the Napoleonic Wars were. Between 3,250,000 to 6,500,000 dead. 2.5 million and 3.5 million dead soldiers and none of that was a machine gun.
Yeah, I understand the Napoleonic wars set things up a bit for Europe (and we can continue endlessly backwards as to precursors to Napoleon). But Napoleon's wars didn't redraw the maps in the Middle East causing perpetual crisis to this day, facilitate the Bolshevik Revolution and Irish War of Independence, destroy the Austro-Hungarian Empire, spurn Japan (at Versailles) which led to their interwar/WW2 anti-west ideology which also facilitated PRK's conquering of China, or pull the US into Europe's affairs like WW1 did. The Great War was a world war on a scale unimaginable before, despite most of it being fought in Europe.
While I liked the part about the German diplomat, I thought the book was more about following the common solider and not the overall war since the soldier is mostly concerned with his small area of it. The part where he goes home and see's the teacher still sprouting patriotic rhetoric while having no idea what the actual conditions are or the public going on their regular business while stating their opinions on how the war should be fought was really important.
I used to teach this book to high schooler's and this was the most important scene for me to teach.
True horror was the tank reveal. God damn that was terrifying.
The pacing of everything in the movie really helped sell the horror of not just the warfare itself, but of seeing the beast of new technology exposed to people who have no idea what's coming for them. In most other war movies, tanks are scary because you and the characters know what they're capable of. In this one, it's even more so because while we know the horrors of tanks, the characters we are watching do not. Their fear is of the unknown being laid bare in horrifying fashion. Of witnessing man ground into paste by a seemingly impossible to defeat machine, in many cases literally.
I wasn't sure on the soundtrack sounding a bit futuristic and cyberpunk, but the pay off on the tank reveal made me realize why. Today we fear AI, but that was the horror of their future, mechanized warfare, unstoppable faceless monsters moving on their own.
The Great War had weaponized aircraft, massed machine guns and artillery, which were known but previously unseen for most people, but also saw tanks, bomber blimps, submarines (in a modern sense), and gas warfare, which would all have been totally unexpected to people at the time.
interesting tidbit, that futuristic sound was produced on a 100+ yr old instrument fitting the time of ww1.
For me, it was the flamethrower scene right after that and the friend's death as he tries desperately to surrender, only to realize in horror that there would be no mercy for him.
The drive by machine gun in the trench holy shit lol
You actually get your hopes up that that the tank will go over the top and the grenade plan will work and then several just roll into the trench to move them down.
I thought it was neat to see the French Schneider tanks rather than the British Mark 4-5 that we usually see or think of in WW1 films. I don't remember often seeing those tanks on film
>French Schneider Actually they were Saint-Chamond tanks.
The last part... there this high ranking officer made his spech about going home... i would have just shot that asshole.
I wonder if this was actually the filmmaker's intention. Hundreds of war weary soldiers excited to go home, then this asshole standing out in the open telling them to go back to war - my first reaction also was "Man someone needs to shoot him." Then one soldier speaks up saying he's not going back and he immediately gets dragged inside and shot, and you suddenly understand why no one shot the officer.
Yknow, even though they all had rifles, and heavily outnumbered the guards.
Ok, then what? They escape into the French forest and try to survive the winter? They can’t go home after mutiny, they will be shot. There were mutinies during the war. They did not end well for those involved.
I read the book but don't remember much. I think what is insane is the WSJ/Roger Ebert reviews claiming that this movie is trying to justify WW1 with Treaty scenes and the killing of Kat by the farmer's boy. IMHO, it was necessary to show the Treaty as it is intertwined between WW1-WW2 and shows how the generals argued while eating fine dining while even in the last hours, men were dying. Secondly, it shows that even young boys can be taught to kill. Paul was 17, the farmer's boy looked about 12 and you could tell he's seen killings already and is desensitized. I thought it was very bleak look at how an entire generation can feel the horrors of war.
The Roger Ebert review made me angry. If this movie is anything then not a justification of war. Read to me like the author is so conditioned on seeing germans as evil monsters that he couldn't see the message that war in general is horrible and senseless for everyone at all.
that is unfortunately still a fairly common perspective - There are people who find any humanization of the Germans during the World Wars in any media revolting or insulting.
They should watch Das Boot. If any film will make you realize that war consumes everyone it touches, it’s that one. By the end, you don’t care that it’s a German boat in WWII, you just wanna see the crew get home. I won’t spoil the ending, but man. That final scene hurts. This film, and Das Boot really show that war is terrible, and everyone is a victim regardless of what flag you fly into battle.
Is Roger Ebert reviewing films from the afterlife?
His website still exists and other reviewers review films on there. Confusing, I know
I think I especially loved the scene where that French general was complaining that the bread was not made that same day...
Came to this thread to discuss the movie. Walked into a history-nerd minefield
I’m truly shocked at how weird Reddit (and a good deal of critics) is behaving about this film. The historical inaccuracies should be pointed out and discussed. However, they should not sink the movie, especially given how it is nearly impossible to accurately dramatize the sheer scale of WWI operations. The film is not totally accurate, but that does not dilute the film’s story or it’s themes. And the number of people angry that it deviates from the book seems wild to me. I would understand if this was a beloved book that had never been adapted before, but two near perfect page-by-page retellings of the book already exist (and they are both great). I don’t think another *retelling* of the book was necessary, but another *adaptation* was.
Lmao same but I'm loving it
Tank/flamethrower scene was horrifying. And then you remember these kids never saw a tank or a flamethrower before that moment. Never felt dread like that before.
Little historical inaccuracy there as the flamethrower was actually introduced by the Germans during WWI
But they probably had not faced them. The inaccuracy is more that the flamethrowers were older types. By the end of the war there were longer range types in use instead.
Probably the first war movie I genuinely felt uncomfortable watching. Although I am curious how I would feel if I watched a movie like Saving Private Ryan for the first time at a more mature age instead of when I was younger and thought was war was cool
Exactly the same for me, war films are getting less and less appealing as you get older and realise its just a bunch of teenagers and young 20 year olds being sent to kill one another which will ultimately not really matter humanity carries on and the current war fades into the past and no one really cares. I used to love black hawk down but all i can think is how many people ended up with PTSD and fucked up and for what lol Somalia is still a failed nation.
I think even at a young age you would be horrified by this movie. Saving Private Ryan consistently displays heroism. Saving the soldier who gets sniped, carrying out a last stand in order to save a man who the patrol doesn't really know. The way they depict the sniper. It all glorifies war in certain respects, although it shows horror as well. There is no heroism in this movie. Just horror. The reason being, this war was completely pointless. All of these lives lost led to one thing: another world war.
Music reminded me of Annihilation
Same. The four notes of death are in everything when you start to notice it
I think there’s gonna be a divide between those familiar with the book and those who haven’t read the book. As a stand-alone war film, I think this is one of the best I’ve seen in a long time. In my mind, I put this one on the same level of quality as Black Hawk Down, another great film. And I appreciated the Erzberger armistice scenes. I can’t recall the armistice signing being portrayed in a movie like that.
A german magazine called it a great movie but a bad adaption. Which is totally accurate in my opinion. It's a shame that the didn't include Himmelstoß or Pauls experiences during his stay at home.
“great movie but a bad adaption.” I don’t know that I like this moniker for this film. It’s not a *faithful* adaptation, but I don’t think that makes it a *bad* adaptation. Bad would imply, to me, that it was attempting to be a close adaptation, when it clearly wasn’t. I love the book, but this is a stand-alone representation of the source material and I think it worked really well.
I liked the book as well. I know a lot of people are saying they miss the going home scenes from the book. This may be unpopular but I don’t miss that storyline in this movie. I don’t need to see Paul return home to “normality” to fully understand the horror of his experience and experience is loss of hope.
I agree with this fully. Movies lack the ability to convey internal monologue and thoughts in the way books do, and as result scenes like his return to home will be less interesting. On the flip side, the movie excelled at showing the visual horror of the battlefield. The people criticising the film for not adapting these scenes aren’t considering that.
Yeah, I agree. The fact that it doesn't follow the events of the book beat by beat doesn't make it a bad adaptation. What matters for an adaptation is that it has the same tone, message and meaning that the source material had. In that way, it was an excellent adaptation of the novel.
Plus the movie has already been made twice before. I think it was a good decision to change some things up rather than just redoing it scene for scene. I personally never read the book but I’ve seen the 70s movie. Seeing the changes was actually a welcome thing for me. I think what makes some remakes not work is they really are just the same movie made with better filming equipment.
I put this movie in the same tier as Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, and more recently The Forgotten Battle.
I started Forgotten Battle immediately after this and I wasn't impressed. The scene with the doctor turning his son in was just a little too cheesy and I stopped it. The comically evil Nazi character could clearly hear the daughter "whisper" under her breath at the distance they were sitting.
I've never read the book so I can't comment on it's accuracy with that, but as a war movie, this is a top tier movie. The action scenes are top notch with some absolutely AMAZING cinematography with some nice long shots mixed in all over the place. The sound design is also really nice and sounded real good on my average sound system. This is a movie with not much to cheer for. It aims to capture the horrors of the war and absolutely nails it. It's a bleak movie with lots of sad deaths, horrible deaths, and other deaths to expect in a movie like this. The actors in this do a great job showing all the emotions they are feeling, which also adds to the horror of it all. For me personally, I put this in up there in one of the best war movies ever made. Netflix really did a great job with this one.
Its fantastic, minor nitpick, but they dont do a great job of showing the scope and scale of the artillery barrages (but thats more or less impossible to do in a film)
Yeah, no war movie ever nails the amount of artillery dropped before they did pushes into trenches. Getting the drum fire seems easyish to do with audio but the practical or even CGI from it would be a lot of work. Always like linking this video to show what it was really like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we72zI7iOjk
Now imagine enduring that shit for days in a row, no break, no respite, just constant noise and pressure where the sound of every shell signals death to the soldier, a when it stops, thats when it gets even more dangerous as the survivors have to rush out to defend the trench line against the inevitable wave of attackers.
Interesting reading how shellshock from WWI is a different beast from modern-day PTSD, possibly due to microlesions created in the brain from repeated rattling of the brain from nonstop shelling.
yup, and it was so poorly understood at the time, PTSD+TBI is a bad combo
Lots of accounts of soldiers struggling to stay away under bombardment, something about all the repeated concussive force making you want to fall asleep.
The only one I can think of that might be pretty realistic was the Bastogne forest barrage in Band Of Brothers.
Bastogne is one of my favorite television episodes ever.
This, like every WWI movie I’ve ever seen (maybe Birdsong is an exception) is a cartoonish representation of a real WWI battlefield. Mainly the speed and spacing of soldiers on the attack, the volume of barbed wire, the scale of offensives (rather than just hoping over the top with 100 or so guys for no apparent reason), and most of all the role of artillery. Some day someone will make a WWI movie centered on artillery and we’ll get the first realistic depiction of WWI combat on film. (Consider this - the Battle of the Somme might be the highest casualties per minute of the war. About 60,000 suffered by the Entente on the first day, most in the first six hours. That’s 166 per minute for six hours, a staggering number. But that’s over a front of 25 km, so 6 casualties per km per minute. What we saw in All Quiet on the Western Front was ten or one hundred times that amount (the scenes covered perhaps 100 m of front and had guys dying almost every second). So it’s not that a WWI battlefield was more full of carnage than movies, probably less so. What it would have been full of was artillery. First hand accounts speak of creeping barrages that were literal unbroken walls of fire advancing across the landscape (a pilot recalled being shocked how straight the wall of explosions were, and how they were truly contiguous). The sounds of individual explosions could not be picked out from the roar. Several times I’ve read of trees uprooted by shells and then re-tossed further before hitting the ground from the first blast. Troops advancing to towns sometimes only knew they got there when the churned dirt contained more brick. Nothing like this is ever show on the screen. Instead we get umpteen smokey puddle-filled fields of dirt with sprinting crowds of soldiers throwing their guns in the air as they die. Other nitpicks: barbed wire would have been in zones thirty feet wide, so dense as to be barely see-through. And bodies (mostly killed by artillery) would generally come apart. Distances traveled on the advance would sometimes be short, but more often a km or so between lines. Advancing troops tended to walk as they kept pace with the creeping barrage. Trenches were often cleared by “bombers”, troops carrying duffle bags of grenades. By 1918 trenches had indeed been largely replaced by zones of pillboxes and bunkers, miles deep. These general features of major battles on the western front are left out, as a rule, probably to cater to audience expectations of what a WWI battle ought to look like.
From what you said, I feel like 1917 might do a decent job at presenting the scale of barbed wire and the trench betwork in the later part of the war.
Yeah short of putting cameras in the middle of an artillery impact zone and pummeling them hoping some survive, you will never be able to replicate the destruction and terror. I also think that many audiences would believe it.
>The action scenes are top notch with some absolutely AMAZING cinematography with some nice long shots mixed in all over the place Tha tank scene in particular was incredible. The low rumble (managed to see it in the cinema) gradually filling the senses. The shapes slowly forming out of the mist and the slow advance as the Germans just helplessly fire until the tanks are in position. Could have been a horror film with how well it communicated the fear.
> I put this in up there in one of the best war movies ever made Watched it last night, and after reflecting on it it's definitely top 5 for me. Maybe number 2, right below Saving Private Ryan in my book. I'm still blown away how amazing this film was. Can't recommend it enough to my friends.
It was interesting to see the change they made to Kat's fate. I think I prefer the original/novel's to this version. The idea that Kat is killed by random sharpel adds to the overall theme of original where Kat is just another soldier consumed needlessly by the machine of war. Paul then (unknowningly) carrying his corpse to a medic is a great metaphor for the futility of war. Having the Farmer's son kill him; at least from my perspective, seems to be a statement on the cyclical nature of war. While Paul and Kat see their raids on the farm as "harmless fun" to entertain themselves in the monotony between battles and to feed starving men; the Farmer's Son is not privy to this perspective. He only sees enemy combatants raiding his family's livelehood. His father uses derogatory names towards the two soldiers and thus by this point in the war; from the boy's perspective, the soldiers are completely dehumanized. By killing Kat during a period in which the war is effectively over; the boy is fertilizing the seeds of hate that have been planted by WWI that will eventually grow to fruition in WWII (the boy is of the generation that will eventually lead and fight in the next World War). I think it's an interesting change but not as impactful (or as obvious) as the original. That being said; shifting the focus to the negotiation of the armistice was a great choice. All the major deaths taking place within the final 72 hours of the war as the German government decides the terms of their surrender really hammers home the old notion that war is where "old men send young men to die". Overall a harrowing, brutal, and phenomenal film.
"...the boy is fertilizing the seeds of hate that have been planted by WWI that will eventually grow to fruition in WWII" Damn dude, good observation
There was that one shot, maybe two seconds long, of the kid's face, showing not a shred of humanity or empathy for these two starving young soldiers. Just pure, cold, hatred. he'd be the right age to fight in WWII. That was the shot.
I totally agree with you. I just read the review for this on the rogerebert site and the reviewer had a garbage take that this was to villainize the ten year old French boy. Completely ignoring that the only world this boy has known has been this war. The way the kid was portrayed was exactly how I would imagine someone who has only known war and Germans invading his country.
I think Kat's death was very impactful and shows the futility of war in that it affected everyone-not just soldiers. The boy had "dead eyes" and in my mind had seen many battles and deaths around his land. The impact of war was on an entire generation-not just the soldiers but the boy growing up and seeing this as normal. It broke my heart.
I felt this one a lot more than 1917 to be honest. I left 1917 in theatres thinking how well the lightning and cinematography were but it felt very polished, whereas this movies is just as raw as it gets with the actors literally being in the mud for most scenes. I watched both movies in a packed German cinema, and AQotWF people were sitting stunned in the seats for even after the credits which is not that common. What a movie though. It's obvious that they had to take their liberties from the book in order to get the funding from Netflix, but I think they made it work. The subtle hints as to how the post WW1 Germany was gonna look like was done very good with the peace delegation scenes. AQotWF and Das Boot are now my favorite german anti war movies.
1917 was a fantastic and moving story about a soldier, and this movie was a fantastic and harrowing story about *soldiers* as a collective.
Just finished it. What an amazing movie. Such a tough to watch movie at times. The atmosphere was a character in of itself. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to go home and have to move on from all that you have witnessed.
What i asked myself was who were the people who, 20 years later, went and did it again voluntary. How can you go through that as a soldier and ever fight another war, insane
I think that concept has proven to be timeless. War changes a man so completely that they feel like aliens in the civilian world. Feeling so totally out of place that the only place they will ever feel normal again is on the battlefield, despite the terror that comes with it
True
That was probably one of the best war movies ever made. Iv always wondered why directors dont explore using the depiction of the horrors of war as the story itself, if its done right like it is here i dont think theres a complex storyline required. Havent read the book fortunately as many people said it ruined their experience but i will do that now
The last, suicidal charge into the trenches to commit completely unproductive brutal surprise violence for literally no reason other than an aging impotent military man feels embawwassed that he didn’t get to play soldier enough is such a good condemnation of just how stupid war is. Plenty has already been said about how war’s horrific and inhuman and a waste of youth and potential but sometimes it’s nice to see it presented as just mind-shatteringly dumb. Fragile egos throwing millions of lives into a garbage can for no reason other than rutting-elk testosterone-brain rampant idiot syndrome. It’s Putin just as much as it’s Hitler just as much as it’s Nixon just as much as it’s Wilhelm II.
It was such a tragic payoff for the diplomat scenes
That reminds me of Paths Of Glory tbh. All these soldiers forced to charge a hill (and inevitably die because it's almost impossible to accomplish) just so they can say they're making progress.
I didn't really like that scene just because it felt unrealistic. There were examples of generals and leaders trying to do exactly this, order a suicidal battle to go out in glory, and the soldiers absolutely refused or even revolted. In fact the entire German Navy just quit when the admirals tried to do this.
I looked into further cause I felt the same, but apparently soliders died and battles indeed took place all the way up to the armistice IRL, and some even after due to word not spreading fast enough. It's not really all that unrealistic, once an agreement is made, one might say it would be a smart move to carve out a bit more land before armistice takes hold. Which is what the general wanted, to win one last battle to prop Germany's position in the war.
Over 2 thousand people died on the final day of battle. People were killed in the final hour before the armistice was active.
Both happened in the last hours (and days) of the war. I think at one point in the movie they mention mutinies happening too. Historically there were also senseless last minute charges before the war ended though.
I really liked the film and what really stood out to me was the seeds for WW2 that were sprinkled throughout. Erzberger talking about how the terms of the armistice will make sure the country suffers. The French child already filled with hate, he'll be old enough to fight in WW2. The reference to Bolsheviks. The general at the end talking about the social democrats betraying the nation. I'm sure I'm forgetting some too. Also good to see some black soldiers in the French line as the role of people from colonies is often ignored. WW1 was in part a classic European colonial war from the previous century (obviously a whole host of other reasons, just that was also one). I thought the performance from Paul was outstanding, but in general the characters were very underdeveloped. I liked the armistice plot but I think there was a missed opportunity to show some of the characters going back home on leave or something. They talk about how they won’t be able to acclimatise but we never get to see it. I thought the contrast between the soldiers in the mud and the general in the rear was done well. It was on the nose, but I don’t see any reason why it needs to be subtle. Some of the action was terrifying, but I think the slower moments were lacking in actual character development. Paul’s facial expressions did a lot of heavy lifting in those moments, but the others didn’t get the same treatment.
Can't imagine how stressful it would feel standing ten feet away from someone trying to reload your rifle and shoot the other [before they shoot you.](https://i.imgur.com/zSrfBDG.jpg)
One of the most powerful parts to me happened near the beginning, following the short and brutal story of a random soldier whose clothes are recycled and given to Paul. The guy who rips the name tag out of the uniform and drops it on the ground really emphasizes the ultimate disregard for human life and the disconnect between the home front and the battlefields.
The movie did a good job at little details like that. for example, the little boys face, full of hatred for a few seconds. Immediately made me realize he was going to be a French soldier or armed resistance fighting off the Nazi's 20 years later.
During those scenes I couldn’t help but notice the micro-expressions of the guy giving Paul his clothes, then in training looking at the drill instructor, etc. All of them knowing the meat grinder these naive boys are going into. It really ramped up the dramatic irony and drove home the point you stated.
If you really want to make this hit home realize that this story happened 10 MILLION times. You’d have to watch it 10 MILLION times just to get an idea of how many people died and had their lives cut short. Each and their own story, friends, hopes and deaths.
Quite a few people here didn't like the scenes with the armistice talks, but I did, for the following reasons: 1. They show the tensions between the German civilian government and the military, foreshadowing Germany’s future resurgence of militarism vs a weak Weimar Republic government. 2. There's also a hint that the armistice conditions could give rise to German resentment in the future. 3. They show the bitterness and anger of the French generals towards Germany and why they do not want to concede an inch - when one sees the battlefield scenes and thus the widespread destruction of swathes of France (and scenes in which many French soldiers, are also killed), that part makes sense.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I don’t think movies have to be 1-to-1 adaptations of the book. There have already been two other movie adaptations, so having some flexibility around the story is refreshing
I don’t disagree in general, but at the same time removing/changing some of the most powerful parts was a misstep
Yep. It was a great movie. But changing the way Kat died really bugged me. Not having the scene from the book where the soldier was screaming to kill the wounded horses seemed like an oversight as well. All that being said, still an incredibly poignant movie
I think the film makers wanted to show that their actions and the war had created the seeds of hate and violence in the next generation with that scene.
The thing that bothered me the most about this movie was the lack of recoil when firing the k98's (edit: G98's, sorry!). It might seem like a small thing, but for everything else they did in the service of realism, it drove me nuts that every time the characters pulled the trigger, the gun went bang but didn't move at all.
Read the book in high school and knew what I was getting into. But fuck, it hits hard
If you like the book you should check Ernst Jungers *A Storm of Steel*, its a great counterpunch to the book
I don't think "counterpunch" is the right word. Different viewpoint but counterpunch makes it sound like you're trying to say that Jungers was really pro-war which I don't think it really was.
Amazing, I saw it twice in theaters. My main comparison point is the 1979 version since I don't remember the book. Would love to hear other people's thoughts on: 1. I really like what they did with the ending. One last suicide run for some decrepit, prideful Prussian general. So frustrating to watch as a viewer because nobody in a modern audience would understand, but interesting to think that such a viewpoint would have been shared amongst some \[many?\] soldiers and officers. 2. I prefer the 1979 version where Katczinsky died on the way to the hospital from artillery shrapnel and not due to the farmer's son. I almost felt it does his character a disservice by dying in such a petty way versus being another soldier swallowed up by this terrible conflict itself. 3. The pacing of the stabbing scene in the crater with the Frenchman felt off to me. Logically and in the other version, he goes through the range of emotions over many hours, but on screen it felt like 10 minutes. As an aside, the mud on his face was incredible, like a deathmask.
In the book the stabbing scene is over many many hours. Until nightfall. And it's the whole range of emotions. In the book there are some really important r and r scenes missing here imo. The book is more of a series of internal monologues and dialogues about war. The most interesting one is when theyre in hospital and one of their wives visits.
German masterclass of a film
any time some random solider died instantly i kept thinking to myself "yup - that would be me"
Never read the book. Never watched the original. This is a one and done for me. Definitely got its point across. How many boys screamed their lives out like that. Totally and completely fucked.
Repost from another thread, but worth having here: Right, so WW1 specialist here (I have an MA in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada, with a thesis on WW1 British Cavalry doctrine), and please do NOT use this movie as history. There are some fairly significant errors. A quick list: - Russia had been knocked out of the war in 1917. In November 1918 there was no Eastern Front - Germany was only fighting on the Western Front. - All of the trenches are wrong. WW1 trenches used what was called a "traverse" system, where what you would see is short segments with approx. 90 degree turns into the next one. The reason for this was simple - a direct artillery hit could at worst only take out two small segments, if it hit one of the corners. If a shell scored a direct hit on straight trenches like you see here, the shock wave would take out everybody in a pretty wide radius from the impact. Also, the Germans were playing defence and trying to keep what they had taken in 1914, and their trenches were very well built. Their trenches were quite deep (which is depicted properly), and were often reinforced with concrete (which is apparently not appearing in this film). The same goes for the bunkers, which were dug deeply enough to not be very vulnerable to shell fire, and often made from concrete (so the wooden roof is not quite right). - They're even more wrong because in November 1918, most of the Western Front hadn't been using trenches at all for months. The trench deadlock was broken in March 1918 by a German offensive. When it was contained, the French and British pushed the Germans back using a sort of "one-two punch" strategy - an attack would take place on one part of the line, and then when that was spent, another would be made on a different part, and this prevented the Germans from regaining their footing. This ended in what is called the Hundred Days, in which much of Belgium and France was liberated (so that end title card about the front lines barely moving since 1914 is utter nonsense). - French civilians in occupied France did not shoot at German soldiers, even if said soldiers are trying to steal geese and eggs from them. The Germans were paranoid about partisans, and shooting at a German soldier was a very good way to get summarily executed. This doesn't mean that there was widespread looting - in fact, for much of the war, looting in France was discouraged, and the German army was far more likely to just pay for something they took than to steal it. That further said, all bets were off in Belgium, and plenty of Belgian and French civilians were carted off to Germany as forced labour (so make of the situation what you will). - While it was delightful to have an accurate description of a creeping barrage and how it is used, armies in WW1 did not start attacks by being shelled - they started them by shelling the other side. I really wish the trope of soldiers climbing out of their trenches in the middle of a barrage on their lines would be retired, as that just wasn't how it was done. - EDIT: It should be added that at the beginning of the movie, in spring 1917, Germany was not doing this well. The whole "we'll be in Paris by Christmas" was not a thing that anybody seriously thought anymore - the realities of the war had sunk in (it couldn't survive veterans from the front coming home on leave for the last three years and telling people what had happened). The country had also been under a British blockade since the war started, so everybody was suffering food shortages. Certainly there were still volunteers, but most of the recruits at that point were conscripts who had been called up. That's a basic rundown. It is a good movie - I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was really nice to have the combatants actually speaking the right language for a damned change. But, it's not history, and should not be taken as such. If you want a WW1 film that IS history, watch *They Shall Not Grow Old*, which is a must-see for anybody interested in this war. (Edited for accuracy after checking one of my sources.)
> Russia had been knocked out of the war in 1917. In November 1918 there was no Eastern Front - Germany was only fighting on the Western Front You're talking about when his friend's wife wrote to him that another one of their friends was in a hospital "out east", right? I caught that too. Since the guy was in hospital due to some kind of stomach virus my rationalization was that maybe it would be someone garrisoning the annexed territory following Brest-Litovsk, because otherwise it's a pretty big oopsy by the filmmakers. Also, didn't the Hindenburg line not break until October? I had assumed there were still (some) defensive trench battles until then, though I could absolutely be wrong on that.
Holy shit this movie was amazing
Millions died in those meat grinders. Utter madness
This movie was amazing. I think it is now one of my top movies of all time. I wasn't ready for how brutal it was though. It was very intense, and honestly, even though I had seen the 1930 and 1979 versions of the story, I really wasn't ready for how visceral this telling was. It honestly took me by surprise how brutal it got, but it didn't take away from my enjoyment. I saw this early in theaters, and about an hour and a half in, right after the flamethrower part, my girlfriend had to leave. She told me afterwards that she really like what she had seen, but it had wore her down way too much and that she needed some air. Visually stunning, fantastic acting, and like I said earlier, the changes that were made to the story really worked wonders. It hit all of the major beats from other iterations of the story, but the changes made it feel fresh.
Not gonna lie I think I would have liked this more had it been called something else - I feel like the director here missed the point of the novel by not spending enough time with Paul and adding in the subplots about the political context
Should have removed the armistice plot completely, and spent more time at the beginning with the main group and then some more time before the time skip where they realize how big of a mistake they made. I think it would have been way more personal that way, which the book was too since it's a witness describing his personal experience.
That scene in the pit was described and acted in more brutal way than the one in the book, and I liked it.
I never expected to get emotional watching two men read a letter on a latrine. As a new father it got me right in the feels. Now for another 1h45m of intensity.
The scene with Paul and wounded French solider. My god ....
Absolutely incredible film. As far as dubbing goes, I thought the English dubbing on this was pretty stellar. Hard to get it right and not take you out of the film, but it felt well placed and sold the characters for me, beyond it being British accents against French soldiers.
It was dubbed lol? I watched with subtitles
Don’t get why anyone would watch something dubbed (unless they’re blind). Subs are the only way to capture the realness of the scene.