All Quiet on the Western Front Reflection- Ashley Walker



Watching the movie All Quiet on the Western Front was an interesting and insightful experience for me. I liked the fact that it showed World War One from a German point of view because they are often blamed for the war and thought of as "the enemy," but there are reasons that each side fights for. While the reasons most likely to be deemed noble and right are the reasons presented by the winning side, this is mostly because history is written by the winners. Therefore, I thought it was interesting to see this point of view in the movie. Also, I enjoyed the fact that it was not all about the casualties and death of war, but rather how war is different than anything that we can imagine. It was nice how the movie showed that the young men went off to war expecting heroism, bravery, courage, adventure, excitement, and glory, but they soon have to face the grim, far-from-glorious reality of modern war. The part of the movie that I felt interested me the most was when Paul (The main character) was in the hole with the French soldier and he realized that, "If you took away the weapons, we could be brothers." The German soldiers were trained to see the French as dangerous killers and the therefore saw only the bayonets and grenades- not the men who were also fighting for a cause they believed was just. All Quiet on the Western Front also made a good point that we, as humans, like to distance ourselves from war. Some of the things that were debuted in World War One were machine guns, airplanes, and poisonous gases, which are all things that help prevent face-to-face combat with "the enemy." It is one thing to kill a person from a distance and an entirely different thing to look them in the eyes as you end their life. In conclusion, I thought that this movie was a comparatively interesting way to show all of these themes of World War One from a unique point of view.