I watched this movie yesterday. In case you missed it, it won an Oscar this past Sunday for Best International Picture, and three other Oscars as well. It surely deserved all of them. The opening sequence of a skyline, a forest, foxes sleeping in their den, and an overhead shot of what looks like a snow covered field, but you soon realize is a pile of dead bodies makes you realize quickly that you are watching a piece of cinematic art, but after that, well, this harrowing look at warfare and Man's Inhumanity To Man is a tough watch.
Based on the classic 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque follows an idealistic young man, Paul Baumer, as he enlists in the German Army in 1917, gets sent to the Western Front, and is immediately both terrified and disillusioned of all of his idealistic ideas of warfare. (Didn't everyone have to read this book in high school? I wonder if it's been banned in Florida schools yet?) This movie is a German production, which made it all the more interesting in my mind.
The movie can be seen on Netflix in both German language with subtitles, or dubbed into English. I chose to watch the former version. It is a movie well worth seeing, but, as I said, it's a hard watch.
Three and One-half Stars from The Grandstander.
Title cards at the end of the film noted that the "western front" in the first World War was established early in 1914, and over the next four years, the positions of either side in the War on that Front never changed by more than a few hundred meters, one way or the other.
Over 17 million people were killed in World War I.
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