The background of the beginning of the film is the first World War just launched. Germany is mobilizing for the war. All people are accepting the slogan and ideas of "dedicate yourself to the motherland, strive for victory in the war, win personal honor, and become a national hero". educate. Even the students who are being educated at school are no exception. Under the strong advocacy of the teacher, the "war victory theory" and "honor supremacy theory" have occupied the brains of the children headed by Paul, and all kinds of fantasies after putting on military uniforms. , came to their minds. So, they actively signed up to join the army.
When they actually set foot on the front line, they witnessed death with their own eyes, and the person who died was a classmate who had been with them day and night. The fear entered their body at that moment, and it lingered from then on. They also began to have their own understanding of the war, and all the previous propaganda ideas began to shake in their minds.
Afterwards, the cruelty of the war was more real in their minds, and they began to face death more frequently, until their attitude was completely indifferent, just like the comrade-in-arms they met in the hospital after being injured. Facing death, they could be so indifferent to death. Like watching a joke, if someone insists on saying it's optimistic, I can only raise my middle finger. This is the side of war that destroys humanity, and Paul's attitude of always wanting to live and cherishing his own life and that of others forms a comparison with the indifference of others. The film uses this comparison to criticize the human destruction of war on people in war.
When Paul saw Cammeri dead in the hospital, at that moment his feelings about death became real and concrete. He began to be afraid and longed to live. If he still had fantasies about war in his heart, then at that moment he began to fear. Completely awakened, realized the truth of the war, saw the most real side of human nature, and only longed to live.
Paul returned to his hometown, during his injury leave. When he saw that politicians who had not experienced the war were still arguing about how to attack France, he left silently; when he returned to the classroom where he used to teach, and saw that the teacher was mobilizing the children for war again, he said When the truth of the war is revealed, it is killing, avoiding bullets, and protecting oneself. All good rhetoric about war is shameful, and all mobilizations that use honor as a temptation are trivial. He is not afraid of being ridiculed as a coward, because in the war he has seen the truest side of human nature, and all the distortions of human nature. His rhetoric was the dirtiest in his eyes, and he began to hate honors that were beyond human nature. This is yet another human devastation of the war on those who are far from the front and in the rear. They didn't experience the war, so they believed in all the good propaganda about war, believed in the honor that war brings, believed in heroes who sacrificed their lives for their country, and then used this as a standard to judge who was a hero and who was a coward, never from human nature. I thought about the cruelty of the war from the perspective of a mother. Even a mother hoped that her son would return safely, but when she heard that her son was going to work in the kitchen, she was afraid that others would laugh at him as a coward, and hoped that he would become a hero. So Paul would feel that "hometown is no longer hometown."
This is a kind of distortion and confinement of people in that era, a specific atmosphere of the era, and isn't this situation in every era?
After Paul killed the British soldier with his own hands, he felt very guilty. In the end, he did not become completely indifferent because of the killing. He did not distort humanity because of the war. And that person who is so indifferent to death has long since lost his humanity. Although the war did not kill him, he cannot be regarded as a complete person. Precisely because Paul recognized the fragility and preciousness of life, he opposed war, he longed to live, and he did not want to kill others. He always understood this, so he did not become indifferent, and hated the indifference.
Paul is a man who still has residual heat in a grim age. When he saw that beautiful butterfly in the trenches and he wanted to catch it, it was amazing that he could still appreciate that beauty. But this kind of behavior made him die under the cold guns of others. This is another place where the film is strongly critical of reality.
For his death, I have the following explanation: In those grim times, a sober person like this could not survive. Unless he paints himself with the gray of that era and completely forgets the color of that butterfly. Because gray is difficult to attract attention, and in his eyes, he was attracted by the color, so he was the only one who did this, and the indifferent muzzle only shot him. In this scene, the film's critique of war's human devastation to people (both those in the war and those in the back) culminates. The warrior would just aim at the enemy and shoot him, ignoring that it was an "enemy" who didn't have a weapon in his hand and just wanted to grab a butterfly. And a man who saw the truth of the war and only wanted to live died on the battlefield because he wanted to appreciate the beauty of butterflies. Often people who see through the truth are not tolerated by the times. In fact, such people are extremely vulnerable. Perhaps the death of the protagonist in the film is very reasonable.
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