The film is adapted from the novel of the same name by the German writer Remarque. It tells the tragic story of the German frontline during the First World War. A group of teenagers in their early 20s, under the instigation of school patriotism education, went to the battlefield with the dream of a great hero, but they did not see anything. Flowers and applause, only mountains of corpses and blood-stained ditches.
At the beginning of the movie, young students are immersed in the romantic fantasy of war under the instigation of the teacher. At that time, the European youth did not know what war was. They thought that war was wearing tall and straight military uniforms, like a heroic adventure like a knight in a legendary novel. , even blood-stained armor is a noble honor, women and wine, music and roses, is another color of war. However, when they actually went to the front line and heard the hail of bullets on the battlefield, they realized that it was the sound of broken dreams.
Under the bombs, the limbs of the comrades flew in the air, the smell of blood was sprinkled on the mud like rain, the excrement and urine on the battlefield mixed with the putrid corpses, stirring the acid in the stomach. "Serving the country is false, only death is true". Boimer said this to the students, but those immature faces had long been bruised by the slogan "The country needs you". The teenager not only turned a deaf ear to his words, but also called him a "coward".
The film finally freezes on the hand of Boimer that did not touch the butterfly. If there was no war, he should have been as free as this butterfly and lived only for himself, but he finally died on the "calm" western front. On the battlefield, this moment has become a classic in film history.
Released in the 1930s, this film is still hailed by fans as "one of the greatest anti-war films" today, and it is meant to tell us that all wars are absurd frauds and that the medal on the shoulder is not The reward for your madness is the bloodthirsty sin of primitive humanity. What a war film should arouse should not be the surging passion and courage of the viewers, but the disgust.
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