Oliver Rose (Michael Douglas, The War of the Roses, 1989)
|
Oliver Rose (Michael Douglas, The War of the Roses, 1989) |
|
 Sixteen year old Paul Bäumer (Lewis Ayres) sits in his class hating that another beautiful day will be wasted listening to his professor drone on and on about this or that or the other thing, but this particular day starts out differently. Today, Professor Kantorek (Arnold Lucy) will change not only his life, but also the lives of his friends, by preaching to him and his fellow classmates about the glories and honor of fighting and dying for the Fatherland. The year is 1914 and Germany boasts that it can and will fight a quick war, crushing its enemies, but it needs all of its valiant, young, German men to fight in order to do it. The professor, who is old, naïve, and never been in a war, believes it, and makes his students believe it as well. In a near spasmodic rush of adrenaline and emotion, he quickly whips the boys up into a fervor and they joyously follow him in a rush of excitement to the recruiter’s office.They’re not the only ones that are caught up in this seemingly glorious enterprise. Postman Himmelstoss (John Wray) is also excited to enlist. With his experience in the postal service, the Army offers him a non-commissioned rank and promises him seniority and authority. Himmelstoss brags to every customer who greets him for their mail that he will soon be fighting for the Fatherland, and that there is nothing so noble as giving oneself for his country. This begins the epic telling of idealism falling away towards disillusionment when facing the realities of war while having to kiss death every moment of every day for the entirety of it.  Bäumer and his friends are quickly relegated to a camp for training, there they find their old friend and postman Himmelstoss. They quickly find that Himmelstoss is not the congenial man they once new, but a hardened drill instructor, who is ready to whip these boys into shape, or kill them trying. From a once near lifelong companionship, they soon find that there is no such thing as friendship when it concerns rank, and they are brutally trained for the rigors of war. Even then the fighting seems so far into the future, the young men only concern themselves with getting even with Himmelstoss, who seems to endlessly humiliate them. Too soon they find that there are a great deal of other things for them to have to worry about for, before they are even aware of it, training is over. It’s time to go to the front.Fortunately for Bäumer, once at the front he meets Katczinsky (Louis Wolheim) and Tjaden (Slim Summerville), two battle hardened veterans who teach him the ins and outs of survival at the front. Yet, even though meeting them is of great benefit, the horrors of warfare are not daunted at all. During WWI, fighting consisted primarily of trench warfare. Men would dig 6’ to 8’ deep trenches that could stretch on for miles, and within these trenches, small bunkers would be made with standard wood struts and supports. That’s not a whole lot of protection from week long bombardments from enemy artillery. It is this that teaches the young men what the professor would have claimed as honor and glory, but what they quickly understand as terror and panic. This is only one of their many lessons they will learn before either the war is over, or they die. This is a movie that lends a poeticism to warfare, yet does not glorify it. It punches you in the nose with its apparent message; war is hell. Many scenes haunt the viewer because it is told in a way so that one can see himself in the position of the recruit. For example, when Bäumer scores his first kill, it is behind enemy lines in a crater from his own army’s artillery. He jumps in to avoid being shot, only to be followed in by a French infantryman. When the two see each other, a quick fight ensues, with Bäumer being the victor with a decisive thrust with his bayonet. Unfortunately for him, he is stuck behind the lines and cannot make a hasty retreat. To make matters worse, his adversary does not die immediately, or easily, but lingers on with groans and whimpering. This changes Bäumer because he cannot just simply relish that he survived, but he has time to sit and ponder the ramifications of what he just did over a period of days. While the enemy dies, Bäumer begins to understand that the man is no different from him, and shame and remorse begin to tear through him. By the time he makes it back to Katczinsky, he is mentally exhausted, and completely disenfranchised to the glories of battle.  Another excellent example comes after Bäumer is wounded in battle, recovers, and then is sent home for a short leave. Bäumer comes home to see his Mother, who still sees him as a child and tries to make him promise to get a job well out of the way of the fighting, and his Father, who is ridiculously inept to understand what his son has gone through and begs him to wear his uniform everywhere so he can parade him to his envious neighbors. But the best scene in the movie is when Bäumer goes back to the school where his professor first enticed him to enlist. As he walks through the door, he hears the professor doing the same thing to his current class. By this time, Bäumer has been fighting in the war for three years, and has no illusions, grand or otherwise, about what war is like. The professor asks him to speak to the kids in the class telling them that this is a man to look up to, that he is a hero with an understanding of the nobility of fighting for the Fatherland. But when Bäumer turns to speak, he says, “We live in the trenches and we fight. We try not to be killed---that’s all.” When the students begin to boo him for behaving as a coward, he shouts to them, “You still think it's beautiful to die for your country. The first bombardment taught us better. When it comes to dying for country, it's better not to die at all!” He knows deep in his gut, however, that they will still enlist.All Quiet On The Western Front is popularly known as the definitive anti-war film, but it is much, much more than that. Not only does it deal with the horrors of combat, but it breaks down what rigorous daily dealings with death, whether it be by one’s own hand or the witnessing thereof, can, and ultimately will do, to ones psyche. It’s told by a soldier. An infantry man. He’s not any different than any other soldier that has ever fought in any war, because he believes in what he is doing, even though he may not truly understand why. When the veil is drawn and the suffering begins, the belief will often crumble away and change into a longing for peace and understanding, which had been lacking all the time before. Tragic and poetic is the life of all soldiers, though even if they somehow live through the fighting, in the end, there is only death…and butterfly’s. |
|
© 2002 - 2007, MovieJustice.com Powered by: ezDatabase 2.1.1; © 2003 - 2010 IndexCOR LLC |
