Is 2022’s ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ a Good Anti-War Film?

Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a video essay that explores whether or not Netflix’s remake of ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ is a good anti-war movie.

With the 2023 Oscars firmly in the rear-view mirror, no one is going to blame you for forgetting the finer details of Hollywood’s biggest night. So cast your mind back, if you will, to the lesser of the Academy’s two sweeps. Sure, Everything Everywhere All At Once scampered off with eleven nominations and seven wins. So it’s easy to forget that All Quiet on the Western Front was nominated for nine little gold men, the second-highest tally for a non-English film since Roma and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

While the film’s final four wins might have caught some of us off guard (me, I’m some of us), the cynic amongst us might point out that the Academy has a soft spot for historical anti-war films. But how does the latest adaptation of on All Quiet on the Western Front square up with its peers (including the 1930 adaptation, the third-ever film to win Best Picture). And, more pressingly, how effectively does the film operate as an anti-war movie?

The following video essay attempts to answer this latter question: investigating to what degree the film actually challenges the idea that war is a stage for heroism. In 2023, the idea of an anti-war film that strives to naturalistically emphasize the realities of war doesn’t have the same argumentative power that it used to. We know that war is hell and that the promise of heroism is a scam. But how does the All Quiet on the Western Front remake make this point, if at all? The answer? It’s complicated.

Watch “Is All Quiet on the Western Front a Good Anti-War Movie?”

Who made this?

This video essay on whether or not Netflix’s 2022 remake of All Quiet on the Western Front functions as an anti-war movie was created by Like Stories of Old, a video essay channel run by Tom van der Linden. You can follow van der Linden on Twitter here. And you can subscribe to his YouTube account here.

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Related Topics: All Quiet on the Western Front, The Queue

Meg Shields is the humble farm boy of your dreams and a senior contributor at Film School Rejects. She currently runs three columns at FSR: The Queue, How’d They Do That?, and Horrorscope. She is also a curator for One Perfect Shot and a freelance writer for hire. Meg can be found screaming about John Boorman’s ‘Excalibur’ on Twitter here: @TheWorstNun. (She/Her).