Heroics in Lewis Milestone’s: All Quiet on the Western Front

Today’s war films clearly identify the good and evil participants on the battlefields.  In Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan the audience is persuaded to see the German soldiers as similar but ultimately wicked villains.  The American audience sees Hanks and Company’s sacrifices through the history and nationalism of our country, so when viewing the naturally uneven 1930 Lewis Milestone film All Quiet on the Western Front, it must come as a challenge to outline who are the heroes and who are the villains.  Despite these issues, we are led to believe that the fresh-faced impressionable German teenage soldiers are the heroes of Milestone’s film, and their slight heroism is defined by their ability to simply stay alive and learn that war destroys all things, whether on the winning or losing side.  Milestone does this by showing the clear development of Paul, played by Lew Ayres, from an idealistic boy into a disillusioned man, as well as showing that heroism can come in the form of retaining a certain semblance of humanity typically lost in a time of war.

The main crux of All Quiet on the Western Front is the growth of Paul Baumer, from his entrance into the military to his death at the hands of a French sniper.  The film is based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, but it differentiates from it by making it less biographical of Baumer and more involved with his relationships with those around him.  The book itself has issues aligning heroism with anything that occurs on either side, and it is no different in the motion picture.  The murky image of heroics in the film emerges within the character of Paul as he slowly realizes that surviving is about the only heroic act within war.  We see instances of perceived heroism, like when one soldier runs out on the battlefield to retrieve the body of his fallen comrade, but ultimately the arc of the film highlights this as bravely stupid.  The heroism cultivated within Paul amounts in the form of his affinity for his fellow soldier, similar to that of any common friendship.  In my opinion, Milestone outlines that heroism in war comes when one can hold onto what makes them human, such as friendship and the knowledge of beauty, clearly shown in the climatic death of our main character.  The director appears to elevate the retention of innocence to a laudable level, while villanizing the destructive nature of war on the young men of that lost generation.

Ultimately, Milestone’s picture does not strive to make heroes and villains out of anyone involved in war, and this is shown through his intention to shoot a film from the uncommon perspective of the World War One defeated.  The film is indeed brave as it struggles with the war story cliché, though in the end it is a fantastic discourse on the glamorization of battle and psychologically-damaging aspect of it.