Somehow I had missed reading this altogether until just a few months ago – I’m 52 – and I’m a poorer person for not having read it long, long ago. I have no doubt I’ll be reading it again soon.
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Once again, Come and See is the perfect film to address the fact that war is sometimes necessary, but not at all glorious. Almost all American war films really fail in that. Come and See does not. You never get the sense that war is some wonderful adventure, because you live the horrors of combat with a 15 year old who came into the war effort with that very mindset. It’s a film that disabuses you and the protagonist of that notion.
It’s absolutely wrenching. I don’t think another film even comes close.
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I wasn’t talking about All Quiet on the Western Front. I was talking about the film @Mindysan33 linked, Come and See.
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I wonder at what point will we deicide we have enough WWI and WWII films?
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After WW III, obviously.
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Maybe, but only about half of WWI films were made before the end of WWII:
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I just re-read the novel, and it does capture the feeling that the soldiers were living in a sort of parallel existence, and how more than the horrors was the fact that Paul despaired of ever becoming a part of civilian life ever again. Remarque spent more time describing his convalescence than describing battles, I felt.
And it was an effective book. Some tried to disparage it, noting that the author didn’t actually live through all of the events described, but that’s not the fucking point. He did survive being on the front, and freely admitted that some episodes were anecdotes he picked up when in the hospital himself, told by others
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Come and See is harrowing. Pretty a “great, but tough to watch a second time” kind of film.
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Unless they have utterly discarded the whole original book, or previous movies, this is not that.
A bunch of boys enlist for the glory of the country. They get slaughtered pointlessly over the course of the next year. It is futile, brutal and heartrending.
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You say that, but whole hosts of people have completely missed the points of films like Fight Club, Starship Troopers, and a billion other films. No matter how much people try to make war look terrible, to me, a lot of these movies still have an undercurrent of the necessary and noble sacrifice. That “yes, war is terrible, and here’s how terrible it is, but still…hey these people were noble.” And even when that undercurrent isn’t there, a lot of people seem to see it. I guess what I’m really saying is, I kind of wish we’d stop making war movies, including ones with the message that war is terrible.
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Saw the movie. It will not replace the 1930 version as the definitive take. Goes on for about 30-40 minutes too long and takes some unnecessary liberties with the novel. Notably extra scenes involving the armistice talks.
Better than walking simulator “1917” at least.
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