All Quiet on the Western Front (Netflix, 2022) is the German-language adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel, following young German soldiers on the Western Front of World War I. It won four Academy Awards including Best International Film and is one of the most devastating anti-war films ever made.
All Quiet on the Western Front does what almost no war film attempts: it shows war as pure waste. There is no heroism, no glory, no meaning extracted from the carnage — only young men fed into a machine that grinds them up for territorial gains measured in meters. The film's final sequence, where Paul is killed hours before the armistice, is one of cinema's most devastating statements on the futility of violence.
This is a profoundly moral film. Matthew 5:9 — "Blessed are the peacemakers" — is not the explicit framework, but the film's emotional argument points toward that beatitude. There is nothing romantic about what these soldiers experience.
Following German soldiers rather than Allied soldiers is deliberately disorienting. These are not villains but boys who believed their country's propaganda as completely as boys on the other side believed theirs. Proverbs 14:12 — "There is a way that appears to be right" — is the principle. Institutional narratives that send young men to die for political goals require exactly the kind of critical discernment the film models.
Extremely graphic WWI combat — gassing, artillery bombardment, bayonet fighting, and the physical destruction of human bodies are shown without restraint. This is the film's moral argument in visual form — showing what war actually is. For mature adults and older teenagers (16+) only. Not appropriate for children.
Available on Netflix.
Children's media shapes formation in ways adult media does not — children are not yet equipped with the critical distance to evaluate what they're consuming. The question is not just "is this harmful?" but "what is this teaching?" GodlyScore evaluates children's content with heightened sensitivity to family depiction, LGBT normalization, spiritual content, and whether the overall tone encourages virtue or passivity. Score: 75/100 Spiritually Safe.
See our Christian TV Reviews hub for similar content evaluated with the same framework. Common Sense Media provides detailed age-by-age content guidance.
Rate any movie, show, song, or channel for spiritual alignment.
Visit GodlyScore.com →