Ask Lemmy

Das Boot, it is the classic movie about German Uboats from the perspective of the Uboat crew.

It does not glorify, it does not condemn, but the one thing that stays with you is the feeling of futility.

They did all the terrible and heroic things, cheered at hitting convoys, let allied seamen drown because of their orders, escaped again and again, showed fanatism and self-reflection, panic and comradeship, and in the end, when they come back to their home base, it just doesn't matter.

All quiet on the western front (movie from 2022) feels like your example a bit without the post-war consequences. Grave of the firefly (anime) is on my watch list and is very anti-war from what I understand. Catch 22 maybe. The Wars by Timothy Findley felt very anti-war but is a tough read. The cruel sea was a good read. Vinland sagas first season is very good, lots of action but some really hard hitting scenes for an anime.

Anything written by Kurt Vonnegut

I subscribe to the philosophy that there is no such thing as an anti-war film or story. They all romanticize and dramatize war in a way to captivate the audience, and to where the horrors of it are observable, yet not experiencable and therefore not understandable.

Vinland Saga

"I have no enemies." It's an anime with two seasons so far. The manga is getting close to complete. Takes place around 1000 ad with the wars between the Vikings and the English. Basically the first season is about revenge while the second pivots hard to redemption. It's ultimately a story about pacifism.

Empire of the Sun is a film about civilians caught in a war zone.

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, is a collection of short stories about the Vietnam War. It shows the exhilaration, the terror, the cruelty and hardship of living through a war. It definitely doesn't glorify conflict.

My War Gone By, I Miss It So, by Anthony Loyd, is a firsthand account of the Bosnian conflict of the 90s. It is ugly and brutal, and the author tries to give an honest presentation of his own state of mind at the time.

Black Hawk Down (the book, not the movie), by Mark Bowden, is a fairly thorough account of the incident in Mogadishu in 1993. Bowden did a lot of research and describes the political background that led to the UN and US presence in Somalia, and all of the mistakes that led up to the helicopter being shot down and what happened after. He interviewed many of the military personnel who were actually involved and recounts the events from several different perspectives. And as the Wikipedia article says:

Bowden simultaneously manages to capture the siege mentality felt by both civilians and the US soldiers, as well as the broad sentiment among many residents that the Rangers were to blame for the majority of the battle casualties.

This is a very realistic presentation of what combat is like, framed inside the perspective of the overall military operation. Bowden doesn't shy away from describing the mistakes in decision-making, but also does a fair job of describing how lack of information or bad information leads to bad decisions in the moment which result in people dying for no good reason. He definitely doesn't glorify the conflict. My overall impression after reading it was "I hope I never have to be involved in anything like that".

And finally, Alice's Restaurant, by Arlo Guthrie, is a song about the draft.

if you wanna end war'n'stuff ya gotta sing loud

pretty much every war movie

the classics have got Saving Private Ryan, Nolan's got Dunkirk, Best Cinematography's got 1917, Ghibli's got Grave of the Fireflies (released same day as Totoro even)...

for anti-war that's not depressing, there's also AFAIK the over-the-top Helldivers

for things that feel "clean" instead of bloody there's the elegant video game Nier: Automata

An amazing movie is come and see. One of the best movies I have ever seen (no pun intended).

Edit: the comments says it all, just the type of thing you asked (or what I understood you asked).

This War of Mine

The Unknown Soldier is quite well made and high budget war movie by Finnish standards and it does nothing to glorify war.

Defcon: Everybody Dies

That game has actually been studied by scientists, because it changes people’s attitudes towards nuclear weapons.

The game literally is about using nuclear weapons to win.

How does it look? It isn’t overly grotesque. There are no melting faces, no devastated landscapes. Nothing. It’s just a minimalist map of the world.

You might hear that and think that it’s a pro-war game. But it actually has the opposite effect on players.

How can it be? Simple. The game is accurate in how swiftly it all ends if there is a nuclear war. And by playing it, that truth is engraved into players’ intuitions.

https://www.academia.edu/6697989/Education_from_inside_the_bunker_Examining_the_effect_of_Defcon_a_nuclear_warfare_simulation_game_on_nuclear_attitudes_and_critical_reflection

Spec Ops: The Line I heard is a game like that

Civil War definitely wasn't fun at all

Edit: I mean it was good don't get me wrong, but it absolutely didn't glorify war

The Anime Grave of the Fireflies (AniDB) is a heart-wrenching telling of the impact and consequences of war.

Come and See (TMDB), a 1985 soviet anti-war film. I haven't watched it yet, but I've seen it mentioned multiple times as significant or exceptional, heart-wrenching. (Looks like other comments mention it as well, as expected. :P)

I'm a bit disappointed I can't recall much else right now, and of different kinds than just the misery of war. Two other anime pop into my head, but the aspects asked for aren't a major part of them.

There are many videos and reports of Ukraine military defense operations that can show what combat realistically looks like. Even for the righteous, it's a harsh situation. Moral superiority does not help much when you're sitting in trenches, in the situational, practical aspects at least.

Saving Private Ryan.

If the first 15 minutes don't turn you into an antiwar activist, I don't know what will.

Some episodes of Star Trek do this well. Off the top of my head, "The Drumhead" is a great example of rejecting fearmongering and witch hunting "The Enemy".

Well, I'll recommend Arcane as a show where nearly everyone wants war and pushes for war, and then regrets it and either changes their mind or dies.

However, I do think war has its place and is sometimes necessary. If we hadn't gone to war with the Nazis, the world would be a much worse place. I believe we should directly intervene in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and in the Israeli invasion of Palestine, on the side of the defending forces, while limiting our actions to purely military targets. I also think World War 3 has become nearly inevitable, and that it will be triggered by the invasion of Venezuela and Greenland, and that we should be prepared to support the defending forces so as to prevent the rampant spread of fascism.

The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On.

:::spoiler Click for summary/spoilers

Kenzō Okuzaki was conscripted to fight in WWII and the experience radicalized him against the Japanese government. He deliberately attempted to get himself shot by Allied forces but was captured instead. After the war, as the years passed, he became worried that the younger generation was growing up unaware of the horrors of war and the atrocities that their government had committed, and so would be prone to repeating the mistakes of the past. He became desperate to do something about it.

Okuzaki brazenly defied norms about politeness and drove around in a car covered in slogans, shouting out of loudspeaker that the emperor was a war criminal. The film focuses on his attempts to track down elderly veterans and get them to record testimonies in front of a camera, specifically investigating allegations that Japanese soldiers resorted to cannibalism in New Guinea. Of course, people generally aren't particularly thrilled about a stranger showing up to relitigate old war crimes and interrogate grandpa about The Things We Don't Talk About. There are times when Okuzaki even gets involved in fistfights with people over it.

After collecting testimony from a bunch of people, he comes to the conclusion that a colonel was responsible for the war crimes, and he decided to kill him over it. However, when he arrived at his house, he only found his son, who he shot and injured instead.

Okuzaki is a complicated and problematic figure but in some ways that makes the film all the more unsettling and challenging. Shooting someone for just for being related to a war criminal is pretty indefensible, but Okuzaki was broken by the war he wanted to avoid repeating (the decade in solitary confinement probably didn't help either). He wanted to remind people of the horrors of war, but it's because of what the war did to him that he had become maladjusted and prone to violence (although it's worth noting that a lot of his protests had been nonviolent, and had gotten him jail time). I think there's a natural inclination to look at things like this in the abstract, to ask, "how for is it justifiable to go in pursuit of a good cause?" but the film pushes us to consider the psychological, human aspect of this traumatized killer trying desperately to create a world where people like himself would not be created.

Godzilla Minus One does a great job at showing post WW2 Japan, and the effect the war had on the Japanese people.

Appreciate this post. I'd welcome any suggestion to help deglorify guns to a kid, too

I haven't watched it, but They Shall not Grow Old (2018) (TMDB) may also be of interest.

A user review says it takes a neutral position, and while it shows negative consequences, it also shows people liking comadery etc. So not sure if it would serve your goals in particular.

Band of Brothers fits this very well, It is very evenhanded all the way through and particularly at the end where the final Heartfelt speech is made by a German officer to his men, but it applies to all of the American characters that you have been following through this series, the feeling of Brotherhood was the same for all men involved

I think most even slightly accurate war movies don’t really glorify the war bit. Two recommendations.

There is a film A24 distributed last year called Warfare that follows a very accurate telling of a single operation of a platoon in Ramadi. It is pretty grim, but really gives a sense of just how brutal it can be for a small group. A lot of movies show slaughter at scale, like beaches of Normandy. That is always fascinating and dark too, but it slightly diminishes the struggle of the individuals. This does not.

Another recommendation is Tora! Tora! Tora!; an absolute classic from 1970. This movie shows you many of the mistakes and oversights, big and small that led to the Pearl Harbor attack being so crippling. Aside from huge ship and air guns there aren’t many guns. I think many people would enjoy it at the moment because it shows the USA on the rout.

To add some music here,

Roger Waters: The Wall.

His version is my personal preference over the original Pink Floyd version; it has some more songs, better audio quality, and IMO hits a little harder. Read the lyrics for full understanding. Watch a recording of the concert to be blown away.

"Di-di-di-did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter when the promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath the clear blue sky?"

Also seconding someone else's recommendation of Vinland Saga, really goes through the whole spectrum from seeking revenge to being horrified by war.

Come and See

Generation Kill is a very watchable look at a recon unit in the lead up to the 2nd (iirc) iraq war. It's by the guy who did The Wire. Excellent dialogue, plotting and acting.

It uses a soldier's eye perspective to examine the systemic issues in the military - casual racism, war crimes, adult diapers and the constant incompetence of officers all come up.

The Lord of the Rings is (among many other things) a book about how the common man deals with the trauma of war.

2000 meters to Andriivka

It follows the Ukrainian push through a narrow strip of woodland to a town that has been destroyed by the war.

The Great War channel on YouTube.

For fiction: Band of Brothers.

MAS*H the 1970 Robert Altman film is a dark comedy following battlefield surgeons in the Vietnam war. Based off a semiautobiographical book with a similar premise taking place during the Korean war.

Essentially the surgeons try to keep themselves sane in an insane environment by playing practical jokes and generally making light of the darkest situation imaginable.

The Boy in The Striped Pajamas and Empire Of The Sun spring to mind.

Edit: Also, The Deer Hunter.