A truly terrific movie that encapsulates the absurd pointlessness of war is the Serbian-Croatian co-production No Man’s Land from 2001. (It later won the International Film Oscar.) It’s set up like a metaphorical fable, and it’s both very bleak and occasionally hilarious. My strongest recommendation.
Johnny Got His Gun (1971) is a surrealistic film about a soldier in World War I who’s hit by a mortar shell and loses his arms, legs, eyes, ears, mouth and nose. It’s one of the most depressing films ever made and can’t possibly be interpreted by any rational person as being anything but antiwar.
The Fog of War is a documentary of interviews with Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam era. It shows how badly the US misjudged the situation and botched its decisions.
All of the protagonists died at the end after failing in their mission to take the Confederate fort. The film starts and ends with mass casualties and death. Pretty depressing stuff.
But the epilogue of the film makes it clear that their sacrifice was not in vain. Their courage was widely reported and led to many thousands of black soldiers being allowed to serve in combat roles, ultimately making up 10% of the Union army and turning the tide of the war, according to Lincoln.
So I think you’re right. The epilogue actually changes the whole tone. Despite losing the battle (shown on screen), they helped win the war (as stated in the epilogue). And since the war was depicted in the film from the Union perspective as a just war, you can’t really call it an anti-war film.
Well, I did say “ironically.” 
But as I indicated above, I’ve changed my mind and agree with you.
No. There was one mention of Gandhi planning to make a speech against World War I in 1915. There was even less mention of World War II. It was an anti-colonialism movie.
Back in 1976 I saw The Execution of Private Slovik a TV movie starring Martin Sheen. It is a very powerful and affecting narrative about the only American soldier executed for desertion in WWII. I have wanted to see it again for years and, thanks to this thread I find that LionHeart FilmWorks has made it available on YouTube, The Execution of Private Slovik,
As an added bonus, among many other interesting items, they have another TV war movie that I only happened to think about a few days ago, the Jan-Michael Vincent vehicle Tribes.
At that, there’s of course nothing satirical about Fail Safe: people aren’t willing to put aside their differences and trust each other, which means that all-out war is about to ensue after innocents get killed en masse, which is so bleak a prospect that yet other innocents get killed en masse to avert it, which prompts the military officer who carries out the mission to commit suicide, the end.
Even without the epilogue, I found the ending sad, but not depressing. They fought bravely and died honorably for a good cause, and were buried together as brothers, officers and enlisted, white and black. Sure, they may have lost the battle, but there’s no shame in that. I actually thought it was pretty inspiring.
Although not as intense as the book “Catch 22” strikes at the capitalist foundation of modern war when Snowden is wounded and another airman opens the aid kit to find a share of stock. I believe it’s Milo who says “his parents would understand”.
Catch 22 covers most of the anti war bases.
I’m amazed anyone thought SPR was supposed to be an anti-war film.
That tracks, since I first saw Full Metal Jacket at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in the summer of 1988 on a large screen TV in a squad bay with 100 other Navy and Marine Corps midshipmen. It was put on by the Gunnery Sergeant in charge of our group, who growled, “This is what boot camp used to be like!”
We were at Camp Pendleton to learn about the Marine Corps, so it was literally used as a recruiting film for us.
(The film we saw at my NROTC unit the previous year was Aliens, because, yaknow, Space Marines.)
Someone mentioned The Day After-a movie about the aftermath of a nuclear war. Definitely anti-war.
In fact I can NOT even think of a movie about NUCLEAR war that seems pro war.
So yes an anti-war film IS possible.
As others pointed out, such a movie would have to show purely the harm done by war and none of the “coolness” of it.
I’ve been thinking about Operation Meetinghouse - the March 1945 napalm and magnesium American firebombing of Tokyo that burned 120,000 people to death - and thought that it would have been the perfect candidate for an anti-war movie, if filmed in grisly-enough detail, showing purely the view from those roasting alive that night.
The phenomenon of “war porn” has been implicitly raised here and is one of the arguments for saying an anti -war movie is,if not impossible, a lot harder to pull off than one might think. Thoughts?
Can you come to the conclusion that the Union prevailing over the Confederacy or the Allies defeating the Axis were, in fact, bad outcomes? If not, you will have a hard time making an “anti-war” piece of media that has the victor’s or even a neutral POV.
Also, there does not and probably cannot exist a piece of media the some consumer cannot take the opposite lesson from that which was intended.
They showed us the first half of the movie at my IDF Infantry Squad Leader’s Course, as part of a class on how to identify signs of emotional distress in new recruits and how NOT to handle the situation if you do. Our main conclusion was that American sergeants were idiots.
Exactly. To make a true anti-war film, you don’t just have to show that war is bad; you also have to show that war is wrong. And some wars simply aren’t.
At least they don’t spend all their time marching up and down the square.
Surprised no one has mentioned Paths of Glory yet. It’s my go-to. If you’ve seen it, you should know why. It leaves you feeling deflated and angry. It only deigns to take just enough of the edge off in the end to not also be an anti-human film (in addition to an anti-war film).
I have seen most of the other films put forward as contenders, and I just don’t see how those measure up. They’re just too much fun for teenage boys. Especially the other Kubrick films mentioned.
Full Metal Jacket? Kids love the boot camp scenes most of all. R. Lee Erney makes being a Gunnery Sergeant and a drill sergeant look so damn cool and he’s just so hilarious, who wouldn’t want to join up and get a taste of that—maybe even be a Gunnery Sergeant themself someday. As for Gomer Pyle, well, I think we can all agree (here putting oneself in the minds of literal children and barely any better young adult men who think this is cool) that they aren’t like that and never will be, so eff him, right? They should have just gone harder on the towels!
Apocalypse Now? Ride of the Valkyries. That’s all I have to say about that. It’s the quintessential anti-war movie that makes war look just so damn cool. Almost literally as Jarhead used it to make the very same point: it’s virtually impossible to make a truly an anti-war film.
Dr. Strangelove? Who wouldn’t want to be invoked in so much hijinks? No fighting in the war room? LOLz! And sign me up for the part where I get to fly a plane while cosplaying as a cowboy hat and ride a giant bomb like mounting a horse! SO COOL!!!
With an honorable (dishonorable?) mention for Robert Altman’s MASH which, as someone noted upthread, makes war look like summer camp, with all sorts of hijinks and pranks. Plus a lot of misogyny and casual racism.
Despite my experience of a drill sergeant glamorizing how boot camp “used to be” 20 years earlier (and now nearly 60 years ago!), there’s a reason that recruit training changed in the U.S. military from how it is depicted in the film. There are a lot more rules now (which is true for the last 40 years or so), and a lot less hazing and cruelty. Not only were there some well-publicized recruit deaths which led to a public outcry, but even the movie Full Metal Jacket itself shows the possible consequences of pushing a recruit literally past the breaking point.