“All Quiet on the Western Front” is one of those founding texts that transcends clichés, because it invented them. Erich Maria Remarque's 1928 novel and Lewis Milestone's 1930 Oscar-winning film are the cornerstones of the "war is hell" subgenre, which, in a post-"Apocalypse Now" era, post-"Save the Private Ryan," has become more pervasive than the jingoistic war epics it was designed to counter.
It's possible that a new perspective will be gained from a new adaptation of "All Quiet", despite the ripple effects of its influence: the war, sadly, isn't over because of the movies about how horrible it is. And his futility and absurdity remain constant, even as his face evolves over time. Sadly, Edward Berger's beautiful but long-awaited take on the story doesn't add much to the canon, except for some absolutely gorgeous visuals.
Director: Edward Berger
Writers: Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson, Ian Stokell
Stars: Daniel Brühl, Albrecht Schuch, Sebastian Hülk
Berger's “All Quiet” was produced in association with Netflix and is the first German-language film version of Remarque's novel, which was originally published in German. “All Quiet” was one of the works targeted by the Nazi book burnings, and this new film is an attempt to reclaim the novel as an essential work of German culture. It comes from inside the house, so to speak, and there is a certain Teutonic gravitas to the making of the film, as well as the subject matter. As polished but not as flashy as Sam Mendes' "1917," the film shows a similar level of commitment to historical detail, but presents its elaborately staged battlefield scenes in a relatively simpler spoken style.
Instead, Berger and cinematographer James Friend focus on color, just as it is. The palette here ranges from dry clay to blackened smoke, with little more than rusty red blood and urgent orange fire to break up the muddy, monochromatic look of the Western Front. Everything is wet—if it's not raining, recruits crawl facedown through muddy puddles, their uniforms soaked with dirty cappuccino-colored water—and cold. The skies are cloudy, the ground is barren and crisp with frost, and the wind whispers through the silent oak groves like the voices of the dead.
And there are many voices to be heard. “All Quiet on the Western Front” is a story of how naive boys become broken men, and the film opens with a young soldier being gunned down on the battlefield and thrown into a mass grave. His boots are removed from his stiff feet and shipped back to a factory where they are cleaned and given to another acne-scarred recruit who will join the boots' previous owner in death very soon. Throughout the film, German officers report to their superiors in large, abstract numbers: 20,000 dead in one afternoon. 100,000 dead by the end of the week.
These abstractions are contrasted with the individualized trauma inflicted on Paul Baumer, a 17-year-old infantryman who joins a group of classmates on a whim who boast of marching on Paris in six weeks. Instead, Paul and his friends — Paul's best friend Albert, his bespectacled schoolmate Ludwig, and the worldly Katczinsky — watch helplessly as their fellow soldiers are eliminated in horrifyingly graphic ways over the course of 18 months.
Paul's disappointment is seen primarily in Kammerer's eyes, which go from wide with fear to cold and dead as he begins to wonder if it would be better to join his comrades in death. Compared to Milestone's "All Quiet," Berger's version spends less screen time hanging out with foot soldiers as they kill time between roundups, chasing girls and geese through the French countryside like the teenagers they are. This makes for a gloomier, less shocking movie – the onslaught of death is more relentless (and numbing) here, yes. But we also don't get to know these young people when they meet death, which makes the loss hurt a little less.
Instead, Berger inserts scenes set in the German high command, where clean sheets, fine glass, and abundant food contrast with the experience of the soldiers at the front as much as the views of the liberal politician Erzberger contrast with those of the soldier at the front. hard line race Gen. Federico. Erzberger's goal is simply to end the war, and he is quick to agree to a ceasefire despite the consequent blow to German dignity; Friedrich, on the other hand, insists on keeping the bloodshed to the end out of pride, which is easy for him to say from behind thick stone walls.
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