‘All Quiet on the Front’ (‘Im Westen nichts Neues’, 2022) by Edward Berger claims a long-elusive classic in German cinematography. This Netflix adaptation comes more than 90 years after the 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque shocked a nationalist Germany by describing in detail the brutality of sending young men to be massacred in the trenches of World War Iso it was vetoed.
The adaptation, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, dives headlong into those horrors, and dares to add a political context that today has an inevitable reflection on the European landscapeand the way to enter it is to look from the opposite perspective to the one that cinema usually shows us, that is, to show us the side of the soldiers who fought on the wrong side, those who would end up being the losers, as a reverse dark and (even more) tragic of ‘1917’ (2019).
It is not difficult for the film to arouse this difficult empathy, since all the power of its images is aimed at eliminating the reasons behind the conflict and turn the battlefield into a real hell in which the colors are erased and only humanity remains in question. There was nothing militaristic or partisan about Remarque’s novel, one of the reasons the Nazis banned it and burned it when they came to power, also because it stoked resentment over what was seen as a humiliating defeat in World War I.
An impeccable revision of a war classic
The 1930 Hollywood version directed by Lewis Milestone portrayed the soldiers as Germans, but spoke English, which sweetened the experience for Anglo audiences and “smoothed” the story to represent the experience of any soldier. In the new ‘All Quiet on the Front’ they speak German, the cast is German and there is no way to look away from a reality: all the hardships that soldiers suffer, the way they lose the war, we know it will lead to a rise of the nazis and an even worse warwith greater hidden horrors.
This historical perspective only contributes to the ideas that the book gave off, which was about humanity (or lack thereof), but in 2022 it takes on new power from the cyclical nature of cruelty, and can be seen more clearly today than ever before. saying “violence begets violence” is not free, which can be seen in each scene of pain, which leads us directly to the great threat to the world that it will somehow end up becoming. A neutral optic that follows a tradition of depicting war that goes back to the Milestone version, but has disappeared for a long time.
The Second World War led Hollywood to embrace a certain epic of victory that has been perpetuated in different ways, despite the fact that Steven Spielberg tried to eliminate the glamor in his famous opening sequence of ‘Saving Private Ryan’ (1998), the crust of allied heroism has never been completely removedand this could be applied to the British perspective of ‘1917’, which came to tell something similar to ‘All Quiet on the Front’ but with a beautiful cinematographic exercise that, although it makes it something close to a masterpiece, is not stop having a fascination with conflict.
The Netflix film eliminates any element of ornamentation to show brutality raw and highlight the dilemma of using young people as cannon fodder, while subjecting the viewer to brutality, tiring the viewer with the endless feeling of a war that is making less and less sense. James Friend’s photography is stunning, but its beauty does not hide a hidden lyric, but rows alongside the immersive realistic perspectiveand even the sequence shots that could be reminiscent of ‘1917’ are to add more anguish to the soldier’s perspective.
A walk through the horrors without a hint of romance
‘All Quiet on the Front’ begins with a hellish landscape full of corpses, spends a short and brutal battle, and from there to a chilling sequence, in which soldiers strip the clothing of their dead comrades, leaving a pile of torn and muddy jackets and pants next to rows of black coffins. We then follow the clothes to a factory to be washed, mended, and finally delivered to the new recruits, one of whom, 17-year-old Paul Bauymer (Felix Kammerer), receives the new uniform from him and sees something strange.
Looking at the name tag, he innocently remarks, “This already belongs to someone,” in a heartbreaking moment that reveals that he has no idea of the macabre origin of his outfit, to put into question Contrast the adolescent naivety of the young recruits against the brutal hardship they will face. The decision to deviate from the source material materializes in the scenes with the German high command, responsible for sending the young men without conscience to die.
Daniel Brühl he plays a government minister who sees that delaying peace will only lead to more soldiers dying before Germany’s inevitable capitulation, but his arguments fail to persuade officials who think France cannot afford to fall. And it is in this contrast, massacred soldiers in front of clean, safe and obsessed commanderswith pointless strategic decision-making, full of pride and agonizing attempts to demonstrate national power, even with decisions that boil blood, when the conflict is hours away, where the film takes on its full meaning.
One of the great Netflix original movies
The montage makes us fully aware of the senselessness of everything that happens on the battlefield, the uselessness of the deaths of men, killed individually or en masse in horrifying ways. We see from stabbings to amputations, savage run overs by a tank, shots in the head, people blowing up, burned without mercy, drowned, gassed to death and more. ‘All Quiet on the Front’ shows death, mutilation —the indelible shot of a parachutist on a tree branch— and psychological torture in the foreground. We witness it all through Paul’s eyes, moving from excitement to horror, to guilt at doing the very thing that terrifies him, to pain and resignation.
The faces of these teenagers dead of fear and suffocation are portraits of blood and mud, and we see how in that state of shock they are shot down again and again by French soldiers with machine guns, tanks, bombs and flamethrowers. The comparison that often comes to mind is the look of ‘Massacre (Come and look)’ (Idí i Smotrí, 1985), but within a more familiar battlefield, connecting in the same way almost with horror movies, among other aspects due to the minimalist score by Volker Bertelmann, with hits of treble drums and unusual electronic chords, in a sinister, almost funeral, three-note beat.
The Netflix movie is Germany’s choice in this year’s Best International Film Oscar race and should have a chance in the social setting in which it opens this year. Berger’s version of ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ is unbearably dark, but he convinces you that it should be. Its contrast between the propaganda and the reality of ruthless life in the trenches is subtle but forceful, a clear anti-war statement that focuses on lost humanity on both sides. Through the stares, the hopelessness and the nothing to lose. It leaves a mark after several days.