All Quiet on the Western Front
A German version of Erich Maria Remarque's classic anti-war novel is rightly being tipped for Oscar acclaim.
It’s all quiet on the Front in the spring of 1917. The war in Europe has been raging for three years and just a few hundred feet have been won and lost, at the cost of three million lives. There is a faint pall of smoke over a ridge of conifers and a screen of mist between the trunks and, out of gun shot, a vixen suckles her cubs in the quiet of her lair. Of course, we know it can’t last. And so, to the sound of Volker Bertelmann’s plangent score, we cut to the horrific ignominy of the aftermath of battle, where a field of frozen bodies strewn here and there are still jumping to the whistle of stray gunfire. And then it starts all over again, as a tired, panicked unit of young men are coaxed into storming headlong into a blizzard of bullets. What follows next is perhaps even more horrific as the industrial process of clearing up the corpses and recycling their belongings begins in earnest, with numbing, methodical and inhuman efficiency.
As long as military conflict continues to blight the planet, so anti-war works like All Quiet on the Western Front seem all too relevant, and necessary. Based on Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 classic novel, the story has been filmed twice before, once in 1930 and then 49 years later as a TV movie starring Richard Thomas. Here, the Austrian actor Felix Kammerer makes his film debut as Paul Bäumer, who enlists in the Imperial Germany army at the age of seventeen. Encouraged to be a hero by his male friends, he cuts the apron strings of home, to join the ‘Iron Youth of Germany.’ A pep talk by a school official generates a palpable sense of excitement. “In years to come,” he bellows, “you will be judged on what you dared to become today. My friends, you are fortunate to be living in great times.” And then the insanity and futility begins.
The first big-screen adaptation of Remarque's book won the Oscar for best picture and remains as powerful today as it was then. The small screen version was honoured with the Golden Globe for best TV movie. And the new film, the first time that a German director has tackled the story, is already being tipped for Oscar acclamation. To be sure, with the advancement of CGI and sophisticated camerawork, it is a brutal experience. But unlike some war films that have dwelled on the explicitness of battle, Edward Berger’s camera, while not shying away from the corporal carnage, does not linger. Indeed, some of the most powerful moments are in the graphic switches in tone, when a starving soldier risks his life by stealing an egg, when, just miles away, an officer complains about the pastries he has been served. Here, the detail is everything, from the attention paid to the despairing faces of the combatants, from a detached retina to their yellowed teeth, to the sheer beauty of the frosted countryside around them. This is truly a creation of artistry, if not of art. It is also a visceral, humane and at times poetic work, likely to stand for years alongside such classics of the genre as the Russian Come and See (1985), the German Stalingrad (1993), the American Saving Private Ryan (1998) and the British 1917 (2019).
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Felix Kammerer, Aaron Hilmer, Moritz Klaus, Adrian Grünewald, Edin Hasanovic, Albrecht Schuch, Daniel Brühl, Thibault de Montalembert, Devid Striesow, Andreas Döhler, Sebastian Hülk, Michael Wittenborn.
Dir Edward Berger, Pro Daniel Brühl, Daniel Marc Dreifuss, Malte Grunert, Clive Barker, Marc Toberoff, Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell, Screenplay Ian Stokell, Lesley Paterson and Edward Berger, based on Erich Maria Remarque's novel of the same name, Ph James Friend, Pro Des Christian M. Goldbeck, Ed Sven Budelmann, Music Volker Bertelmann, Costumes Lisy Christl, Sound Frank Kruse and Markus Stemler.
Amusement Park-Netflix.
147 mins. Germany. 2022. US Rel: 7 October 2022. UK Rel: 14 October 2022. Cert. 15.
