All Quiet on the Western Front (2022): Film Review
After two previous movie adaptations, Erich Maria Remarque‘s 1929 novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, has finally received the film treatment in the author’s native Germany.
The film is mostly set in Northern France in the closing years of World War I. It follows young soldier Paul Baumer (Felix Kammerer) after he enlists in the German Army with his friends and gets exposed to the true realities of war.
Edward Berger‘s film is an unflinching, harrowing anti-war epic. It is a brutal, graphic, and bloody story that doesn’t sugarcoat the grim reality of life in the trenches or what you might find running across no man’s land. The men are caked in mud and dirt and there are dead bodies or body parts everywhere. It is a sobering watch and one of the most powerful depictions of the futility of war I’ve ever seen.
The movie left me feeling upset and angry because it all felt so pointless. All that loss of life and yet both sides (shown as French and German here) achieved very little by the time they signed the armistice on 11th November 1918. The ending packs an emotional punch as it is, but the text that flashes up onscreen really drives it home and solidifies the novel’s anti-war message.
The cinematography of this movie is amazing. As you might expect, it is seeped in greys and browns and looks very bleak. The way the camera captures some of the action sequences is very impressive, the opening establishing shot is stunning and some of the harsh, war-torn landscapes made my jaw drop.
Paul is the eyes and ears of the audience and we are with him all the way. Kammerer has an incredible transformation from this happy, naive young man to an empty, soulless recruit who has mentally checked out. There is one face you may recognise – Daniel Bruhl, who plays politician Matthias Erzberger in the other half of the movie, which shows the lead-up to the signing of the armistice.
Germany has submitted All Quiet on the Western Front as its contender for the Best International Feature Film Oscar and I expect it to get nominated because it is a massive achievement narratively and technically.
On Netflix now. It defaults to a dubbed English version and I highly recommend watching the German original with English subtitles