The horrific experience of World War I depicted in All Quiet on the Western Front is about as grim and brutal a depiction as anything put to screen. While there have been powerful film adaptations of Erich Maria Remarque's poignant 1929 novel in the past that also showed that there is no heroism or glory in such a struggle, none compare to this one. Alternating between graphic violence as countless young people are killed one by one, and cold isolation as the survivors sit and wait their turn to die, the film is imbued with righteous indignation in a way that no other adaptation has. All changes become necessary in order for this vision to be realized.
Previous works - one in 1930 and a television film in 1979 - reflected the cinematic techniques and context of the era, while maintaining the desire to convey the horrific truth of war. The latest interpretation from writer-director Edward Berger largely follows the previous stories, albeit in a different manner that removes many narrative threads from the source material while introducing several significant others. These additions transform the film into a work that gives up on the idea that simply recognizing the horrors that can be found in war will have a significant impact on preventing them. For all its cynicism, the dark truth the film finds in this reimagined approach is refreshing in the quiet fury that simmers underneath.
More than a century has passed since the so-called “Great War,” and it can hardly be said that portraying the inhumanity of such conflicts has had any effect on the depravity that drives them. The film engages in cinematic dialogue with the legacy of anti-war art and is much less keen on the promise that visual representation of what wars are really like will somehow stop them. The crisis it depicts stems not from a lack of information, since those looking down from their safe and cozy towers have plenty of information about what is really happening, but from a brutality fueled by nationalists.
All Quiet on the Western Front 2022 review and the tragic futility of anti-war cinema
The film still follows the novel's central character, Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer), who almost immediately throws him and his fellow young recruits into the chaos of the front. Explosions and shooting do not stop, and we see how, over the years, millions of people die in battles in the same area of several hundred yards. This cancels all training and that bit of order that was felt at the beginning of the novel, to completely plunge into chaos. Men are driven to madness, others plunge even deeper into themselves in order to survive. The only respite comes when Berger shows us the natural world, as if we are being given a glimpse of what might have been if there had been no such war. These moments of calm are short-lived, but their juxtaposition with how monstrous the violence is becomes clear. Destruction is positioned as unnatural and an insult to the surrounding world, which becomes absorbed.
Even when far from the front, the echoes of the fighting can never be completely eliminated. The people here are constantly aware of what is happening, and at every moment they know what awaits them when they are sent back to the depths of this Hell on Earth. Whereas in the book and previous films such conflict has been positioned as stemming from a lack of a broader understanding of how terrible it is to be there, this work takes it one step further. It starts with Paul getting no leave to return to his family. This is the most significant change from the source material and indicates a shift in what this film is about. In particular, we see how characters in higher positions in the military and government leadership speak frankly about what is happening. All of these characters were absent from the novel, and their appearance at key moments in the film speaks volumes about what Berger is aiming for. It gives us a glimpse of those who have the power to stop the violence and tragedy gripping thousands of people who die every single day they put off.
The only character who seems to care is Daniel Brühl's Matthias Erzberger, also a new character in the story, who is desperate to stop the fighting to stop the endless death. However, he is an outlier that helps highlight how dispassionate and cold almost everyone else around him is. No matter how hard he tries to change the trajectory of the conflict, his pleas for peace come too late for the millions of people who were sent to their graves by those who fully understood that they would die. Paul is the face of this conflict, but there are countless others like him who have been cast aside as nonentities. Even the uniform he wears came from someone who was killed shortly before him and thrown away along with his nameplate.
The central figure in this story is a general who receives sumptuous dinners while those under him die in the mud. This is a recurring element of the film, where we see those in power feasting in safety and then returning to the men in the ranks who wait silently to be marched off to the slaughter. This is a rage that, although present in the novel when the men discussed the conflict among themselves, reaches its limit here. While ordinary people may not have known the full extent of the war, distorted by propaganda, or had the power to stop it alone, those in power absolutely did. Every order to send soldiers over the wall in an attack that would end with them being torn to pieces was a choice by those who understood what it would lead to. The film's portrayal of this, particularly one long scene halfway through the film's nightmarish scene, represents a reality that was well known to those giving the order. They did this fully aware of what would happen and the losses they would suffer. These decisions cannot be justified, there is no justification for them, because they sent people into the meat grinder again and again. The true face of the war was the one they all looked at with dead eyes and sent people to die.
So what is the role of anti-war film or similar art in general? Is it to shed light on the truth and talk about what is really happening so that we understand that we can’t do this anymore? This idealistic premise is based on the idea that the only reason wars occur is a lack of knowledge about their human costs. The latest film, All Quiet on the Western Front, shows not only that this is not the case, but that most of those with the power to throw away countless lives do so without even thinking. The futility of trying to evoke compassion from those who have nothing to give always ends with the same result. The film, while deliberately avoiding glorifying such conflict as one might hope, also understands that it's all for naught. The ending for Paul, again extended from the novel and significantly different from all previous adaptations, makes this obvious. She takes on a more pessimistic poetry that works in conversation with predecessors, as each of them, no matter how adamant, has not changed the fundamental ways in which the gears of the war machine will always continue to turn with the powers that be controlling the levers.
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