Rating: R | Runtime: 148 minutes
Release Date: September 29th, 2022 (Germany) / October 7th, 2022 (USA)
Studio: 24 Bilder Filmagentur / Netflix
Director(s): Edward Berger
Writer(s): Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson & Ian Stokell / Erich Maria Remarque (novel)

What is a soldier without war?

The war had only been over a decade when Erich Maria Remarque wrote his novel All Quiet on the Western Front about his experience during World War I. It was only two more years before it was adapted into an Oscar-winning film—the first ever based on a book. And yet here we are almost a century later, finally receiving a cinematic adaptation from a German director. It’s only fitting considering Remarque’s tale was never about heroism or glorifying a fight that history has proven did little beyond sow the seeds for a second Great War while killing millions of young men. He sought to portray how war ultimately stole the souls of everyone who picked up a gun in the trenches, regardless of his fate. And Edward Berger honors that intent.

He leaves no doubt about it from the first frame depicting a new band of recruits in the mud with gunfire and explosions all around them. We think we’re meeting Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer) to get familiar with the futility of being a soldier sent to die while those giving orders worry about whether their bread is fresh. But it’s actually just the start of an unforgettably damning sequence that stars a coat instead. It adorns a young man as he’s killed. It’s stripped off his corpse, bundled with others like it, and shipped back to Germany to be washed, mended, and sent back to the recruitment office. That’s when we finally see Paul take that same piece of clothing, excited about the adventure he’s about to embark on towards Paris. It should only be a few weeks.

The film conversely unfolds over the course of two years between reaching the front and hearing the sirens of ceasefire. It’s a drama of attrition as Paul and his comrades, both new (Albrecht Schuch’s Kat) and old (Aaron Hilmer’s Albert and Moritz Klaus’ Franz), survive as a result of sheer luck while those around them perish. Berger captures it all with an objective lens to ensure its brutality never wavers. There can be no mistaking what’s on-screen for patriotism. Only as a complete waste of life at the hands of hubristic men (provided via the contrast between Devid Striesow’s immovable beast of a general seeking blood and Daniel Brühl’s calm realist of a diplomat seeking mercy) pushing these soldiers around like pieces on a board.

There’s zero sentimentality. Zero grace. Hope finds its way in every now and then, but only to ready another descent into Hell. We watch Paul shut his mind off to everything, robotically moving across no man’s land so his body doesn’t freeze in terror. We watch him kill without emotion, each trigger pull and ax whack a trained imperative born from impulse that prevents him from seeing his victims plead for their lives. It therefore hits hard when the chaos dies down into one-on-one exchanges. Suddenly Paul must look his enemy in the eye and watch the life slowly drain from his face. To survive is to remember the horrors wrought by your own hands. Wishing for another chance to die becomes more prevalent than praying for home.

The carnage is relentless and those moments when it’s given pause bring violence of another kind via emotional or psychological distress. Volker Bertemann’s score thunders its bass for added effect as James Friend’s cinematography dares to show the beauty of winter and sunrise before throwing us back into the blood-drenched craters of a front-line that barely moved a hundred yards despite years of constant conflict. And while Berger’s team’s craft is king, you must give credit to Kammerer for holding the weight of their precision upon his shoulders by lending all the humanity we need to understand Remarque’s desire for the world to bear witness.

---

Felix Kammerer in All Quiet On the Western Front. Photo by Reiner Bajo.