All Quiet on the Western Front Deromanticizes War

 

 

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

Directed by Edward Berger

Netflix, 147 minutes, R (violence, gore, disturbing images)

In German (Subtitles but some versions dubbed)

★★★★★

 

I read All Quiet on the Western Front when I was in high school. It, the Vietnam War, and the Quakers turned me into a pacifist. Later I saw both the 1930 and 1979 film versions of Erich Maria Remarque’s classic  novel, but the 2022 remake tops them all. The novel and the various films are the most powerful antiwar statements ever produced. The latest film, directed by Edward Berger, won all manner of prizes, including four Oscars.

 

Some ducked it because it is so gruesome. To such people I say that it drives home the absolute obscenity of war and moves us beyond the hero dreams of military recruiters, braggadocio generals, and pandering politicians. If you don’t like what you see on the screen, watch how you vote and don’t let your children become soldiers. Every element you see on the screen is a logical outcome of war and each justification for combat is hollow.

 

Seventeen-year-old Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer) is the protagonist of All Quiet on the Western Front, one of millions of lambs sent to the slaughter who fell for the patriotic claptrap of the German high command during the waning days of World War I. He is a fresh-faced postal delivery boy lured into uniform along with three of his best friends.  The lie is on from the outset, old uniforms boiled to remove the blood, sewn to close the bullet holes, and (most of) the tags removed that identified the deceased former wearers. It’s 1917 and trench warfare has stalemated to the point where waves of young men charge across bomb-pocked landscapes filled with barbed wire, dead horses, corpses, and water-and-blood filled craters. The insanity of youths being machine-gunned, blown apart, bayoneted, set afire, and gassed to secure a few hundred meters of land is on full display. So too is life inside the trenches: sucking mud, excrement, sniper fire, flares, bunker-blasting bombs, and the grim task of collecting dog tags from the dead when there’s a lull in the fighting.

 

There are hundreds of ways to die. Albert Kropp is roasted by a flamethrower and Tjaden Stackfleet stabs himself in the throat with a fork rather than endure amputation (and, in all likelihood, sepsis). Paul will loses his comrades but befriends “Kat” Katczinsky (Albrecht Schuch), an older soldier who becomes a big brother of sorts. As you might predict, graveyard humor, dreams of women, and talk of a postwar future that few will live to see dominate trench conversation. That is, when they are not too emotionally drained to speak. One of the ways that one tries to deal with the horror is to become a stoic killing machine that can shoot another human being at pointblank range, smash a skull with a rock, or repeatedly stab someone, move on to the next victim, and avoid becoming one yourself. When you find a room of 60 dead new recruits who died because they prematurely removed their gas mask, you but shrug.

 

The ultimate craziness, as Paul and Kat survive into 1918, is that German politicians know the war has been lost­–U.S. entry into the conflict tipped the scales–but try convincing the Kaiser of that or fanatics such as General Friedrichs (Daniel Striesow). The German state secretary Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Brühl) is trying his best to end the war, but he’s getting no cooperation from French General Fuchs (Thibault de Montalembert) on ending the carnage. Fuchs has the winning hand and knows it; he gives the Germans 72 hours to accept unconditional surrender involving major land concessions and won’t listen to pleas that a victor’s peace could lead to a future war. (Think fascism and World War II.)

 

The accord is signed and, as you might know, the war ended at 11 am on November 11: 11/11/11. Ahh, but what about that 72-hour period before the armistice took hold? Do you think a sanguinary monster such as Friedrichs will tell his troops to chill? He’s perfectly willing to send hundreds of young men to their graves if he can claim a “glorious” victory. Remember the line from Apocalypse Now: “The horror! The horror!”

 

All Quiet on the Western Front is brilliant filmmaking in the service of warning us against such horror: the cinematography of James Friend, the creepy soundtrack of Volker Bertelmann, the make-up artistry of Heike Merker, and Berger’s uncompromising don’t-look-away direction. Too much horror? Did you think war is pretty?

 

Rob Weir