All Quiet on the Western Front

 Now we go from fantastical horrors to actual horrors ...

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque was most famously filmed in 1930 as only the third film named Best Picture at the Academy Awards. There was also a TV movie in 1979 that's just a footnote now. It's more of a footnote now with this film version, the first made in its native Germany and its official entry in the International Feature Oscar race. Let's talk about it.

It's World War I. Paul Baumer (Felix Kammerer) is a new recruit to the Imperial German Army. He and his school chums are excited to fight for the Kaiser and the Fatherland. Their uniforms - all recycled from corpses of the opening skirmish - barely fit, but no worries. Their excitement disintegrates when they get their first taste of trench warfare. It's a chaotic ordeal which leaves one of the school chums, Ludwig (Adrian Grunewald), dead on their first night.

By November 1918, the war has gone nowhere, and an armistice seems imminent. Eventual Vice-Chancellor Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Bruhl) represents the Reich for the peace talks. Meanwhile, Paul and his friends try to survive the war's last few days. The odious General Friedrichs (Devid Striesow) wants a last-minute victory for the Fatherland. This will not end well.

This Netflix release was directed and co-written by Edward Berger. It opens in a majestic forest photographed by cinematographer James Friend as a vixen and her cubs rest. It's all quiet on their front. They're spared the carnage that the human soldiers endure for nearly two and a half hours. A few get smushed by tanks and scorched by flamethrowers. One makes good on his promise to not live a cripple. We get some levity whenever Paul and his friends have downtime. He and his mentor, Katczinsky (Albrecht Schuch), even raid a farm for food, though it doesn't end well the second time. 

Paul is a strong audience surrogate. Anyone expecting "War is Awesome," like he and his friends do, are sorely mistaken. His attempts to survive are tested when his friends are killed. We empathize with him as he finds Ludwig's body and later stabs a soldier who takes forever to die. The altered timeline of the film makes his eventual fate more tragic. Among his friends, Ludwig is the most sympathetic, Katczinsky is a cool old guy and Franz (Moritz Klaus) is fun. Erzberger is a compelling voice of reason, while Friedrichs is a War Hawk madman. 

The film's technical stars draw us further into the war. The editing and sound mix renders the battles as chaotic affairs. The sound design lets us experience Paul's momentary deafness from explosions. The cinematography and production design visualize an impressive Western Front. It's quite splendid when it's all quiet there. The makeup design gives us plenty of war wounds, mud-caked soldiers and world weariness. Volker Bertelmann's (aka Hauschka) score is as stunning as it is bleak. Its recurring bass motif is quite imposing.

All Quiet on the Western Front may drain your enthusiasm for future wars. If so, then it's gotten it's 93-year-old point across. Its grim portrayal of a mismanaged and destructive war puts modern events into perspective. I wouldn't blame you if you seek something lighthearted instead. But everyone else should see it on the biggest screens they can find. It's truly one of the best anti-war films of all time in any language.