All Quiet On The
Western Front
Cert 15 |
★★★★★

The horrors of the Great War — 1914 to 1918 — take centre stage in this adaptation of German author Erich Maria Remarque’s best selling 1929 novel All Quiet on the Western Front.

Produced by Netflix and directed by Edward Berger (Patrick Melrose), the film was recently announced as Germany’s submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at next year’s prize giving ceremony.

Despite a number of English language adaptations, both for TV and the big screen, this is the very first German language screen incarnation of Remarque’s book. Labelled as unpatriotic, the book was later banned by Goebbels for its open political agnosticism and was considered a threat to the Nazi cause alongside other left wing literature.

Set in Germany in 1917, as the deadly conflict with France rumbles on, teenager Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer) lies about his age so that he can enlist alongside his best friends after being sold a romanticised patriotic notion by their school teacher. Paul and his friends are almost immediately hit by the reality and destructive nature of war as they arrive at the front.

All Quiet On the Western Front ©Reiner Bajo

A battle scene from the film

Thrown into trench-life with little to no equipment, the young men die one by one, but only Paul is left to tell their story over and over again. “Germany will be empty soon” utters one of Paul’s comrades as more young men are found dead in a barn from a deadly gas attack.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, sickened by the endless deaths and senseless destruction, diplomat Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Brühl, brilliant) seeks a peaceful end to the conflict, while blood-thirsty officers are seen advocating for more young recruits to be sent to their death.

Much like the numerous adaptations of R C Sherriff’s Journey’s End — the most recent Saul Dibb’s in 2017 — or 1917, the multi-award winning one-shot war drama by Sam Mendes, All Quiet On The Western Front wears its pacifist sleeve on its heart without ever diminishing the heroism of its protagonists.

And while its warts-and-all representation of war may not be something new, Berger still manages to put his own twist on this story as seen from the other side of the trenches.

Bolstered by Volker Bertelmann’s gorgeously composed ominous score and by James Friend’s breathtaking cinematography, this latest incarnation of this much loved novel has proven to be its most faithful yet.

Granted, the film might not be for the faint-hearted amongst us, but still manages to be the most honest and brilliantly executed representation of the horrors of the Great War.