All Quiet on the Western Front
starring Felix Krammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Daniel Bruhl, Sebastian Hülk, Aaron Hilmer, Edin Hasanovic and Devid Striesow
screenplay by Ian Stockell, Lesley Patterson and Edward Berger
directed by Edward Berger
Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦
This is the 2022 German re-make of the original 1930 American film (directed by Lewis Milestone), based on the famous 1929 German novel of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque. I’ve never seen the 1930 film, which habitually ranks as one of the best regarded films ever made. I have read the novel three times in English, and I’ve watched the 1979 made-for-TV film version starring Richard Thomas and Ernest Borgnine, directed by Delbert Mann. I rather like that film version. I’ve watched it several times.
Called “Im Westen nichts Neues,” it is epic both in duration (2½-hours) and scope. It’s brutally graphic.
This new version is a German-language film with English subtitles, which is okay. But is it improved? Does authentic German screenwriting, acting and soundtracking measurably improve it? Maybe purists would automatically say so without much thought, calling it an existential improvement, maybe. Or, some might say that the German version is an effort to advance Germany’s discourse about the war and responsibility. Allied veterans could return home celebrated as proud heroes. But not so German veterans who faced shame and guilt, grappling with their place in history.
A lot of the commentary about this film will probably focus more on the current situation in Europe - a land war to which Germany is contributing materiel to the Ukrainians to fight the Russians - than to the merits of the movie. That leaves my question of the value of a German re-make unanswered. Is it important just because it’s a German story that’s finally being told in German? That’s not enough for me.
The story follows volunteer infantryman Paul Baumer and his classmates from school on the Western Front, 1916-18. The movie opens with a gruesome scene of German dead being stripped of their clothes. The uniforms are recycled - washed and mended and then re-issued to new recruits. I thought it was profoundly sad that the dead would be buried naked in the cold earth, not even in the uniforms they fought in. Throughout the next two years of war, that’s the last time those clothes were clean. The mud was really impressive. The volunteers’ aspirations immediately conflict with frontline realities. Remarque himself was a veteran of the Imperial German Army, and he excelled at describing the stark banalities of military life. There’s no heroism in it.
It was filmed largely in the Czech Republic which, coincidentally, is where the Ernest Borgnine/Richard Thomas 1979 version was also filmed. Does that say something about the Czech Republic? That it has a well-developed film industry, or a very good film liaison office? Or, maybe the country just naturally looks like a war zone.