All Quiet on the Western Front (3 Stars)

Netflix Thursday #35

The film is based on a book with the same name written in 1929. It was made in 2022, and it's the third adaptation of the book. The previous versions were made in 1930 and 1979. The1930 version was banned in Nazi Germany. It's not overtly an anti-war film, but it depicts the combat between Germany and France in the ugliest possible way. Soldiers were dying en masse on both sides, and for what?

The film follows the army career of Paul Bäumer, a 17-year-old boy who enthusiastically enlists in the German army in 1917. The new recruits are greeted by rousing speeches that tell them they'll march into Paris in two weeks. Were the speakers lying or deluded? 18 months later Paul's unit has hardly moved from its position in eastern France. They advance a hundred meters, then they're driven back a hundred meters, then they advance again.

Paul is by all accounts a good soldier. He does what's expected of him. He kills more than his fair share of French soldiers, many of them in hand-to-hand combat. But his eyes show the emotions that he's struggling to keep hidden. His friends die one by one before his eyes.

It's a bizarre world full of craters and mud. Would Paul have gone to war if he'd known what awaited him? Would Paul have gone to war if he'd known his side would lose? Three million soldiers died in the battle on the western front. Three million lives were wasted for nothing.

I prefer the original German title of the book and film: "Im Westen Nichts Neues", i.e. "Nothing new in the West". The western front was never quiet. There was always the sound of gunfire and screaming. But there was never anything new. The same battles were being fought every day, with new soldiers arriving regularly to replace the ones who had died.

"All quiet on the western front" was nominated for nine Oscars, of which it won four. It's doubtlessly a good film, but I can't bear to watch it again.

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