At The Movies: All Quiet On The Western Front is a shocking, moving testimonial

All Quiet On The Western Front (M18)

148 minutes, now streaming on Netflix

4 stars

The story: It is 1917 and the German thrust into France has stalled. In Germany, citizens are unaware of the gruesome losses at the front and war fervour still runs high. A group of students, raised on tales of manly valour, are eager to fight. Among them is 17-year-old Paul Baumer (Felix Kammerer). He and his school friends are sent to the trenches, where disillusionment, and worse, waits for them.

For every 10 movies about war, there is one anti-war movie and it is usually the losing side that makes it. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say.

Several powerful movies about the Vietnam War have come from the United States. Japanese producers have adapted the 1973 Hiroshima atomic-attack manga, Barefoot Gen, into several excellent live-action and anime films.

For some reason, German studios have never picked up Erich Maria Remarque’s 1928 German novel of the film’s title, despite the book’s reputation as the most famous anti-war novel of the last 100 years. An American studio turned it into a celebrated film in 1930.

In 2022, the gap has finally been filled, brilliantly. This German adaptation of Remarque’s novel is big, bold and dripping with bitterly humorous observations. Mundanities of trench life are shown, from getting grub to going to the toilet.

There is a special emphasis on the horrors visited on the Germans. Gassed, pancaked by tanks and roasted by flamethrowers, their deaths are the final insult after weeks of starvation rations and sadistic abuse by their commanders.

Unlike anti-war movies that hint at why war is hell, this M18-rated film directed and co-written by German film-maker Edward Berger believes in showing, not telling, and he hits the emotional mark every time.

While there are superficial similarities to another German-made war movie, the acclaimed submarine operations film Das Boot (1981), All Quiet On The Western Front is not a suspense thriller or a record of camaraderie. Instead, the focus is on Baumer’s loss of innocence. Kammerer’s portrayal of the teen as he moves from happy patriot to dead-eyed veteran is wonderfully accomplished.

Berger reserves special vitriol for the warmongers, the old men who threw millions of Baumers into the meat grinder while feeling pity only for themselves and their fallen honour. Rarely has the smugly monstrous nature of militarist culture been depicted with such eviscerating accuracy.

Hot take: This new German adaptation is not just a moving anti-war movie, but its portrayal of life and death in the trenches of France are also among the most vivid ever shown on film.