Lewis Milestone’s 1930 film version of the same book won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director but was banned in Germany, such was the humiliation felt by the Germans back then at having been defeated in World War I.
This time, the film’s message about victims and futility will appeal all over the world, including in Germany, and the film will probably be a worthy contender for Academy Awards again, with Germany in support. It’s already won European Film Awards for Makeup, Hair and Visual Effects.
All Quiet On The Western Front opens with a wide, landscape shot, a work of art like almost every frame in the film: it’s a quiet wood, tall trees piercing the sky. An extreme close-up of a fox nursing its young follows. Next there’s an aerial view of drifting smoke, which slowly clears to reveal sprawling corpses everywhere. Bullets are the first sound effects. This war is a violation of everything peaceful, everything beautiful. James Friend, cinematographer, honed his noir skills when working on C.B. Strike (TV series running since 2017). Lighting and composition are superb.
It’s 1917. Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer), a student, goes off to war with his mates, the older soldier, cobbler Katscinsky (Kat) (Albrecht Schuch), special mate Albert Kropp (Aaron Hilmer), fun-loving Franz Müller (Moritz Klaus) and ambitious Tjaden (Edin Hasanovic). They’re naïve, full of adventurous spirit, as if they’re going off on holiday.
Domestic-scale scenes of boyish activities, the theft of a goose, a beetle collected in a matchbox, the sad longings for female company are a wonderful counterpoint for the horrific violence they encounter and which they are required to perpetrate. The lace-trimmed scarf Franz brings back to the trenches after spending a night with a woman is a symbol of the world that waits for them.
Over the next year and half, until Armistice Day 1918, the young men witness all kinds of atrocity. They’re driven to the brink of sanity by relentless attacks, grenades, guns, tanks, and also by near starvation. It’s strange, but the French generals who meet German High Command in a train to sign the surrender documents, seem to be the cruel ones, such is the humanity of the young soldiers who are supposedly the enemy.
The score by Volker Bertelmann features a pounding, often-repeated three-note riff in varying levels of intensity, positioned to alert viewers to rising dramatic tension. There’s plenty of that and a lot to think about afterwards.
Must see.
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