Many students will recognize the title “All Quiet on the Western Front,” a book by Erich Maria Remarque about the external and internal turmoils soldiers faced during World War One, currently in the sophomore year English curriculum.
“All Quiet on the Western Front” was released on Oct 28 exclusively on Netflix. Directed by Edward Berger, it stars Paul Baumer (Felix, a German soldier inspired to join the war with his friends, only to quickly realize that instead of entering a battlefield of glory and fame as he was promised, he has entered a wretched hell of constant misery and pain.
The movie immediately makes something abundantly clear: it is a gore fest. The action scenes are intense because they do not focus on the action itself; instead, the main focus is how the ongoing battles are affecting Paul’s sanity. During these moments, the camera constantly keeps cutting back to Paul’s reaction to the ongoing massacre, and as the movie progresses and the violence gets worse, Paul seems to distance himself from his surroundings. The movie greatly captures how the senseless death slowly destroys Paul’s humanity; every time Paul witnesses the bloodshed around him, he dissociates from it more and more, reacting more indifferently to the chaos, something that was well translated from the novel. It helps the audience understand what Paul is going through, and it humanizes his character. Not only does the viewer see what Paul sees, but they feel what he feels, adding depth to his character.
The acting is phenomenal, and Kammerer shows he is capable of portraying true horror through his emotional moments. The score is well implemented, adding an eerie feeling to the movie. However, where the movie truly shines is its cinematography. Every frame is a masterpiece, from start to finish. The movie has a beautiful color palette that illuminates the screen. The composition of the battle scenes is surprisingly immersive, it appears the director wanted the viewer to feel like a soldier watching the events unfold. The composition of the shots along with the colors is the best asset this movie has. The precious visuals alone make this movie a worthwhile watch.
If you enjoyed the novel, you will be surprised that the film experience is so different. It feels like you are watching a completely different story that simply borrowed some elements from Remarque’s book. The movie strays so far away from the book that it might as well be considered an entirely different script. In the novel, Paul and his friends join the army at the start of the war, and as the war progresses, he slowly loses his friends and himself in the conflict. In this new movie adaptation, Paul joins the war in 1917 (a year before it ends). This change shifts the focus from how war destroys the human soul, to the futility of war, represented by the millions that are still dying while the war is already beginning to end.
Only the character names were left unchanged and most characters’ importance is reduced, while some are excluded from the film entirely. Notable characters like Himmelstoss, the authoritative general who torments Paul during training, have been removed and instead replaced with General Friedrichs. Both characters fit the role of an authoritative figure who seeks only glory for Germany instead of looking for the nation’s citizens. This change, like many others in the film, feels like they were implemented to adjust to the two-hour run time of the movie. The movie still drives home the same messages of anti-authority and the raw cruelness of war and includes the most important segments from the novel, otherwise, everything is different. These differences do not make the movie bad, they simply retell the story in a different way.
In essence, “All Quiet on the Western Front” has many great elements like cinematography and acting which merit a recommendation, and fans of the book shouldn’t be discouraged from watching it by expecting an exact recreation of the book. The movie has a lot of emotional, intense, and heart-wrenching moments that will make every second worth it.