All Quiet on the Western Front

I’ve read the book once in high school and don't remember much of it, I'm not burdened by the demands of faithful adaptation. What I demand of a historical war film, however, is that it somehow expresses its thesis in a meaningful way, which All Quite on the Western Front (and Boredom and Ash) fails to do. There is no character development, no profiling in the opening and no emotion in the scenes where we are supposed to sympathise with the protagonists. The whole thing is mired in the bias of war scenes, of which only the transporter sequence leaves a bigger impression, otherwise every scene from the trenches has the same aesthetic: stick the camera on the protagonist and let it bang around. This is supposed to increase the suggestiveness and perhaps the subjectivity of the experience, but the film soon disproves this by layering melodramatic clichés and haphazardly involving "big stories" from the peace negotiations – by that point, it's already mixing together Come and See (in a weak concoction of the hero's suffering), 1917 (steadicam in the trenches), Paths of Glory (a moral about the futility of human sacrifice and the irrational thinking of generals), and Dunkirk (the role of condensed time during the negotiations, cutting to the impending battle). Together, of course, it's a mess, which mostly looks nice, but the sheer disjointedness of the journey leads to inevitable boredom and tedium. When I checked the progress bar and found that I still had over 40 minutes to go, I almost wanted to turn the film off. Of course, it only takes the basic ideas and motivations from Remarque, I know that, even with the rather clouded memories of the book (and unfortunately that's the least of the problems). (11/02/2022)

I haven’t read the novel, so I’m reviewing this strictly as a war movie. In technical terms, it’s fine. There is nothing to criticise when it comes to the sets, costumes, camerawork or the depiction of the battle and negotiation scenes. However, the detailed portrayal of the characters and, mainly, the dialogue come up short, feeling flat and failing to emotionally engage the viewer. The film lacks a strong screenwriting focus on the personal stories of the protagonist and several other characters. (11/13/2022)

Yesterday, I saw the 1979 American rendition of this movie, and while it had its flaws, the creators stayed true to the book, albeit loosely at times. On the flip side, despite the correct title and character names, the new German version diverged significantly from Remarque's book. Unlike the American version, the German one painted a more realistic picture of the war—the trenches looked right, and it effectively portrayed the impersonal war machinery where soldiers were treated as mere expendables. However, the creators took the de-personalization to an extreme, resulting in flat characters (except for Paul and Katczinsky), making it difficult for me to connect with any of them. Even when they made an effort to make the battles realistic, there were lapses, like extras wandering around destroyed trenches after artillery bombardments. Fortunately, the French machine gunners were apparently on a smoke break. Putting the book aside (which is a challenge for me), it was a decently crafted film depicting the senselessness of warfare, showing the ludicrous pursuit of a two-hundred-meter strip of land, resembling the moon's surface, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides. / Lesson learned: Running towards machine guns is not a healthy sport. (01/02/2023)

The repetitive alternation of the heat of battle and the coldness of waiting, the recurring motifs for unimaginative half-wits, the book’s premise stripped of all its compelling scenes, which the film replaces with simple (and sometimes unrealistic) war porn and a completely hollow political storyline. The film fails to approximate Remarque’s insistent humanism except by literally illustrating the conflict of minor and major history, which doesn’t make a lot of sense (the horrors of the First World War didn’t actually consist in the fact that Foch wanted an armistice in six days and the Germans needed to think it over). As an adaptation, this is a disaster, devoid of psychology and with no thoroughly developed characters, and as a film it’s drawn out, transparent and superficial. The versions from 1930 and 1979 had something to them, but this fails even as a stand-alone work. Netflix’s problem isn’t the lack of casting actors of color. Its problem is that its projects lack dramaturgy and thus don’t much sense. (11/01/2022)

In the trailer, the All Quite on the Western Front teases us with visual exhibitionism, and you can't help but expect a proper war spectacle. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. For the entire 150 minutes or so, the filmmakers draw primarily on the formal identity of Saving Private Ryan, but miss the best moments entirely. Anyone who has seen Spielberg's opus remembers the names of the main characters: good guy Captain Miller, tough guy Captain Caparza, Ryan of course, not to mention iconic scenes like Normandy or the battle in the city; plus, with a hard-to-beat level of shocking authenticity and Kaminski's mastery of cinematography. Here, 10 minutes after the screening, you don't remember a single name and perhaps only one memorable scene – the one with the general in the puddle. Iconic, innovative and precisely crafted cult-classic vs. generic German filmmakers' wartime turmoil that is more akin to Hacksaw Ridge or We Were Soldiers. I deliberately mention Gibson’s films, because the level and depiction of violence is quite similar here. It might grab you by the balls for a second, but you’ll easily forget about it in a couple of minutes. It's still a solid film for Germans standards, with some spectacular and polished visuals in places, but it's not going to become a classic by any stretch of the imagination. For that, the story is blandly executed, the actors are lackluster and the action is too monotonous. (11/12/2022)