‘All Quiet on the Western Front': A German's grim view of World War I
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Loading... - Liam Bakker
- 13 Oct 2022
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There are times in “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Germany’s official Oscar submission, that you might be reminded, more than a little, of “1917,” Sam Mendes’s Oscar-winning 2019 film, also loosely based on real events during World War I. The new movie — the first German-language adaptation of German veteran Erich Maria Remarque’s semi-autobiographical 1929 bestseller, later banned under Nazi rule for its antiwar sentiments — includes many echoes of Mendes’s film.
It opens in 1917, features a star (Felix Kammerer) who looks uncannily like “1917’s” George MacKay, and includes all the visual trappings of the earlier film: muddy trench warfare, misery, violence and frequent scenes of a raw recruit running across a corpse-strewn battlefield, filmed in a way that somehow aestheticizes the bleak, bloody horrors of battle. (Something to think about: Can there ever truly be a purely antiwar film, when so many movies on the theme are so terribly stunning to look at?)
There are also several differences between the two films. Mostly, “All Quiet” is not so breathtakingly, heart-stoppingly cinematic. Yes, it’s handsomely shot, but there are long sequences where little happens. True to life, perhaps, but slow. Read More...
