‘All Quiet On The Western Front’ Review: Netflix Adaptation Is A Chilling Piece Of Anti-War Filmmaking [TIFF]

Adapted from Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel of the same name, Edward Berger’s take on “All Quiet On The Western Front” is a chilling piece of anti-war filmmaking with a star-making turn from Felix Kammerer in the lead role of young Paul Bäumer, who learns the hard way that war is hell.

Although it’s hard not to compare and contrast this new version to Lewis Milestone’s Best Picture-winning 1930 film starring Lew Ayres, it’s equally wild that it took nearly 100 years for a German adaptation given it’s the novel’s country of origin. There are shades of Milestone’s picture here due to their shared source material, but it’s closer in tone to G.W. Pabst’s much bleaker 1930 flick “Westfront 1918.” Like both films, Berger finds beauty in all the bloodshed, but mostly he finds hypocrisy in the senseless slaughter of nearly a whole generation’s worth of the nation’s young men.  

READ MORE: TIFF 2022: 16 Must-See Films To See At The Toronto Film Festival

In early 1917, a young man named Heinrich charges out of the trenches with his brigade, watching them all die as they call out his name in camaraderie. His uniform, like that of all the other fallen men, is stripped from his dead body, the blood washed out, the rips patched, before it is re-issued to the new young recruit Paul Bäumer, who, along with his friends, have lied about their ages so they can go to war and gain the fabled glory the old men of the country have sold them on. Each unaware that for the last three years, their fellow countrymen, like Heinrich, have been dying in the millions over roughly 300 yards of land. 

This harrowing opening sequence is one of several stellar action set pieces in the film. On Paul’s first night, he almost dies a thousand ways as the cacophony of war sounds – bombs firing, explosions, men wailing – swirl around him. After seeing several friends killed in the most brutal ways and being assigned to collect their dog tags, Paul’s fresh face loses its sheen, and the shock of seeing so much death up close creeps in. 

The most impressive set piece finds Paul and his regiment a week before Armistice, ordered back to the front. It’s here the film’s overreliance on CGI gets the best of it. Berger’s compositions are striking, and the tension created by the film’s overwhelming sound design and Volker Bertelmann’s searing synth-infused organ score is palpable. But what should be as awe-inspiring as the extended battle sequence in King Vidor’s 1925 classic “The Big Parade,” is undone by the shockingly chintzy CGI. Instead of looking ominous, the massive panzer tanks look like something from “Star Wars.” The flamethrowers wielded by the opposing soldiers are peppered beautifully into the frame, but they shoot some of the absolute fakest-looking flames. In fact, throughout the battle sequences, even the smoke is created with CGI, which continually proves distracting. 

READ MORE: Fall 2022 Preview: 60+ Must-See Films To Watch

At nearly two-and-a-half hours long, the screenplay, credited to Ian Stokell, Lesley Paterson, and Berger himself, hews closely to the book, meaning in between battles, Paul has plenty of conversations with his fellow soldiers. He is particularly close to Stanislaus “Kat” Katczinsky (Albrecht Schuch), an illiterate cobbler whom Paul helps by reading to him from his wife’s letters. They form a unique bond as the two seem to survive so much together while all those around them perish. Although their final moments together are slightly altered from the novel, the emotional impact remains as devastating as it ever was. 

Since Paul is the audience’s surrogate, the film lives or dies on his casting, and in Kammerer, the filmmakers struck gold. His transformation from a wide-eyed teenage recruit with delusions of grandeur to a disillusioned killer indifferent to life and death is astonishing. In one stand-out sequence, Paul kills a French soldier in hand-to-hand combat, who dies loudly and slowly as the two are trapped together in a water-soaked crater. Overwhelmed with remorse and realizing he is an ordinary man, just like all his fallen friends, Paul attempts to save the man’s life. When he fails, grief overtakes his whole body. Kammerer is extraordinary; a raw nerve whose slow numbing is devastating to watch.

“All of Germany will be empty soon,” a fellow soldier laments earlier in the film after the regiment finds a room full of teenage soldiers, dead because they had no experienced leader with them and took their masks off too soon. An apt metaphor for the total mismanagement of the war by a cowardly Kaiser and power-hungry generals, more interested in getting their names in the history books than in the welfare of their fellow countrymen. 

Unfortunately, it’s the sections in which we see one of these generals commanding his troops from the comfort of a balcony. Also, scenes of Daniel Brühl as German politician Matthias Erzberger attempting to broker the Armistice don’t quite fit into the flow of the film. Berger returns to both haphazardly throughout the film, never finding a way to smooth the transitions to and from these scenes, even though they are necessary to thrust the story toward its bleakly ironic conclusion. 

Regardless of its minor flaws, Berger and his crew have crafted a faithful and heart-wrenching adaptation that fully realizes the novel’s trenchant anti-war themes. As the film ends, a new young soldier is ordered to collect the dog tags of all the soldiers slain in the general’s vain final attempt at a victory, mere minutes before the armistice comes into effect. Looking into Paul’s face, he sees it is not unlike his own; young and yet old beyond its years. Maybe this young man realizes, unlike Paul, he now has a chance to be more than just fodder for the war machine, and that’s the real path to glory. [B+]

Follow along with all our coverage of the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival.