All Quiet on the Western Front
Im Westen nichts Neues
Edward Berger (2022)
I haven’t read Erich Maria Remarque’s novel or seen Lewis Milestone’s 1930 film so watched Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front baggage-free. I’m guessing the people behind this remake felt it was long overdue (an American TV-movie version appeared in 1979 but there’d been no cinema film since Milestone’s) and that the technical resources now available would enable a description of life and death in the Great War trenches more realistically harrowing than was possible in Hollywood nearly a century ago. It seems right, too, that a German film of a famous German literary work – and one of the first ‘degenerate’ books publicly burned under the Nazi regime – has, albeit courtesy of Netflix, finally reached so many screens. The new version is a technical feat, to which Berger’s cinematographer (James Friend), film editor (Sven Budelmann) and special visual effects team (headed by Frank Petzold) are major contributors. The repeated scenes of carnage strongly convey the idea of a war machine – of men killed in a kind of industrial process, certainly on an industrial scale. Berger does extraordinary things with blood and mud in the trenches. The integration of real action and CGI is (as far as this viewer was concerned) seamless. Yet there’s a mismatch between the graphic realism of the images and other important aspects of the film.
That these include the acting is evident from a very early stage. After an opening trench warfare sequence, Berger cuts to the peaceful streets of a town where, in the spring of 1917, four teenage friends – Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer), Ludwig Behm (Adrian Grünewald), Albert Kropp (Aaron Hilmer) and Franz Müller (Moritz Klaus) – excitedly enlist in the German army. Along with scores of other new recruits, the boys listen enthusiastically to a hortatory patriotic speech and proudly collect their uniforms. Those adverbs really signify, and so does another: emphatically – that’s how these young actors execute excitement, enthusiasm, pride. When seventeen-year-old Paul, the main character, receives his uniform, he notices someone else’s name tag on the collar and reacts with alarm; reassured by the official handing out the uniforms, Felix Kammerer does relief. Isn’t this just what any actor worth their salt should be doing? Yes, in the sense of expressing what their character is feeling; no, if it means – as it does here – switching emotions on and off blatantly, one by one.
Paul has, of course, inherited the uniform of a dead soldier and the four friends’ romantic notions about fighting for Kaiser and country are quickly destroyed. They appear to be thrown in at the deep end without military training: I wasn’t sure if this was historically accurate or Berger’s exaggerated way of stressing the boys’ innocence. On their very first night in the Western Front trenches, Ludwig dies in artillery fire but the three others have miles to go before they sleep. The actors’ commitment and stamina are admirable, Felix Kammerer’s especially, but, whatever they’re subjected to, one is always aware of watching actors. It has to be acknowledged this is partly a relief. The warfare, including the annihilation of numerous anonymous soldiers, is so grimly convincing that the conspicuous performances, which have the effect of assuring the audience it’s-only-a-film, amount to a form of protection. But this surely can’t have been Edward Berger’s intention. It’s difficult not to feel uncomfortable that much more skilful care has been applied to technical aspects of All Quiet on the Western Front, and not to infer from this that Berger’s priorities are logistical. Even the visual accomplishments sometimes feel wrong. James Friend’s lighting brilliantly distinguishes various shades of dark green and brown in the landscape of the trenches. The result is incongruously beautiful.
The action soon moves forward to the last days of the war in November 1918. The focus – on Paul, Albert, Franz and two older soldiers in their unit, Stanislaus ‘Kat’ Katczinsky (Albrecht Schuch) and Tjaden Stackfleet (Edin Hasanovic) – is now shared with scenes describing armistice negotiations. This part of the narrative, which I gather wasn’t part of Remarque’s novel, conventionalises All Quiet on the Western Front, diverting it from the Front line into more generic epic-war-movie territory. Berger and his fellow writers (the screenplay is also credited to Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell) presumably wanted a dramatic juxtaposition between the political manoeuvring in the Forest of Compiègne and the consequences of ceasefire delay for those at the sharp end. Perhaps this seemed to work on the page. On the screen, each shift of the action from the soldiers to the negotiators amounts to a meanwhile-back-on-the-train deflation of tension. As Matthias Erzberger, the chief German negotiator, Daniel Brühl, internationally the best known member of the cast, gives a considered, unshowy performance – more than can be said for Thierry de Montalembert’s moustache-twirling theatrics as Marshal Foch, on the opposite side of the table.
The only human relationship that develops any substance is that of Paul and Kat. That first night in the trenches, when rookie Paul thinks he’s taken a bullet and panics, it’s experienced Kat who gives reassurance and calm, clear advice to Paul on how best to protect himself in future. In terms of civilian background also, the two men are simply contrasted. Paul was a good student, planning to go to college; Kat’s a cobbler and illiterate (Paul has to read him the letters Kat receives from his wife). The trust and friendship between the pair is credible thanks to the warmth and integrity of Albrecht Schuch’s acting, a cut above anyone else’s because he’s firmly inside his character. Schuch’s strong presence and sensitive playing are nearly a problem: in combination, they give him such relative authority that you can’t fully believe in Kat as a humble working man with nous rather than intellect. But it’s hardly Schuch’s fault that he stands out in this way. I’d not seen this actor before; I’ll look forward to seeing him again.
The two episodes in which Kat and Paul steal poultry from a farm are effectively contrasted, too. The first is, in the grisly context of the story, high-spirited and almost fun. The second, to get a goose for a meal to celebrate the imminent armistice, goes wrong and results in Kat’s death. By this point, Albert and Tjaden are already dead. Franz has also departed the film (he may have died, off camera) but a scarf that he took from a French woman, as a memento of the night he spent with her, is increasingly in evidence. It’s in Tjaden’s possession when he’s briefly reunited with Paul, a moment that, alas, is laughably staged. Gravely wounded, Tjaden lies on his back on the floor of a vast room full of wounded men. Paul walks down the corridor outside the room and Tjaden calls out his name. It’s nearly as hard to credit that Paul can hear him as it is to believe that Tjaden, in his position, could have seen Paul. When Paul and Kat bring him food, Tjaden summons all his strength to stab himself in the throat with a fork but not before he has passed Franz’s scarf to Paul.
Berger makes a meal of illustrating the high-grade catering available on Marshal Foch’s train: no need for anyone on board that to steal a goose. Good food and drink are also plentiful at a separate location, the headquarters of a maniacally jingoist German general, implacably opposed to the armistice talks. General Friedrichs (Devid Striesow) is responsible for the film’s culminating outrage. Following the announcement of the impending armistice, he orders his troops to carry out an attack beginning fifteen minutes before the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Devid Striesow not only tends to perform like a Bond villain but, as Friedrichs sits seething in his lair, is sometimes photographed like one. While this crude caricature might seem to qualify, like the obvious acting of some of the younger cast, as a kind of negative relief, the final mayhem only made me angry – though the anger was confused, brought on by the film’s direction as well as by the homicidal general. I’d gradually lost faith in Berger, finding him too determined to impress – for example, in a powerful but excessive sequence in no man’s land, where Paul stabs a French soldier, prevents the man from breathing by stuffing mud into his mouth then becomes remorseful and, too late, begs the dead man’s forgiveness. When Friedrichs issues his final order, Paul kills more French soldiers before he himself is fatally wounded, a few seconds before 11am. A newly arrived German soldier finds Paul’s corpse. He removes from it Franz’s scarf, with which, by now, I felt like strangling Edward Berger.
4 February 2023